How To Boost Your Computer Speed And Performance

Turn Off Indexing to Speed Up XP 
Windows XP keeps a record of all files on the hard disk so when you do a search on the hard drive it is faster. There is a downside to this and because the computer has to index all files, it will slow down normal file commands like open, close, etc. If you do not do a whole lot of searches on your hard drive then you may want to turn this feature off: 
Open My Computer. 
Right-click your hard drive icon and select Properties. 
At the bottom of the window you'll see "Allow indexing service to index this disk for faster searches," uncheck this and click ok. 
A new window will pop up and select Apply to all folders and subfolders. 
It will take a minute or two for the changes to take affect but 

Clean Your Prefetch to Improve Performance 
This is a unique technique for WinXP. We know that it is necessary to scrub registry and TEMP files for Win9X/ME/2000 periodically. Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP. However, after using XP some time, the prefetch directory can get full of junk and obsolete links in the Prefetch catalog, which can slow down your computer noticeably. 
Open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete those junk and obsolete files, reboot. It is recommended that you do this every month. 

Performance Increase Through My Computer 
Easy enough tweak to usually find out about it on your own, but still, some of us still don't find it right away. So here it is: 
Start > right-click on My Computer and select Properties. 
Click on the "Advanced" tab. 
See the "Performance" section? Click "Settings". 
Disable the following: 
Fade or slide menus into view 
Fade or slide ToolTips into view 
Fade out menu items after clicking 
Show Shadows under menus 
Slide open combo boxes 
Slide taskbar buttons 
Use a background image for each folder type 
Use common tasks in folders 
There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster. 
Reduce 10 Second Scandisk Wait Time 
Start MS Dos Prompt (Start run CMD), and type: CHKNTFS /T:4 
where 4 is the amount of wait time. 
CHKNTFS /? 
for more info.

DMA Mode on IDE Devices 
Just like Windows 2000, Windows XP still fails to set the DMA mode correctly for the IDE device designated as the slaves on the primary IDE and secondary IDE channels. Most CD-ROMS are capable of supporting DMA mode, but the default in XP is still PIO. Setting it to DMA won't make your CD-ROM faster, but it will consume less CPU cycles. Here's how: 
Open the Device Manager. One way to do that is to right-click on "My Computer", select the Hardware tab, and select Device Manager. 
Expand "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" and double-click on "Primary IDE Channel". 
Under the "Advanced Settings" tab, check the "Device 1" setting. More than likely, your current transfer mode is set to PIO. 
Set it to "DMA if available". 
Repeat the step for the "Secondary IDE Channel" if you have devices attached to it. Reboot. 
Load Internet Explorer the Fastest Way Possible 
Edit your link to start Internet Explorer to have -nohome after it. For Example: "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" -nohome 
This will load internet explorer very fast because it does not load a web page while it is loading. If you want to go to your homepage after it is loaded, just click on the home button. 

Easy Way to Adjust LargeSystemCache 
Normally, the tweak I've seen asks you to go into HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and change the value to either O or 1 to the adjustment the LargeSystemCache. 
However, in Windows XP, all you have to do is: 
Right-click My Computer.
Select Properties. 
Click Advanced. 
Choose Performance. 
Click Advanced again. 
Select either Programs or System Cache under Memory Usage. 
Programs = 0 for the registry tweak equivalent 
System Cache = 1 for the registry tweak equivalent 
9)Shutdown XP faster.
Like previous versions of windows, it takes long time to restart or shutdown windows XP when the "Exit Windows" sound is enabled. To solve this problem you must disable this useless sound. 
Click Start button. 
Go to settings > Control Panel > Sound, Speech and Audio devices > Sounds and Audio Devices > Sounds. 
Then under program events and windows menu click on "Exit Windows" sub-menu and highlight it. Now from sounds you can select, choose "none" and then click Apply and OK.
Now you should see some improvements when shutting down your system. 
10)Easily Disable Messanger
Go into: C:/Program Files/Messenger. Rename the Messenger folder to "MessengerOFF". 
This does not slow down Outlook Express or hinder system performance. 

Turn Off Autoplay for Program CDs 
How can you stop Windows XP from launching program CDs? 
Click Start, click Run, type GPEDIT.MSC to open Group Policy in the Microsoft Management Console. 
Double-click Computer Configuration, double-click Administrative templates, double-click System, and then click Turn off autoplay. 
The instructions on your screen describe how to configure this setting. Click Properties to display the setting dialog. 
Click Enabled, and choose CD-ROM drives, then click OK, to stop CD autoplay. 
This setting does not prevent Autoplay for music CDs. 


Win XP Won’t Completely Shutdown 
Go to Control Panel, then go to Power Options. 
Click on the APM tab, then check the "Enable Advanced Power Management support." 
Shut down your PC. 
It should now successfully complete the Shut Down process. 

Adjust Various Visual Effects 
Open up the Control Panel. 
Go under System and click on the Advanced tab. 
Click settings under Performance options. 
You can now change various graphical effects (mainly animations and shadows). 

Disable Error Reporting 
Open Control Panel. 
Click on Performance and Maintenance. 
Click on System. 
Then click on the Advanced tab. 
Click on the error-reporting button on the bottom of the windows. 
Select Disable error reporting. 
Click OK. Click OK. 

Increase Your Cable Modem or DSL Speed in XP 
This tweak is for broad band cable connections on stand alone machines with WinXP professional version - might work on Home version also. It may also work with networked machines as well. 
This tweak assumes that you have let WinXP create a connection on install for your cable modem/NIC combination and that your connection has tcp/ip - QoS - file and print sharing - and client for Microsoft networks , only, installed. It also assumes that WinXP will detect your NIC and has in-box drivers for it. If it doesn't do not try this. 
In the "My Network Places" properties (right-click on the desktop icon and choose properties), highlight the connection 
then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the 
bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK. 
16)Stop Jerkey Graphics 
If you are connected to a LAN and have problems with jerkey graphics, this might be the solution: 
Right-click "MyComputer". 
Select "Manage". 
Click on "Device Manager". 
Double-click on your NIC under "Network Adapters". 
In the new window, select the "Advanced" tab. 
Select "Connection Type" and manually set the value of your NIC. (Not "Auto Sense" which is default.). 
You should reboot. 

Speeding Up Your Old Shit Pentium by 50% 
We all know that you really shouldn't try to run Windows XP on anything less that about a Pentium 3 of some sort if you are out for speedy operations and amazing reaction times, but for those of us with the good old Pentium 2's who want to see just how well we can run XP, we have to tweak as much as we can where-ever we can. A real killer to the system's performance is Windows Media Player. Although it may look desirable and fancy with it's rounded off edges and 3rd-Dimensional appearance, the truth is, it takes up a large amount of that precious processing power. All of these troubles however, lead to one thing in particular with this 'new-look' over-rated music and video player...the Visualizations. The look-great I'll admit but like a lot of software these days, it has no purpose. If you run the task manager, and click the Performance tab along the top, you'll see that when Windows Media Player is running and nothing else is active, it takes up around 50% of the processors power. Once these visualizations are turned off, it barely takes up 2-3% of the processors power, which leaves much more room for other applications to work efficiently. 
Here's how to disable the feature: 
Open Media Player. 
Make sure the Now Playing tab on the left is selected. 
Click the View menu along the top. 
Go down to Now Playing Tools