You are responsible for any changes made to your computer.
Performance Increase through My Computer
Easy enough tweak to usually find out about it on your own, but still, some of use still don’t find it right away. So here it is:
1: Start > Right Click on My Computer and select properties.
2: Click on the “Advanced” tab
3: See the “Performance” section? Click “Settings”
4: 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.
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 then 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 can see some improvements when shutting down your system.
Speeding up your pentium 2 by 50%
We all know that you really shouldn’t try to run Windows XP on anything less than 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 Visualisations. 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 visualisations 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:
1. Open Media Player
2. Make sure the Now Playing tab on the left is selected.
3. Click the View menu along the top.
4. Go down to Now Playing Tools
5. In the sub-menu that has just ‘popped-out’, uncheck Show Visualisation.
It’s a very simple process and a little boring without the colorful graphics – but then no-one said computing was easy!
Shutdown XP Faster
When a user shuts down Windows XP, first the system has to kill all services currently running. Every once in a while the service does not shut down instantly and windows gives it a change to shut down on its own before it kills it. This amount of time that windows waits is stored in the system registry. If you modify this setting, then windows will kill the service earlier. To modify the setting, follow the directions below:
1. Start Regedit.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control.
3. Click on the “Control” Folder.
4. Select “WaitToKillServiceTimeout”
5. Right click on it and select Modify.
6. Set it a value lower than 2000 (Mine is set to 200).
Speed up Detailed view in Explorer
If you like to view your files in Windows Explorer using the “Details” view here is a tweak to speed up the listing of file attributes:
Viewing files in Windows Explorer using the “Details” mode shows various attributes associated with each file shown. Some of these must be retrieved from the individual files when you click on the directory for viewing. For a directory with numerous and relatively large files (such as a folder in which one stores media, eg: *.mp3’s, *.avi’s etc.) Windows Explorer lags as it reads through each one. Here’s how to disable viewing of unwanted attributes and speed up file browsing:
1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Navigate to the folder which you wish to optimize.
3. In “Details” mode right click the bar at the top which displays the names of the attribute columns.
4. Uncheck any that are unwanted/unneeded.
Explorer will apply your preferences immediately, and longs lists of unnecessary attributes will not be displayed.
Likewise, one may choose to display any information which is regarded as needed, getting more out of Explorer.
Easily Disable Messenger
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 System Restore to save space
By default, Windows XP keeps a backup of system files in the System Volume Information folder. This can eat up valuable space on your hard drive. If you don’t want Windows to back up your system files:
1. Open the Control Panel
2. Double-click on system
3. Click the System Restore tab
4. Check “Turn off System Restore on all drives”
5. Hit Apply
6. You may now delete the System Volume Information folder.
Warning! If you turn this off you will not be able to use Windows System Restore to restore your system in case of failure.
Fresh Install with no ACPI (updated)
Here is an easier way to do the Fresh Install with no ACPI. When setup is loading, the blue screen will ask if you have any raid devices, and to press F6. When it does that, press and hold F7, & Congratulations! No ACPI will be installed.
Increase ‘CPU priority tweak’ effect
First you must set the CPU Priority setting tweak.Using ‘Regedit’, go to this location:”HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl\” and set the “Win32PrioritySeparation” to “38”
The last adjustment is to set the “Launch folder windows in separate process” setting by opening the “My Computer\Tools\Folder Options\View -and tick the “Launch folder windows in separate process” box.
Window XP will open any new window(including program) in its own memory and in separate process priority.(increase stability and speed but use much more RAM than before)
Note:
Sometimes this 2 tweak can cause unresponsive keyboard and mouse in Counter-Strike.
Very slow boot when networking
On some XP Pro installations, when connected to a network (peer-peer in this case), the computer boot time is over 1:40. The system seems to freeze after logging in and the desktop may not appear or will freeze for a minute. As timed with the utility, Bootvis.exe, the problem was with the driver mrxsmb.dll, adding over 67 seconds to the boot time. Turning off and restoring file and printer sharing eliminated 65 seconds from the boot time.
