Here's where we talk about things such as minor setting changes and personal favorite tweaks that really add speed to your computer's overall performance.
A lot of what you're going to find here, are exactly what you pay for when you ask companies to perform an "optimization" on your computer for $40-$50. Stop paying for it, read on and learn how you can do it yourself.
1. Stop keeping your trash in your recycle bin. The larger your recycle bin is, the more crap you're keeping on your computer, the more chances that you're going to have some kind of issue down the road. The general rule of thumb I always go by with the recycle bin, - don't put it there unless you mean it. Yes, you can always recover it back out of there, but there's a couple things you should know. First off when you run the cleanmgr shortcut from Keepin' it clean, that does have the option to clean out your trash as well as the batch file if you put it in your start up folder. Which means if you restart or log off to let someone else log on, those files in the recycle bin are going to get dumped anyway. Make sure you mean to put it there because once it goes, the only way to recover it is by using third party software. Again, make sure if you put it there, you mean it. To control how much drive space you let XP allocate for your trash, right click on the recycle bin and click on Properties. From here you have a slider bar that you can add or subtract from. Set this slider bar down to 1% and click on OK.
2. Most of your system's performance is directly impacted by the amount of visual effects you run. To see what i'm talking about, Right Click on "My Computer" and then click on Properties. From the system properties window, click on the Advanced Tab, and then click the Settings button in the Performance section. This brings up the Performance Options Window already set on the Visual Effects tab. Let Windows Choose is the Default setting. Click Adjust for best performance and you'll notice that all the checks go away. Now scroll down on the list and check the boxes for the last two options and you'll notice that the selection automatically goes to Custom. Click on Apply and you have your visuals set.
3. While we're in this area, this particular step ONLY APPLIES TO USERS WHO HAVE 2GB MEMORY OR MORE. After you clicked Apply in the above step, click on the Advanced Tab. Down at the bottom in the Virtual Memory Section, click on the Change button. The Virtual Memory box opens up and you'll see whatever size is set. Now, since you have 2GB or more of physical memory, put the dot in the NO PAGING FILE, click OK and reboot for it to take effect.
The reason why we do this is because your system has more than enough physical memory to run not only the main XP operating system but any applications that you wish to run as well with very little to no trouble. HOWEVER, if you're planning on running something large like Autocad or another design program, Office, Web Developing software and a bunch of other LARGE programs, yes you will run out of physical memory and eventually hang.
The average everyday user won't get to this point but maybe once in a great while. This also reduces the read/write on your main Hard drive since the Paging file is actually a section of your hard drive set up as a memory, which is slower.
4. For users that DON'T HAVE more than 2GB physical memory installed, complete the above mentioned steps, but instead of selecting NO paging file, Select a Custom sized file. Your page file is suggested to be 1.5x the amount of physically installed memory. So if you have 512mb of installed memory, your paging file should be set at 768mb for BOTH Initial and Maximum size. This means that XP is going to set aside 768mb of Hard Drive space to use for your paging file. Until you have AT LEAST 1gb of physical memory installed, your paging file shouldn't exceed 1536mb in size. Anything larger than that with less memory and the system will actually choke itself out. It does this by rapidly placing files ANYWHERE, ANYHOW in the paging file area, not systematically. Also, for users that don't have nearly as much Memory installed, Ultimate Defrag by Disktrix has an added feature even in the trial mode, to allow you to strategically play your Paging File on the furthest outer ring for increased speed and access.
Screenshots Here
The above link is directly to their site. You can see clearly in the first picture what your hard drive can look like when the program is used with some pre-defined settings. What's important to notice here, in the first picture on the page, the inner dark green ring is the system paging file. The newer versions (.51 and .55) of this software allow you to push this system paging file all the way to the outer rings where it will be more beneficial. I know because I personally own a licensed copy of this software and it makes my machine extremely organized and extremely fast.
