Windows XP is a pretty good operating system, but there are many ways you can gain extra performance with a few little tweaks. In this article we have combined quite a few tweaks that will help you accelerate Windows XP performance and productivity.
It is worth testing these tweaks one at a time to measure the performance increase of each one. Some will give a much more noticeable effect than others, but overall system performance can improve dramatically if you implement all the tweaks. On our test XP system, we noticed quite an improvement, especially in switching between applications and opening/closing programs.
Speed Up Folder Browsing.
This one can get really annoying. You click on a folder and there is a delay before seeing the contents. Windows XP automatically tries to find network files and printers, hence the delay. To switch this off:
1) From Windows Explorer or My Computer, click on Tools -> Folder Options
2) Click on the "View" tab
3) Uncheck the box - "Automatically search for network folders and printers". Click OK. Done!!
Disable Indexing
Windows Indexing service is used to make searching faster and easier. Windows runs a program that indexes folders and files and then uses this index to deliver faster search results. However, the indexing process can chew up a lot of RAM and slow things down quite considerably. Depending on how often you use Windows search, turning this feature off will most likely be beneficial.
1) Go to the Windows XP control panel. Click Start -> Control Panel
2) Open "Add or Remove Programs"
3) Click on "Add/Remove Windows Components" from the left menu
4) Uncheck the "Indexing Service", then click "Next", then click "Finish"
Optimize Your Display
Windows XP display options are not as resource intensive as Vista, but you can still improve performance with a few display tweaks. If you really are lacking performance in XP, then try turning off some of these settings to see if things improve.
1) Go to Windows XP control panel. Click Start -> Control Panel
2) Open "System"
3) Click on the "Advanced" tab
4) Click on the "Settings" button under the "Performance" heading
5) In the "Visual Effects" tab you can try turning off certain options. You can click the option "Adjust for best performance". You can also choose your own custom options. This may take a bit of trial and error, but try it out for some performance gains.
Some quick tips to speed up Windows XP shutdown process
Speed Up Windows XP Shutdown
Note: These cool tweaks will require the Windows Registry to be edited and should only be performed if you know what you are doing. All edits to the Registry are at your own risk.
1) Don’t Clear the Paging File
Everytime XP shuts down it clears the paging file. This can take a bit of time, so if this is switched on, here is how you can turn it off.
goto: start->run, then type: regedit
Browse to the following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
Double click on ClearPageFileAtShutdown, and set the value to 0. Close the registry editor and reboot.
2) Kill Open Applications Faster on Shutdown
When XP shuts down it can take a hell of a long time to close applications. By changing these settings, you can speed that up quite a bit.
In the registry editor, goto: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Change the following values (set them to something much lower, eg: 2000):
WaitToKillAppTimeout
HungAppTimeout
Now also change those same values in:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
3) Kill Services Faster on Shutdown
This will reduce the amount of time XP waits to kill services during shutdown.
In your registry editor, goto:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Edit the value, WaitToKillServiceTimeout, and set it to something much lower, eg: 2000.
Thats it. Now you should have a super fast XP shutdown.
Some quick tips to speed up Windows XP startup
There are a ton of cool little tweaks that can get Windows XP running alot faster than it is right now. A fresh install is generally fairly fast, but over time it gets bogged down with all kinds of software, adware, spyware, registry entries and other junk. So lets look at some quick ways to get more speed without doing a re-install.
Speed Up Windows XP Startup
If your system is anything like mine, it has a ton of useless software installed and startup can take forever. Well there are luckily two little tweaks that can dramatically increase startup/bootup times on XP.
1) This is a powerful little tool that allows you to control items that load during startup. Click start->run, then type in msconfig, click ok
2) Click on the startup tab and then select the programs you don’t want to run on startup. Be careful here. We recommend doing only 1 or 2 at a time, and only select programs that you know. As you can see, i have turned off Skype during startup.
3) After you are done, click ok. After reboot you will get a message saying that startup items have changed. You can just ignore that.
Cleaning up the Startup Folder
Windows XP also has a startup folder in your profile and cleaning this up is another tweak that should see some increased performance.
The startup folder contains a bunch of shortcuts that run on startup. They are only shortcuts, so you won’t be removing the actual program. It just wont start on startup every time.
Goto:
c:\Documents and Settings\username\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
note: username will be your Windows XP username.
Once you are in the correct location, remove shortcuts for any programs that you dont want to run on startup.
OK, there is quite a bit there for you to get started with. Hopefully you will see performance gains of over 100%. Some users have even reported a 200-300% gain. You can also check out our free download below which will scan your PC, fix errors and increase speed on all versions of Windows.
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