1. Alt-click (or right click) on Network Places > Properties
2. Alt-click on Ethernet Adapter connection > properties
3. Un-check “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” > OK
4. reboot
5. If you need file or printer sharing, repeat the above, re-check the box and re-boot again.
Disable Virtual Memory
On a system with little memory (less than 512mb), the swap file (or page file) is a large file on your hard drive that temporarily holds blocks (or pages) of real memory while another task has focus. In the past, this has been a good thing as memory has been very expensive, while hard disk storage has been relatively cheaper.
BUT IT’S SLOW.
Every time you start a task on an untweaked system, then a lot of the disk activity isn’t your program loading into memory, it’s the current program’s memory being paged out to disk. This takes time, but generally it’s a good trade, extra virtual memory for the cost of a short wait.
There are a few ways of increasing the performance of your system related to your swap file. With a default system, the swap file is allowed to shrink and grow according to how many programs are in use. Over time, with increased disk usage, it can become fragmented, so that it takes longer to page memory in and out as the drive head moves backwards and forwards picking up a file fragment here and there. If you fix the size of the swap file by setting it manually, a contiguous section of your hard drive is allocated by windows. There is no way that this can now become fragmented (and therefore slower), as it takes up a fixed area on your hard drive.
To get a further speed improvement, if you have a second PHYSICAL drive (not a partition), and most of your programs are stored on your primary drive, then you can allocate the swap file to the second drive. Now you benefit from having one drive manage the swap file, while the other manages your program loading.
The third method of improving performance is to switch the damn thing off altogether. If you have more than 512mb of RAM (I guess that’s a lot of people nowadays), you can disable the swap file as Windows will insist on using it even when it’s unnecessary. Well, the way I look at it is, why use virtual memory when you have the real thing? Real memory is a LOT faster than a swap file, and one day hard drives may become defunct as memory technology improves.
I have 640mb RAM in my system, and the swap file is disabled. It’s pretty quick at loading programs – the amount of disk access is noticeably reduced. Even when I have a lot of programs open, I still have a couple of hundred megabytes to spare.
Anyway, that’s the background, now how to do it.
1. Open up Control Panel.
2. Double click System.
3. Click on Advanced tab.
4. Click on “Settings” button of Performance section.
5. Click on Advanced tab.
6. Click on “Change” button of Virtual Memory section.
7. Now depending on what you want to do, you can alter the size and location of the swap file by clicking on “Custom size” and the desired drive, or you can just click on “No paging file”.
8. Click the “Set” button.
9. Ok, Ok, Ok.
10. Reboot.
Now for the disclaimer.
If you set things up wrong, you could end up with A SYSTEM THAT WON’T BOOT. Be very careful about the settings you choose for a static swap file. There is probably a good formula along the lines of using twice the size of your RAM for the swap file. I don’t think you could go too wrong if you set it to 512mb. Windows has some simple method of working it out which I think is based on one and a half times your RAM. This clearly doesn’t make sense, as if you had 4gb RAM, why would you even need a 6gb swap file?
As I said above, my system works fine without a swap file, it has 640mb RAM, but worked for about two months with 512mb and no swap file, so I know that configuration is fine, but then I keep my system pretty lean anyway, no unnecessary programs running in the background (Real player, MS Messenger, Anti-Virus etc.). I check for viruses manually every Friday, keep on top of security fixes, and never run anything dodgy. If my system suddenly decides to do anything on it’s own, I find out what it is and kill it (Real player, MS Messenger, Anti-Virus etc. hehe).
Have fun, and don’t blame me if you break something, you do this at your own risk.
Ramdrive in XP
Remember good old ramdisk. Implementing it in a 9x kernel box is easy. But what about in an XP box? Or more importantly, why the heck would you? Well, if your a paranoid internet surfer that does not want your surfing habits left on your machine. You can redirect your temp cache to the ramdrive. Any sensitive files/folders (Those wonderful ~*.tmp that Office creates) that you want washed away on reboot. I’m sure there are other uses.
