SillyDog701 Message Centre

[Antony]

Okay, this document is for those people can't afford the hardware upgrading damands by Microsoft Windows XP, and have enjoyed the new XP look and "feel" for quite a while. This is very useful for people who are doing serious work on their Windows XP, requiring lots of system resources.

System Properties
Visual Effects
Windows XP contains a huge list of special effects and visual enhancements such as nimated menus, fade effects, cursor shadows, menu shadows, ... etc. Disabling some of these settings can make Windows XP running faster and use less system resources.

1. Open Control Panel from the Start menu and choose "System."
   
2. Choose the "Advanced" tab.
   
3. Select the "Settings" button under the Performance section.
   
4. Check the "Adjust for best performance" box and click "Apply" to apply the settings.
   
5. Alternatively, you can choose the "Custom" open, you can then selectively enable or disable each specific effects.

The cursor shadowing effect can have a noticable impact on performance.

Remote Desktop
So you want to allow someone from another location to control your Windows? Disable it.

1. Choose the "Remote" tab.
   
2. Make sure both "Allow Remote Assistance ..." and "Allow users to connect ..." are not selected and click OK.

Automatic Updates
Having Microsoft automatically screwing up your computer is not a good idea. There are a number of reasons not to let your Windows updates itself. (I will add reasons if I have time to write those.)

1. Choose the "Automatic Updates" tab.
   
2. Uncheck the "Keep my computer up to date..." box
   OR
   tick the box that says "Turn off automatic updating..."

Display Properties
Well, it is sad to say goodbye to special effects, but we want to speed up the computer.

1. Open Control Panel from the Start menu and choose Display.
   
2. Choose the "Desktop tab and set the Background to "None."
   
3. Select the "Appearance" tab.
   
4. Under "Windows and buttons," choose "Windows Classic Sytle" from the drop-down menu.
   
5. Click the "Effects" button.
   
6. Unselect all options and click OK.
   
7. Click OK to close the Display Properties and apply the changes.

There's more ways to speed up your XP.
Start Menu and Folders
Start Menu and Taskbar

Context click (usually known as Right click) on the Windows XP Start button and choose "Properties" from the contextual menu.

1. Choose "Classic Start Menu"
   
2. Click the "Customise" button
   
3. Select the "Show Small Icons in Start Menu" option
   
4. Unselect any other items that you don't use often.

Folder Options

1. Open My Computer
   
2. Open the C: Drive or any other drive
   
3. Choose "Folder Options" from the Tools menu
   
4. Select "Use Windows classic folders"
   
5. Select the "View" tab.
   
6. Unselect the "Automatically search for network folders and printers" option.
   
7. Click "Apply"
   
8. Click the "Apply to All Folders" button
   
9. Click OK.

Now, you can enjoy your Windows XP faster.
(Based on Connectix's documentation for optimising Windows XP Professional and Home Edition)

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MozInfo701 | MacCentre701 | AntBlog701 | don't steal music.

[Mandrake]

There is another thing you can do (I've done this in XP Pro) - Enable the "Classic' theme, then right click on My Computer - Manage. Then go into the services, and disable the themes service. This provides a bit of a speedup, and is very useful to those with 128mb of memory and XP.

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Core 2 Duo E8200 (@ 3.6GHz) | Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 | 2GB G-Skill/2GB Kingston DDR2-800 RAM (4GB total) | GeForce 9800 GTX (@ 800/2000/2500)

[Lorraine]

I have hardly anything on this flaming computer, actually I have 67% free, but my system resource is only 6 %, it is very low and some programs may not run. Lovely. I closed my email window and now I have 8% system resources. I have Netscape runing, real player icon, Zone Alarm and McAfee in systray.
I was just told in IE POGO that I didn't have enough memory.
That I only have 3 MB
This is the only window I have open.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02

[playernovis]

don't forget to disable MESSENGER service, it slows down computer and keeps it open to silly MSN pop-up ads....

Start-> Settings-> Control Panel-> Administrative Tools->Services and disable MESSENGER service

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[Mandrake]

Actually, this is not a complete list at all. Black Viper has a great page on what services to disable on Windows 2000 and XP.

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[tonyeldon]

I run a bunch of bloated software which over the past year has made my desktop very sluggish. I did a quick MozillaGoogle search, found this post, did the steps, and my machine works nearly instantaneously again. Thanks for posting this great information.
Tony

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[Don_HH2K]

[keith]

When talking about speeding it up, how much RAM can windows XP take? I know ME only handles 256. On my XP machine, i have 512, and was wondering how much more it would take? I know the newer computers are up in the GB now, are they not?

Keith

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KEITH

[Mandrake]

The 32bit version of Windows XP supports 4GB of memory.

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Core 2 Duo E8200 (@ 3.6GHz) | Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 | 2GB G-Skill/2GB Kingston DDR2-800 RAM (4GB total) | GeForce 9800 GTX (@ 800/2000/2500)

[profman]

My motherboard, under Windows XP, is able to accept up to 4 GB of DDR memory. I have two paired 512 MB sticks installed for a total of about one GB of memory. I've never suffered for lack of available memory space on this system.

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profman, the mad chemist; User of Mozilla 1.7.1x, Firefox 2.0.0.x, & NS 7.2; Moderator of SillyDog Forums. Forum Search or NETSCAPE (+ more) SOLUTIONS

[keith]

The way i see it, is theres not much point in goin super high on ram, if you don't have the processer to back it up. what would you say to a statment like that? True or false? Maybe i am wrong, but i think if you have a small processor, alot of ram won't make a huge difference. Am i correct?

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

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KEITH

[Ron Williams]

[keith]

Hey thanks for the reply. What would yal think if a person were to upgrade to say a GB of ram, with a 1.92 GHz processor? would that even be worth it?

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

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KEITH

[Antony]

Keith,

The key thing to speed up the Windows is to disable/uninstall unnecessary/unwanted visual effects and applications.

[keith]

ok, i sorta get ya. Say hypothedically if i kept alot of that stuff enabled, with my athlon 1.92 GHz processer, would an uprage from 512 MB to 1.0 GB be a fair investment, in your opinion?

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

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KEITH