Speed up Windows XP--free class online!

[Indyologist]

If you were insightful enough to keep Windows XP and not venture into the unknown of Vista (especially after hearing horror stories), you probably would like to speed up your XP system, which is still very much desired. I've read stories online of people who actually kicked Vista off their systems and begged to get XP back. They eventually did. You might even have a story like this of your own.

Anyways, below is a free internet "class" on how to speed up Windows XP AND your online browser. It doesn't cost anything and you don't need to sign up. I've done most of the steps and I do notice my PC has sped up since then! You'll want to make note of the changes you made somewhere and keep them in case you want to go back and change something to the original setting, of course. I just thought I'd share this with you all because it was so useful to me. I hope it gives your PCs the kick in the pants it probably needs.

http://speed-up-windows-pc.classes.cnet.com/

[Finn]

Jesus! Thank god I look into the nick before I go busting it.

You were THIS close getting your hide thrown away for spamming.

[nezobiwan]

Sounds cool. Lord knows I need to look into it. I hope I get to find the time. Thanks for the heads up. :up:

[Indyologist]

Jesus! Thank god I look into the nick before I go busting it.

You were THIS close getting your hide thrown away for spamming.

Well, I'm sure you would have chosen to give me the benefit of the doubt and ask me why I would spam before you would just throw my hide in the nearest snowbank with no warning at all. After all, it's pretty cold in Nepal this time of year, y'know?

[Indyologist]

Also, here's a nice site for those of us with XP who want to get the maximum speed and use out of it before we have to have Vista (ugh).

www.tweakxp.com

[Finn]

Well, I'm sure you would have chosen to give me the benefit of the doubt and ask me why I would spam before you would just throw my hide in the nearest snowbank with no warning at all. After all, it's pretty cold in Nepal this time of year, y'know? You don't ask questions from spambots.

[Indyologist]

Has anyone tried this?

[Indy500]

I have done all of these tweaks over the years (plus several more) with my XP Pro and they work great! Nice to see most of them all in one spot, but there are two big tweaks that are missing.

1. First I have a disk clone program that I got free with a Seagate drive that I use to create back up images of my whole computer. This is much better than System Restore which is in itself a SYSTEM HOG. I disable system restore. But, I am good with computers so do it at your own risk.

2. There are system performance counters in XP that run in the background and they are another SYSTEM HOG. These are a bit more involved to turn off as you have to download a Microsoft tech tool to do it. It's called exctrlst.exe and is tough to find. Just search Google for "Disable Performance Counters" and you'll find out all about it.
Turning off those counters also made a big difference, especially on my laptop.

Shutting down the indexing service really makes another big difference and I have spent alot of time shutting down other sevices as well. A website called Black Viper is the one to look at for everything you wanted to know about Services. This guy knows his stuff.

What ever you read on the web about turning off Task Scheduler, don't do it!
I never use Task Scheduler, but it needs to run as it is part of your Prefech service. Prefech is a good thing and really speeds up XP

If any of you have Microsoft Office (and I'm sure you do) get rid of Fast Find. Just do a search on your pc for "Fast Find" and delete ALL of those files.

Don't forget the basic stuff like purging your internet cache and disk clean up. I run CCleaner which is free...!

Also get rid of any help assistants like the puppy for file searching and Clippy for Excel and Word.

And defrag monthly.