Instructions:
Get the software from here:
Install the software as a new hardware device (Add New Hardware) using the advanced install wizard to point to the .inf
Change these registry keys
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Ramdisk\Parmeters
DiskSize change to 01F00000 (32505856)
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Fastfat\Start
Start change from 4(disabled) to 1(system)
Reboot
The only limitation is that the drive can only be 32MB in size. 😦
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:
1. Right click My Computer
2. Select Properties
3. Click Advanced
4. Choose Performance
5. Click Advanced again
6. Select either Programs or System Cache under Memory Usage.
Programs = 0 for the registry tweak equilavent
System Cache = 1 for the registry tweak equilavent
On NT Server (in this case XP), the Large System Cache option is enabled, but disabled on Workstation. The two different settings effect how the cache manager allocates free memory. If the Large Cache option is on, the manager marks all the free memory, which isn’t being used by the system and/or applications, as freely available for disk caching. On the flip-side (with a small cache), the manager instead only sets aside 4MB of memory for disk caching in an attempt to accelerate the launch of applications. Or in a more technical approach, if enabled the system will favor system-cache working sets over process working sets (with a working set basically being the memory used by components of a process).
XP Automatic Shutdown
This tweak enables XP to turn off your computer automatically at shutdown.
1. Goto /Start/Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance/System.
2. Select the Hardware tab and then select Device Manager.
3. Under the ‘View’ menu select Show Hidden Devices. Double click NT/Apm/Legacy Interface
Node and enable device. De-select show hidden devices again and re-boot.
Now your PC will shutdown automatically just like good old Windows 98.
Slow start-up when using Norton Internet Security 2002
If you are using Norton Internet Security 2002, and are experiencing slow start-up of XP.
i.e. you can see the desktop with icons etc. but it takes 30-60sec before you can start using the computer.
1. Click on start buttom.
2. Select control panel
3. Open â??Network Connectionsâ?
4. Under â??LAN and High-Speed Internetâ?, right-click on your â??Local Area Connectionâ? and select â??Propertiesâ?
5. Under â??Generalâ? tab, select â??Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)â? and select â??Properties.
6. Select â??Use the following IP address:â?
7. Under â??IP addressâ? enter following : 192.168.0.1
8. Under â??Subnet Mask:â? enter following : 255.255.255.0
9. Click â??Okâ?
Correcting System Hang at Startup
If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can’t access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn’t work for me. Here’s what you do:
1. Click on Start/Run, type ‘msconfig’, then click ‘OK’.
2. Go to the ‘Services’ tab, find the ‘Background Intelligent Transfer’ service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot.
Windows XP does have a back-up Utility!!!
Insert your windows XP disc into your PC. Click exit if your installation screen comes up. Now go too your CD drive in *My Computer*. Right-click and select open. Choose VALUE ADD\MSFT\NT BACK-UP FILE. In the *files of type* drop down list be sure that *select all files* is on. Click on the NTBACK-UP.msi file and click okay. Click the finish button and now go over too the start button\ALL PROGRAMS\ACCESSORIES\SYSTEM TOOLS\ and there it is now.. BACK-UP FILES…Great little tool that Microsoft never should have hidden.
Clicking AVI Files on explorer casuing 100% CPU Usage
Well windows seem to have a REALLY big problem when it comes to reading AVI files. It seems that when you click on an AVI file in explorer, it’ll try to read the entire AVI file to determine the width,height, etc. of the AVI file (this is displayed in the Properties window). Now the problem with Windows is that if you have a broken/not fully downloaded AVI file that doesnt contain this info, Windows will scan the entire AVI file trying to figure out all these properties which in the process will probably cause 100% CPU usage and heavy memory usage.
To solve this problem all you have to do is the following:
1. Open up regedit
2. Goto HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler
3. Delete the “Default” value which should be “{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}”
Voila! Please not that this will no longer provide you with the windows properties displaying the AVI file information such as width, height, bitrate etc. But its a small price to pay for saving you resources.
NOTE: Please use caution when using regedit. Improper usage may cause windows to behave imcorrectly. Also, I cannot be held resposible. Backup your registry first.
CDFS Tweaks
Howdy all……..Whats the one thing we hate most when copying something from CD, for me at least, is the speed in which the data is copied.
After many months of research, I have found what I consider the best CDFS settings to have, and my DVD drive never copied so good 😉
Here are the changes that must be made:
– HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\CDFS
– Look for that registry key, if not there, we must create a new key, then add the following values
– CacheSize, this must be added as a binary value, then type in this value: ff ff 00 00
– Prefetch, this key must be added as a DWORD value, then type in this value: 4000 hex
– PrefetchTail, this key must be added as a DWORD value, then type in this value: 4000 hex
After that tweaking, try copying something across from CD, and you will notice it does produce a speed boost, but it becomes apparent after a while of using this tweak, you may or may not see it at first.
