Today I will go into some details of ways you can speed up your XP installation. There is much you can find by Googling for "Make XP Faster along with what is here.
1. DUPLICATE FILE NAMES
Beleive it or not but each and every file in windows is given two sets of names. One is the XP long filename type and there is another short filename for older legacy versions of Windows and DOS.
If you are only using XP or Newer systems and do not need access to older systems you are just using up valuable system resources in doing this and it can be turned off with a simple registry tweak.
Open the RUN box from the start menu and type "regedit" and click ok
Then in the directory tree on the left navigate to the following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > FileSystem
In the right hand windows there should be an entry called NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation... give this a double click and change the value to 1 and click ok.
This has now disabled the double naming of files within XP.
2. Disk Indexing
Disk indexing claims to make it faster to find files... this may be the case however it dramatically affects the performance of the system it is running on by increasing the time it takes to access files whilst it is being indexed.
This is easy to disable, just go into My Computer and right click on your hard drive, or drives if you have more than one disk / partition and click on Properties.
At the bottom of the box that appears just uncheck the box that says "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching" and click ok. It will process this request and will complain that it cannot do some files when you get one of these boxes come up just click on ignore for all.
3. Visual Themes
Visual Themes may well look pretty but they slow things down...
It is easy to turn themes off.. just right click on your desktop and click on properties. Goto the appearance tab and change windows and buttons to windows classic style.
Now click on effects and uncheck all the boxes. Click on ok and close the display properties.
Now right click on My Computer and click on properties goto the advances tab. Click on settings in the performace section and set to best performance.
Click ok and close system properties.
5. Other stuff
A few other things you can do if you are comfortable with what you are doing is to turn off your system restore to free up disk space.
Disable or reduce the recycle bin. You can get to these settings by right clicking on the recyle bin and clicking on properties.
Dont forget to periodically defragment your hard drive.
Thats it for now, these are the most useful tweaks I have found to date. Comment with yours.
Friday, 10 April 2009
Thursday, 9 April 2009
XP vs VISTA
I know, I know we've been there, done that! Have many of you noticed that more and more frequently lately that new systems are coming with XP rather than Vista again.
For instance all of those little web book / mini laptop things all come with XP.
In my personal opinion Vista is a nightmare anyway. Over time it messes up your disk and no amount of defragging cleans it up. My desktop has vista on it... 6 months later it was slower than a chronically ill snail and sounding like a helicopter all the time with the HDD constantly working. Defrag however said it was clean! Well throw the disk up on my SATA adaptor and run it up on my laptop with the old XP defragger and wow what a mess, never seen so much red in my life in the disk analysis.
Also Vista from a business sense is a bad move as it is not compatible with many legacy systems such as the old novell netware.
Well there is my two cents on XP vs Vista... what do you think?
For instance all of those little web book / mini laptop things all come with XP.
In my personal opinion Vista is a nightmare anyway. Over time it messes up your disk and no amount of defragging cleans it up. My desktop has vista on it... 6 months later it was slower than a chronically ill snail and sounding like a helicopter all the time with the HDD constantly working. Defrag however said it was clean! Well throw the disk up on my SATA adaptor and run it up on my laptop with the old XP defragger and wow what a mess, never seen so much red in my life in the disk analysis.
Also Vista from a business sense is a bad move as it is not compatible with many legacy systems such as the old novell netware.
Well there is my two cents on XP vs Vista... what do you think?
Welcome to my blog!
Hello all and welcome to my blog all about computer services and the likes.
I have created this blog in the bid to aid people into what's hot and what's not in the computer services world. Looking at what software is good, which hardware to use and also many of the online services available.
I readily invite all of you to add to my blog with your recommendations and submissions. If you wish to contact me direct email me on michael.cripps8@ntlworld.com.
Mike
I have created this blog in the bid to aid people into what's hot and what's not in the computer services world. Looking at what software is good, which hardware to use and also many of the online services available.
I readily invite all of you to add to my blog with your recommendations and submissions. If you wish to contact me direct email me on michael.cripps8@ntlworld.com.
Mike
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