• Business and Finance
• Family
• Computers and Internet
• Auto and Trucks
• Education
• Health
• Hobbies
• Home Improvement
• Legal
• Marketing

• Home
• Arthur's Articles Home
• Browse Categories
• Browse Authors
• Submit an Article
• Search for Articles

Home » Computers And Internet Articles » 10 Simple Ways To Speed Up Your Windows Xp

10 Simple Ways To Speed Up Your Windows XP

1. Defrag Disk to Speed Up Access to Data

One of the factors that slow the performance of the computer is disk fragmentation. When files are fragmented, the computer must search the hard disk when the file is opened to piece it back together. To speed up the response time, you should monthly run Disk Defragmenter, a Windows utility that defrags and consolidates fragmented files for quicker computer response.

* Follow Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter
* Click the drives you want to defrag and click Analyze
* Click Defragment

2. Detect and Repair Disk Errors

Over time, your hard disk develops bad sectors. Bad sectors slow down hard disk performance and sometimes make data writing difficult or even impossible. To detect and repair disk errors, Windows has a built-in tool called the Error Checking utility. It'll search the hard disk for bad sectors and system errors and repair them for faster performance.

* Follow Start > My Computer
* In My Computer right-click the hard disk you want to scan and click Properties
* Click the Tools tab
* Click Check Now
* Select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box
* Click Start

3. Disable Indexing Services

Indexing Services is a little application that uses a lot of CPU. By indexing and updating lists of all the files on the computer, it helps you to do a search for something faster as it scans the index list. But if you know where your files are, you can disable this system service. It won't do any harm to you machine, whether you search often or not very often.

* Go to Start
* Click Settings
* Click Control Panel
* Double-click Add/Remove Programs
* Click the Add/Remove Window Components
* Uncheck the Indexing services
* Click Next
4. Optimize Display Settings

Windows XP is a looker. But it costs you system resources that are used to display all the visual items and effects. Windows looks fine if you disable most of the settings and leave the following:

* Show shadows under menus
* Show shadows under mouse pointer
* Show translucent selection rectangle
* Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
* Use visual styles on windows and buttons

5. Speedup Folder Browsing

You may have noticed that everytime you open My Computer to browse folders that there is a little delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing speed, you can disable the "Automatically search for network folders and printers" option.

6. Disable Performance Counters

Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC's performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea.

* Download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/exctrlst-o.asp)
* Then select each counter in turn in the 'Extensible performance counters' window and clear the 'performance counters enabled' checkbox at the bottom button below

7. Optimize Your Pagefile

You can optimize your pagefile. Setting a fixed size to your pagefile saves the operating system from the need to resize the pagefile.

* Right click on My Computer and select Properties
* Select the Advanced tab
* Under Performance choose the Settings button
* Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
* Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

8. Remove Fonts for Speed

Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.

* Open Control Panel
* Open Fonts folder
* Move fonts you don't need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.

9. Use a Flash Memory to Boost Performance

To improve performance, you need to install additional RAM memory. It'll let you boot your OS much quicker and run many applications and access data quicker. There is no easiest and more technically elegant way to do it than use eBoostr (http://www.eboostr.com).

eBoostr is a little program that lets you improve a performance of any computer, powered by Windows XP in much the same way as Vista's ReadyBoost. With eBoostr, if you have a flash drive, such as a USB flash thumb drive or an SD card, you can use it to make your computer run better. Simply plug in a flash drive through a USB socket and Windows XP will use eBoostr to utilize the flash memory to improve performance.

The product shows the best results for frequently used applications and data, which becomes a great feature for people who are using office programs, graphics applications or developer tools. It'll surely attract a special attention of laptop owners as laptop upgrade is usually more complicated and laptop hard drives are by definition slower than those of desktops.

10. Perform a Boot Defragment

There's a simple way to speed up XP startup: make your system do a boot defragment, which will put all the boot files next to one another on your hard disk. When boot files are in close proximity to one another, your system will start faster.

