Many people are interested in making the most of their hardware. So here are 10 simple tips on how to make your Windows XP computer run faster without having to purchase additional hardware.
1. Defrag Disk to Speed Up Access to Data – One of the factors that slow the performance of the computer is disk fragmentation. Disk fragmentation really can slow down your computer. To speed up the response time, you should monthly run Disk Defragmenter, a Windows utility that defrags and consolidates fragmented files. There are also several paid apps available as well.
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.
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.
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 only a few necessary bells and whistles. Use a simpler theme or turn off some of the destop effects. Another option is to run fewer programs that are graphically intense.
5. Speedup Folder Browsing – You may have noticed that everytime you open My Computer to browse folders that there is a little delay. To fix this and to increase browsing speed, you can disable the “Automatically search for network folders and printers” option. Most of us don’t have network drives and network printers attach your computer. Anyways. So these options are completely useless.
6. Disable Performance Counters – Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. Unless you are a performance fanatic, this is not very useful. Disable it.
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. 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. Unless you are a gfx designer, you shouldn’t need 1,000 fonts. Arial, Verdana, and the rest of the built-in fonts are more than enough to suit most users.
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. On vista you can use a program called ReadyBoost to do this, on XP programs like eBoost can help. unfortunately, while there is some benefit from what I’ve read, this is not going to give you a huge boost in speed or performance. Built-in RAM is usually going to help more, up to about 2GB, after that you see diminishing returns.
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, if not, enable it.
Hope you find these 10 tips useful. Have a nice day!
Tags: computer, computers, windows, computer tips
