You are new to computer and looking for some useful tips & tricks, here are some tips - selected from various articles, webpages & blogs of Techies....
1. Disabling Unused PORTS
I have just accidentally found out another way to give you an extra boost in
windowsXP's boot performance. This is done by disabling your unused devices in
Device Manager. for example, if you don't have input devices that are connected to
one of your USBs or COM ports, disabling them will give you an extra perfromance
boost in booting.
Go to Control Panel System Hardware tab Device manager
Disable devices that you don't use for your PC and then restart. See the difference for
yourself.
Bonus Tip: 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, but it might not be
on yours, or it might have been changed inadvertently. To make sure that boot
defragment is enabled on your system, run the Registry Editor and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
Edit the Enable string value to Y if it is not already set to Y. Exit the Registry and
reboot. The next time you reboot, you'll do a boot defragment.
2. Stop Error Messages from Displaying
on Startup
If you constantly see an error message that you can't get rid offor example, from a
piece of software that didn't uninstall properly and continues to give errors on
startupyou can disable it from displaying on startup. Run the Registry Editor and go to
HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows. (This
key holds a variety of Windows system settings, such as the location of your system
directory.) Create a new DWORD called NoPopupsOnBoot and give it a value of 1.
Exit the Registry and reboot for the setting to take effect. To disable it, either delete
the DWORD value or give it a value of 0.
3. Memory Tweak
1. Start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) and locate the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\
MemoryManagement\PrefetchParameters
2.On the EnablePrefetcher value, change the setting from 3 to 5 (decimal).
3. Close the registry editor and restart your computer
4. Disabling Recent Documents History
The bad thing about Recent Documents History is that Windows XP has to calculate
what should be put there each time you boot Windows, which can slow things down.
1. Open the Registry Editor (select Start/Run, type regedit, and click OK).
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mcft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
3. Create a NoRecentDocsHistory D_WORD key. Double-click the value to open it
once it is created.
4. Set the Data Value to 1 to enable the restriction.
5. Click OK and close the Registry Editor. You'll need to restart the computer for the
change to take effect.
5. Disabling the Boot Logo
You can remove the boot logo that appears when you start Windows XP. This little
tweak probably shaves only a few seconds off your boot time but seconds count if you
are serious about trying to get Windows XP up and running as quickly as possible.
The only negative is that if you remove the boot logo, you will also not see any boot
messages, such as check disk.
To remove the boot logo, follow these steps:
1. Select Start/Run, type msconfig, and click OK.
2. In the System Configuration Utility, click the BOOT.INI tab.
3. On the BOOT.INI tab, click the NOGUIBOOT check box option. Click OK.
6. Removing Unwanted Fonts
One trick that increases your boot time a bit is to lose any fonts in the Fonts folder in
Control Panel that you never use. The more fonts you have, the more processing
Windows XP has to do to prep all of those fonts for use. You must be a bit careful
here to not remove fonts that you might want, but there is a good chance that you can
live without many of them.
To delete unneeded fonts, follow these steps:
1. Open the Fonts folder in Control Panel.
2. Select Edit/Select All and then Edit/Copy.
3. Create a new folder on your desktop, open it, and select Edit/Paste.
4. In this new folder, delete any of the fonts you do not want.
5. Return to the Fonts folder in Control Panel. Right-click the selected fonts and click
Delete.
6. Go back to your new desktop folder and click Edit/Select All.
7. Return to your Fonts folder and click Edit/Paste. You now have only the desired
fonts in the Fonts folder.
7. Stopping Remote Assistance and
Remote Desktop Sharing
In Windows XP Professional, you have two remote networking features called
Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop Sharing. These remote networking features
are very helpful in a variety of situations but if you don't use them, it is good idea to
disable them to save boot time. You can always enable them later if you want to use
them.
1. Open the Start menu, right-click My Computer, and choose Properties.
2.Click the remote tab.
3. Clear both check boxes to disable Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop.
8. Speeding Up the Dual-Boot Timeout
If you dual-boot your computer with Windows XP and another operating system, you
see an operating system selection menu on startup. If you typically boot into Windows
XP and not the other operating system, you can speed up the dual-boot timeout value
so that you do not wait so long for the boot process to select your default operating
system and continue with the boot process. The default timeout value is 30 seconds
but you can change this setting to 10. This gives you enough time to select the
alternate operating system if you want but also speeds up the boot process. You can
skip this section if you do not use a dual-boot configuration.
Follow these steps:
1. Locate the boot.ini file on your computer. It is a hidden file by default; mine is
located in C:\boot.ini.
2. Open the file with Notepad (which is what opens it by default).
3. Change the Timeout value to 10.
4. Select File/Save and close Notepad.
9. Speeding Up Your PPPoE Connection
If you use a Point-to-Point Protocol connection over Ethernet (PPPoE), you may
notice a delay in using the PPPoE connection after startup. By default, there is a 120
second delay but you can stop this behavior by manually configuring an IP address for
the network adapter card. If you do not use a PPPoE connection, you can skip this
section.
1. Select Start/Connect to/Show All Connections.
2. Open the TCP/IP properties for your LAN network interface card.
3. Manually set the IP address on the TCP/IP properties to an appropriate IP address
and subnet mask for your network.
10. Reducing the Wait Time
When you start to shut down Windows XP, it has to quit, or "kill," any live
applications or processes that are currently running. So close all applications first.
However, some applications and processes are always running in the background.
You can reduce the amount of time that Windows XP waits for those applications and
processes to close before Windows XP kills them.
1. Open registry editor
2. Navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop. Set the
WaitToKillAppTimeout and set the value to 1000. Select the HungAppTimeout
\newline value and set it to 1000 as well.
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control.
Select the WaitToKillServiceTimeout value and set it to 10000.
4. Close the Registry Editor.
