Wednesday, October 12, 2005

23 Ways to Speed Up Windows XP

23 different ways to speed up your Windows XP system (also works for older versions)

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Posted by Matthew K. Petty at 4:34 PM

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your article is entitled “23 Ways to Speed Up Windows XP” – and while it contains a great deal of wonderful sound advice, but not all of it correct.

1 & 2) YEP. Your advice to upgrade your computer’s hard drive and increase its memory should be followed. Adding more memory is probably THE best advice!

3) YEP – don’t use FAT, use NTFS it’s the fastest, and most secure

4) YEP Disable file indexing. Agreed – this just makes your hard drive spin all the time. . .and rarely makes searching faster!

5) NOPE. Updating the software on the actual computer’s hardware (aka firmware, BIOS) can actually be pretty risky. If not done correctly, it can render your computer “useless”. Updates to your firmware is usually for stability, or adding functionality – it is seldom for a performance upgrade.

6) NOPE. Empting the Windows Prefetch folder MAY make things to appear to load faster, but only on bootup – that’s it. . .it does not make your overall performance faster.

7) YEP. Actually, let’s take your good advice – and add it to your automatic scheduler!

8) NOPE. If your hardware was NOT automatically detected with “Enabled DMA” – do NOT change it. Yes, this option makes Windows faster – but if your drive doesn’t do it, it doesn’t do it!

9) NOPE. Unless you’ve built your own computer – or upgrade from regular IDE to Utlra IDE – there is NO reason to changes cables. . .and there is NO increase in speed.

10) A BIG YEP! Spyware will cripple your computers speed!

11) NOPE. The MSCONFIG utility is for troubleshooting NOT speeding up your computer. And while it is true that removing unnecessary programs that run on StartUp will increase the speed of your computer – MSCONFIG is really for Windows 98, you are supposed to use “services.msc” in Windows XP

12) SORTA. Remove any unnecessary or unused programs from the Add/Remove Programs section of the Control Panel make the bootup faster, but only marginally once the computer is running.

13) YEP. Fancy graphics are a resource hog – turn them off.

14) SORTA. Most powertoys from Microsoft usually make it easier to ADD stuff rather than remove it! :-)

15) NOPE but SORTA. Updates rarely make your computer run faster. But I’m NEVER going to disagree with this point!

16) SORTA. Keeping your AntiVirus updated doesn’t make your computer faster – but NOT getting infected with a Virus sure does!

17) YEP BUT. It’s true that too many fonts can slow down a computer – but be warned, there is NO way to know which documents will be affected with you remove fonts. Be careful!

18) NOPE. But the issue of partitioning is too long for a paragraph – but it’s not a function of “speed”, but rather “stability”.

19) NOPE. Windows XP manages memory just fine, see your recommendation #1. Purchase more memory!

20) DOUBTFUL. I’ve seen it, but that is such a rare case, that my position is noted in #9

21) YES. This is sorta like #11 – and unfortunately the Black Viper is “off air” (again)

22) NOPE HUH? Nice tip – but changing Explorer’s view it doesn’t really make your computer run faster.

23.) NOPE. Again a nice tip – but blowing out dust, doesn’t really make your computer run faster


Total Score:
Yes = 9
No = 10
Sorta = 4

10:11 PM
Matthew K. Petty said...

A fair assesment. Not all of the tips are great but a few made it worth linking to. Thanks for the comment.

10:25 PM

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