Let the ripping begin 😉
Disable XP Boot Logo
It is possible to disable XP splash screen, which will slightly speed up the overall boot process. Be aware that removing the splash screen will also cause you not to see any boot-up messages that might come up (chkdsk, convert … ), but if your system runs without any problems then it should not matter.
1. Edit boot.ini
2. Add ” /noguiboot” right after “/fastdetect”.
Upon restarting, the splash screen will be gone. It can be re-enabled by removing the new switch.
Slow network access not always due to Scheduled tasks check
If you have very slow access to your network computers through “My network Places” and have already deleted the Registry entry calling for a check of Scheduled Tasks on the other network computers (documented elsewhere on this site) AND you have multiple network adaptors (i.e. a cable or DSL connection through one NIC and an internal network using a second NIC) check the following.
Right click on “My Network Places”, go to properties. Right click on the NIC that your cable/DSL connects to, and chose properties. Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and click on properties. Click on “advanced”, go to “WINS” tab, and chose Disable NetBios over TCP/IP.
When you are back at your Network Connections page, right click on the Broadband selection, chose “properties” click on the networking tab. Again, chose TCP/IP, properties, advanced, WINS, and select “disable NetBios over TCP/IP”
Worked for me!
BTW, I don’t use ICS (can never get it configured right) and instead use Sygate for my Connection Sharing, so I can’t verify that with ICS netbios is enabled in the broadband connection and the modem NIC.The Wizard might catch it, but take a look just in case.
Increase speed by tweaking prefetcher settings
This is an unique technique for XP, which could improve the performance significantly by tweaking the prefetcher. Recommended hardware: PIII 800 or higher, 512M RAM or more.
1. run “regedit”;
2. goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher];
3. Set the value to either 0-Disable, 1-App launch prefetch, 2-Boot Prefetch, 3-Both (“3” is recommended).
4. reboot.
It will decrease the boot time but double and increase the performance of your XP. Try it!
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 I suggest turnning this feature off:
1. Open my computer
2. Right click your hard drive icon and select properties.
3. At the bottom of the window you’ll see “Allow indexing service to index this disk for faster searches,” uncheck this and click ok.
4. 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 then you should enjoy slightly faster performance.
Clean your prefetch to improve performance
This is an unique technique for WinXP. We know that it is necessary to wash registry and TEMP files for Win9X/ME/2000 periodly. 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 notablely. My suggestion is: open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete those junk and obsolete files,reboot. It is recommended that you do this every month.
Remove hibernation file
If you do not use hibernation, make sure you do not have it enabled, which reserves disk space equal to your RAM. If you have a hidden file on the root directory of your C-drive called hiberfil.sys, hibernation is enabled. To remove that file, go to Control Panel, select Performance and Maintenance, Power Options, Hibernate tab, and uncheck the Enable hibernation box.
Improve NTFS Performance
The NTFS file system is the recommended file system because of its advantages in terms of reliability and security and because it is required for large drive sizes. However, these advantages come with some overhead. You can modify some functionality to improve NTFS performance as follows:
1. Disable creation of short names. By default, NTFS generates the style of file name that consists of eight characters, followed by a period and a three-character extension for compatibility with MS-DOS and Microsoft® Windows® 3.x clients. If you are not supporting these types of clients, you can turn off this setting by changing the default value of the NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation registry entry (in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem) to 1.
2. Disable last access update. By default NTFS updates the date and time stamp of the last access on directories whenever it traverses the directory. For a large NTFS volume, this update process can slow performance. To disable automatic updating, change the value of the NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate registry entry (in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentContolSet\Control\Filesystem) to 1. If the entry is not already present in the registry, add it before setting the value. (Add it as a REG_DWORD)
3. Reserve appropriate space for the master file table. Add the NtfsMftZoneReservation entry to the registry as a REG_DWORD in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem. When you add this entry to the registry, the system reserves space on the volume for the master file table. Reserving space in this manner allows the master file table to grow optimally. If your NTFS volumes generally contain relatively few files that are typically large, set value of this registry entry to 1 (the default). Typically you can use a value of 2 or 3 for moderate numbers of files, and 4 (the maximum) if your volumes tend to contain a relatively large number of files. However, be sure to test any settings greater than 2 because these higher values cause the system to reserve a much larger portion of the disk for the master file table.
