Number 277 - June 2006
Five More Tips on How to Speed Up Windows XP
by Randy Esdon - Big Blue and Cousins:
The Greater Victoria PC Users' Association APRIL 2006


   Since February's edition of BB&C's newsletter, I have had several people comment on the tips I had submitted on how to speed up Windows XP. Overall most of the feedback was positive. Well I thought I would search around and find a few more tips people can use to tweak their systems should they feel that their systems could be performing a little bit better.

   1. Defragment Your Pagefile: Keeping your pagefile defragmented can provide a major performance boost. One of the best ways of doing this is to create a separate partition on your hard drive just for your page file, so that normal disk usage does not affect it. Another way of keeping your pagefile defragmented is to run PageDefrag . This little application can be used to defrag your pagefile, and can be set to defrag the pagefile every time your PC starts. To install:
   
  • Download and Run PageDefrag

    •    
  • Tick Defrag at next Reboot

    •    
  • Click OK and reboot


    •    2. Improve Boot Times: A great feature in Microsoft Windows XP is the ability to do a boot defragment. This places all boot files next to each other on the disk to allow for faster booting. By default, this option is enabled but on some builds, it is not and so below is how to turn it on.
       
  • Go to Start Menu and Click Run

    •    
  • Type in Regedit then click OK

    •    
  • Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Micro soft\ Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction (All one line - ed)

    •    
  • Select Enable from the list on the right

    •    
  • Right click on it and select Modify

    •    
  • Change the value to Y to enable

    •    
  • Reboot


    •    3. Improve Swap file Performance: If you have more than 256MB of RAM this tweak will considerably improve your performance. It makes sure that your PC uses every drop of memory before it starts using the swap file. Using the memory is faster than accessing the swap file on the hard disk.
       
  • Go to Start then Run

    •    
  • Type msconfig.exe then OK

    •    
  • Click on the System.ini tab

    •    
  • Expand the 386enh tab by clicking on the plus sign

    •    
  • Click on New then in the blank box type ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

    •    
  • Click OK and reboot


    •    4. Make Your Menus Load Faster: What this tweak does is remove the slight delay between clicking on a menu and XP displaying the menu.
       
  • Go to Start then Run

    •    
  • Type 'Regedit' then click OK

    •    
  • Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\

    •    
  • Select MenuShowDelay

    •    
  • Right click and select Modify

    •    
  • Reduce the number to around 100


    •    This is the delay time before a menu is opened. You can set it to "0" but it can make Windows hard to use, as menus will open if you just look at them--well move your mouse over them anyway. You can try a number anywhere between 50-150 depending on how quick you are with moving a mouse and selecting items on the screen.

       5. Improve XP Shutdown Speed: This tweak reduces the time XP waits before automatically closing any running programs when you give it the command to shutdown.
       
  • Go to Start then select Run

    •    
  • Type Regedit and click OK

    •    
  • Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\

    •    
  • Select 'WaitToKillAppTimeout'

    •    
  • Right click and select Modify

    •    
  • Change the value to 1000

    •    
  • Click OK

    •    
  • Now select HungAppTimeout

    •    
  • Right click and select Modify

    •    
  • Change the value to 1000

    •    
  • Click OK

    •    
  • Now find HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\ControlPanel\Desktop

    •    
  • Select WaitToKillAppTimeout

    •    
  • Right click and select Modify

    •    
  • Change the value to 1000

    •    
  • Click OK

    •    
  • Now find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\

    •    
  • Select WaitToKillServiceTimeout

    •    
  • Right click and select Modify

    •    
  • Change the value to 1000

    •    
  • Click OK


    •    That's it. I hope you find these tips useful. You should now see a noticeable speed improvement if you make all of these changes correctly.

       Copyright (C) 1990-2006 by Big Blue and Cousins: The Greater Victoria Personal Computer Users' Association. www.bbc.org

    TOGGLE Editor's Note:
       You may find, as we did, that many of the step's suggested have already been taken, either directly by you or by some software that you have installed, such as a firewall or anti virus suite, or whatever.
      Number 277 - June 2006