On most systems, boot defragment should be enabled by default, but it might not be on yours, or it might have been changed inadvertently. To make sure that boot defragment is enabled:

* Run the Registry Editor
* Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
* Set the Enable string value to Y if it is not already set to Y.
* Exit the Registry
* Reboot

Hope you find these 10 tips useful. Have a nice day!

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

South Beach Diet Effects on Sales

Food industry needs to adapt to the South Beach Diet principles in order to remain profitable.

Watching the big amount of "low-carb", diet-friendly versions of foods that appear on the market, one would say that the South Beach Diet has not affected only people who want to get slim and healthy. Companies involved in the food industry have also been feeling the South Beach Diet effects: some of the products in great demand have brought profit while sales for high-carbs, diet unfriendly ones have drastically fallen. The owners of many businesses have taken measures to adapt their range of products to the needs of the market, offering low-carb versions of their products.

• Some pizza owners have introduced into their menus the low-carb pizza, inventing new dough recipes: Donatos Pizzeria from Columbus, Ohio makes a pizza dough of soy protein and other ingredients and it is said to be very tasty too. Others just offer "pizza in a bucket" - no dough at all, only the topping ingredients (Escondido, California, Pit Stop Pasta).
• Doughnut producers have been experiencing serious inconvenience â€" The New York company, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. has registered a serious decrease in sales that diminished its quarterly profit by more than half and lowered 17 percent of the value of its stock. It plans a change in menu â€" offering sugar-free, low-fat products.
• Bakeries are at a pinch. George Weston Ltd. has halted the production of an Entenmann's baked goods factory in Northlake, Illinois in the process of cutting costs. The company produced bagels, pastry and other goods. The flat-bread maker Damascus Bakeries substituted the flour wih grains such as flax, soy and added oat fiber. Healthy sandwich roll-ups with reduced amount of carbs resulted and a high fiber content.
• Citrus producers introduce low-carb drinks. Florida is the second world oranges producer after Brazil and most of the production is transformed into juice. With the South Beach Diet book advising people against the consumption of orange juice because of its high fructose levels, the State Department of Citrus, Florida's $9 billion industry, has every reason to be concerned. The consumption had a noticeable drop since these diets reached a critical mass. The state Department of Citrus tries to direct its marketing strategy to convince consumers that orange juice can be compatible with dieting and to emphasize its benefits for health. The introduction of low-carb drinks will cause wholesale prices to rise.
• Even chips producers find a way out of the "diet situation": Jays Foods LLC has created "Sweet Baby Jays" â€" chips made from sweet potatoes which are South Beach diet friendly. Strategically, they also raised the prices, as a healthy item is a costly one! And it seems that this strategy works!
• Kraft Foods Inc. has already created South Beach Diet friendly products and has come to an agreement with Dr. Agatston to use the South Beach Diet trademark to promote them. In 2003, Kraft had already begun its campaign for encouraging healthier lifestyles, offering the consumers low-calorie, reduced carbs products.

  Beer producers try hard to regain the lost ground because of the diet's claim that the beer contains carbohydrates, its consumption leading to "beer bellies". Important beer producers such as Anheuser-Busch Inc. say that this theory is inaccurate and sustain that all beer is "low-carb" being thus suitable for the diet. They have launched ad campaigns urging people to "Have a Beer With Your South Beach Diet".

On the other hand, companies that have as business object poultry, meat and fish trade and those that process dairy products have increased their profit lately:

• It seems that the US chicken industry has benefited more than the beef or pork industries. In the top of preferences, poultry comes first, followed by beef and pork. The sales of beef also boasted significantly and the variety of the products offered for sale increased accordingly.
• Fish industry is certainly favored by the South Beach Diet, but apparently seafood is friendly to all diets.
• Another boost in sales was registered by the producers of "Laughing Cow" cheese, warmly recommended during the diet. The demand has reached as far as to surpass the power of supply.

The low-carb diets seem to gain more and more ground and their influence spreads faster and stronger than anything the food industry has ever seen and probably on a long-term basis too. Food-consciousness has acquired new meanings together with the power of leading businesses towards success if adopting the latest nutritional directions, or towards failure if not responding to the market demand.