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XP Tweaks| Category | | | Summary | | | Body | Most people who run Windows XP know that its a memory hugger and runs many programs in the background. However, with a careful prodding of the registry and other areas of XP, you can make XP run faster or even on a lower spec machine. These range from deleting temp files to editing the registry, all carry a certain degree of risk but if done correctly can seriously enhance XP and subsequently your PCs performance.
The first thing I will say before you try any of the processes below is to backup your registry and create a restore point! This tutorial is presented as is so if you do something that's included here and it goes a bit pear shaped, I didn't tell you to do it.
OK, where to start? Well lets go hard to easy shall we? Which means were starting on the *shudder* registry. Like I said before backup your registry and create that restore point, if things go wrong you'll regret it if you don't. For those who don't know, to backup your registry click Start > Run and type regedit. Next click File > Export and then save it to a suitable location, perhaps a CD-RW or similar. With that out of the way, lets get down to business. When you remove a program from you PC it doesn't always remove the registry entry associated with it, programs that are shareware or time limited are perfect examples. So the first thing to look for is entries associated with programs/hardware you've recently removed. There are two ways you can do this, either by manually looking through each of the main keys (HKEY_LOCAL_ROOT, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, H_KEY_USERS & HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG) and their associated sub-keys or by using Find by click Edit > Find. If you're using the find utility once you've found one you are looking for you can look for others by using the Find Next function by pressing F3. To delete a registry entry Right-Click > Delete.
Some main keys get more clogged up than others, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE is the place where software struts its stuff. Look for folders in the software sub-branch named after programs you've deleted, its safe to say deleting these should not have a detrimental effect on your PC. The same for the hardware sub-branch for devices you've removed from your PC. Now expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER, and search the software sub-branch for unnecessary or duplicated entries. The reason there are duplicates is that HKEY_CURRENT_USER duplicates much of the information contained in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Basically that's it for the registry. If you really don't feel confident enough to tackle the registry on your own you can always use dedicated programs like Reg Clean or Easy Cleaner. These programs scan the registry for ones it thinks it can delete and then show you its findings where you delete them at your discretion (still backup your registry!).
The next area on the clean up hit-list is Services. These are background processes that run whilst you're in windows. To see what is running press Ctrl + Alt + Del and select the processes tab surprising isn't it! Most are actually vital but there are a few that can be discarded. The reason there are so many processes to begin with is XP is designed to be highly flexible (so they say) and so to do this they have different processes and such to cope. This means, by switching off redundant processes you can gain a performance boost.
To start with, go to Administrative Tools (which is in the control panel, if you're not running classic view its under Performance & Maintenance) and launch Services. So, now you're presented with all the services. To view each process double-click the service you want to see and in the box that pops up it will tell you what it does (and in some cases what will happen if you disable it) and also dependencies. Now, under the General Tab (where you can see its description) there is a drop down box next to Startup Type, this is where you change what happens. There are three different options:
Automatic All processes that are needed should always be on Automatic
Manual This can act as your fail-safe, if you're not sure whether you need it set it to manual, therefore it will only start up if needed.
Disable Quite easy to know what this does! Select this if you're sure it can be discarded!
Its a good idea to perhaps make a list of all services you've changed and from what it was to what you changed it to e.g. Alerter Manual changed to Disabled. That way if something doesn't work right you know what you've changed and you can simply change back. Always note that shutting down a service shuts down certain functions of XP so if you do run into problems this is probably the cause. Editing services is basically a balancing act.
The final, and probably one of the easiest, tweak is changing what programs load when you start your PC. There are two ways of finding out what starts on boot, the first is simply looking in Start > Programs > Startup, any program in here will start up with XP. If you don't want any of those programs to start simply delete its short cut from the Startup folder and it will no longer load again on boot. The second is to find those that aren't contained there. To access this go Start > Run and type msconfig. Click the Startup tab and below will be a list of programs that startup up with your computer. Most are those are required by XP so be careful what you disable! Again I can't stress enough about creating restore points since they are in a way a get out of jail free card.
Well thats it! Hopefully if you've be careful whilst doing all of the above, your version of XP should be running that little bit quicker and be less of a hugger on resources. Do note that if you do any of the things I've described in this tutorial and something goes seriously wrong I'm in no way responsible and that you do things like editing the registry at your own risk. Remember create restore points and backup that registry! With that I bid you adieu.
- Tr s33r
Reference: Windows XP Official Mag
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This article was imported from the CyberArmy University site. (original author: )
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