Reboot after making changes
Unload .dll’s to Free Memory
Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory.
1. Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer].
2. Create a new DWORD sub-key named ‘AlwaysUnloadDLL’ and set the default value to equal ‘1’ to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory.
3. Restart Windows for the change to take effect.
I tried this after running a intense program, then watched the task manager; memory recovered it self.
Remove start-up items
Having programs run when windows loads slows down your start.
There are two ways do disable programs that may be in your startup (like icq, messanger,)
The easiest is to do the following:
1. start –> run –> msconfig
2. Click on the “startup” tab (furthest right)\
3. Unclick any items you don’t want to load when windows starts.
The second is by deleting registry entrys, this can be done the following way:
1. Start –> run –> regedit
2. Navigate to : \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
3. Delete any entry’s that you don’t want to load up
***NOTE***
Deleting keys from the registry will not allow you to set them to startup again if you change your mind.
**********
Reduce 10 second scandisk wait time
Start MS Dos Prompt (Start run CMD)
CHKNTFS/T:4
where 4 is the amount of waity time
CHKNTFS/?
for more info
System Page Memory Tweak
Hi, I’m not 100% sure if this tweak will yield a great performance boost to the majority of users out there, but for me it seems to have shown very good results. By default, if you look in the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]key, you’ll see the ‘SystemPages’ DWORD Value set to something around 500 MB (more accurately, 524288 (KB), or something close to that value). Simply reduce the value to something around 128 MB (131072 KB) or 256 MB (262144 KB). Personally, I’m using the 128 MB setting, since my total RAM is 256 MB. It might help to experiment a little, since each machine will most likely yield better or worse results. Good Luck!
Get rid of IM and no slow OE startup
If you have OE 6 got to tools > windows messenger > options > preferences and in the general area uncheck “run this program when windows starts” and “allow this program to run in the background.” After doing this IM does not load on startup and OE loads as usual.
Hope it helps.
Convert FAT32 To NTFS
To change from FAT 32 to NTFS for more stability and security, open the command prompt and type: “Convert C: /FS:NTFS”. Make sure there is a space between the C: and the foward slash (/). Once you press enter it will ask you for confirmation and press Y. Then press Y and enter once more to reboot. It will take between one hour and 15 minutes to convert to NTFS. Now you can set passwords for files and use encryption. This also works for windows XP Home.
Fix for slow loading of Outlook Express when Messenger is disabled
Open up Register Editor by running “regedit” command. Click on “Edit” and select “Find”. Copy and paste FB7199AB-79BF-11D2-8D94-0000F875C541 onto the “Find what” box and click on “Find Next”. Once found, click on the plus sign in front of it and you will find InProc32 and LocalServer32. Select one of them then right click on default under the name column and select “modify”, then simply delete what’s in the Value Data box. Repeat for the other.
Virtual Paging File
This tweak can increase the amount of RAM significantly used on your computer. What this tweak actually does is it uses your hard-drive disk-space to emulate RAM. This is called caching, or in Microsoft terms – The Virtual Paging File Size.
1.) Go into Control Panel and into Performance and Maintenance
2.) Get into System
3.) Click the Advanced Tab
4.) In the Performance Frame, click on Settings
5.) Once in Settings click on the Advanced Tab
6.) Now under Virutal Memory click on Change
7.) Here you can set your RAM value. The recommended increase you should make should be achieved by multiplying your RAM by 1.5. This is already done if you have a System Managed file size. I like to increase it by 1/5 of my actual hard-drive space. This will drastically increase performance, because the system will now have a pool of cache to retrieve memory from.
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:
1. Open the Device Manager. One way to do that is to right click on “My Computer”, select the Hardware tab, and Select Device Manager.
2. Expand “IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers” and double-click on “Primary IDE Channel”
3. Under the “Advanced Settings” tab, check the “Device 1” setting. More than likely, your current transfer mode is set to PIO.
4. Set it to “DMA if available”.
Repeat the step for the “Secondary IDE Channel” if you have devices attached to it. Reboot.