5. Double click on My Computer and when it opens up, click on Tools, Folder Options and in the Folder Options, click on the View tab. In the BOX, uncheck the very first box and click ok, you don't need your computer automatically checking for networked folders or printers, especially if you're not on a network at home. This will also speed up your computer's response whenever you are opening or exploring other areas of your computer such as looking for a file or whatnot. See Below.
6. While you're here, right click on your local C:\ drive and click on properties. The drive properties window opens up on the general tab, all the way at the bottom, uncheck the box for Allowing Indexing. You're asking how this is going to speed your comptuer up as it seems very trivial, but it will in the end. When you click on Apply or Ok, you're going to see it go through a laundry list of files that it's removing the indexing from. Eventually it'll come across a few files that it can't remove indexing from, just click the Ignore All button and it will complete on its own.
7. Click on Start, Programs and look at your Program List, very disturbing if you can find anything in that misaligned list. Right click anywhere on the list and then click on Sort by name, this cleans the list up so much better and it's easier to find what you're looking for.
8. Next, we're going to make kind of a major change, but the results are again, immediately noticed. Ever wonder why your computer while as "fast" as it should be seems like it takes minutes to forever before you even see your desktop? There's a reason for that. You know all the stuff that you have sitting on your desktop? All the music and pictures you have stored in your "My Documents\My Music or My Pictures"? Well here's the scoop, when Windows loads your user profile before producing your desktop, EVERYTHING that's on your desktop and stored within My Documents gets pushed through your physically installed memory. How is that bad? Say you have 4.5gb of music through Napster or Rhapsody in your music, and roughly about 1gb of pictures plus another 500mb of misc. documents, homework, ideas and whatnots floating around. Roughly about 6gb of information right? ALL of that has to pass through memory as your user profile is loading. There is a way to prevent that. By relocating the physical location of your My Documents folder.
***NOTE***
To view the existing size of your user profile, right click on My Computer, click on properties. In the system properties window, click on the Advanced tab, then under User Profiles, click on the settings button. It will take a moment or some time depending on how large your profile is, but eventually a box will pop up and show a list of all the accounts and their sizes.
***END NOTE***
What this does, is it takes your My Documents, moves it to a neutral location, but still provides the user direct access to everything contained therein. It also makes Data Backup/Data Recovery a snap because instead of bouncing between multiple locations, you just snap up one folder and you have everything you need. Where you really see the benefit in this change is if you have multiple user accounts on your machine.
Here's how it's done: On your desktop, right click on My Documents folder or click on start find My Documents and right click on it from there and click on properties.
***NOTE***
To view the existing size of your user profile, right click on My Computer, click on properties. In the system properties window, click on the Advanced tab, then under User Profiles, click on the settings button. It will take a moment or some time depending on how large your profile is, but eventually a box will pop up and show a list of all the accounts and their sizes.
***END NOTE***
What this does, is it takes your My Documents, moves it to a neutral location, but still provides the user direct access to everything contained therein. It also makes Data Backup/Data Recovery a snap because instead of bouncing between multiple locations, you just snap up one folder and you have everything you need. Where you really see the benefit in this change is if you have multiple user accounts on your machine.
Here's how it's done: On your desktop, right click on My Documents folder or click on start find My Documents and right click on it from there and click on properties.
Select the Local Disk (C:) and click the "Make New Folder" botton. Then right click on the new folder and rename it USERDATA as your see above. Next click on the USERDATA folder to select and then click on the "Make New Folder" button again for a new folder UNDER the USERDATA folder.
Right click on this new folder and call it whatever your Windows XP Login name's Documents, in my case, my user account is simply User.
Lastly, Click on OK, and you'll be returned to the My Documents Properties box, and you'll see the following.
Click on OK one last time and you'll be prompted that you're moving the default location to the above location, do you wish to continue, click yes and all your documents, music, pictures and what nots will be relocated but still very accessible. Reboot your computer and check out how much faster it's going to come up. Refer to the above ***NOTE*** for faster profile size verification.