Speed up Network Browsing
There was a bug in windows 2000 that would cause the scheduled tasks folder to be searched when ever the user would browse network drives. Microsoft developed a fix for this bug. The fix fixed the problem and it also had nice side affect of speeding up browsing of Microsoft networks. Below are instructions how to apply the fix.
1. Open up regedit.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace.
3. Find a key named {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}.
4. Right click on it and delete it.
5. Restart
Speed up menu display
When using the start menu the you will notice a delay between different tiers of the menu hierarchy. For the fastest computer experience possible I recommend changing this value to zero. This will allow the different tiers to appear instantly.
1. Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
3. Select MenuShowDelay from the list on the right.
4. Right on it and select Modify.
5. Change the value to 0.
6. Reboot your computer.
Uninstall Msn Messenger – batch script
Here is how to uninstall msn messenger from you XP system 🙂
1. copy this code into your text document and save it with extension “bat” without quotes
@echo off
echo Removing Microsoft Messenger…
rundll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %WinDir%\inf\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
echo Disabling it from running in the future…
echo REGEDIT4>%temp%\nomsngr.reg
echo
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Messenger\Client]>>%temp%\no
msngr.reg
echo “PreventRun”=dword:00000001>>%temp%\nomsngr.reg
echo “PreventAutoRun”=dword:00000001>>%temp%\nomsngr.reg
echo “PreventAutoUpdate”=dword:00000001>>%temp%\nomsngr.reg
echo “PreventBackgroundDownload”=dword:00000001>>%temp%\nomsngr.reg
echo “Disabled”=dword:00000001>>%temp%\nomsngr.reg
regedit /s %temp%\nomsngr.reg
2. double click on it and restart computer
3. msn messenger will be uninstalled from you system
Remove history in internet explorer address bar
Internet Explorer keeps track of each URL that you type in the address bar as a convenience to save you from typing the next time that you visit that site. However, any user that uses your computer can find out what addresses you typed in as well so some may be interested in clearing the address bar addresses. Just clearing the browser history will not do this as a registry modification is needed:
1. Click on Start, then Run.
2. Type regedit in the box provided.
3. In Regedit navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Typed URLs
4. Then just delete all of the keys that list the URL’s you no longer want to see.
Fix for slow xDSL Internet access
This tweak is also valid for all Windows versions.
Sometimes during browsiing you can notice that it takes time to access any web page, and then, suddenly, your connection establishes full-speed again. The reason lays in amount of time it needs for tcp/ip protocol to translate a host name to an IP address. In order to fix this problem your xDSL modem shoud have an internal IP address specified in TCP/IP properties. For Win98 it would be TCP/IP bounded to NIC.
In most of the cases IP address would be 192.168.1.2; subnet mask : 255.255.255.0.
Hope it helps.
Speeding up Share Viewing
When you connect to another computer with Windows XP, it checks for any Scheduled tasks on that computer – a fairly useless task, but one that can add up to 30 seconds of waiting on the other end – not good! Fortunately, itâ??s fairly easy to disable this process.
First, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace
in the Registry. Below that, there should be a key called {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}. Just delete this, and after a restart, Windows will no longer check for scheduled tasks – major performance improvement!
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 webpage while it is loading. If you want to go to your homepage after it is loaded, just click on the home button.
Speed up browsing with DNS catch
When you connect to a web site your computer sends information back and forth, this is obvious. Some of this information deals with resolving the site name to an IP address, the stuff that tcp/ip really deals with, not words. This is DNS information and is used so that you will not need to ask for the site location each and every time you visit the site. Although WinXP and win2000 has a pretty efficient DNS cache, you can increase its overall performance by increasing its size.
You can do this with the registry entries below:
************begin copy and paste***********
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters]
“CacheHashTableBucketSize”=dword:00000001
“CacheHashTableSize”=dword:00000180
“MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit”=dword:0000fa00
“MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit”=dword:0000012d
************end copy and paste***********
Make a new text file and rename it to dnscache.reg. The copy and paste the above into it and save it. Then merge it into the registry
Disable ICMP Redirect for security
If your running server versions, add the following reg_dword in the location shown and set it to “0”. This will help keep an icmp re-direct attack from taking over your server.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
“EnableICMPRedirect”=dword:00000000
Works in both Win2k and XP
Dautovic 