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How to make Windows less annoying
EVERYONE is quite familiar with the dreaded process of ageing. No one is exempt from it, not even computers. Whether you have just bought a new PC or have reformatted the hard drive on your old one and are firing up Windows XP for the billionth time; without some form of optimization, your PC certainly isn’t running at peak performance.
Tweaking your system isn’t an easy job but it is by no means impossible. This step-by-step guide will hope to make it easier so that you can attain high levels of performance and evade gnarly application errors, frozen screens, overall sluggishness as well as frequent restarts — problems that have plagued every version of Windows so far.
This article primarily makes use of tools already integrated into Windows. However, where appropriate, links to other free utilities are provided as well. Keep in mind that although all tweaks mentioned below have been tested, they might not work with your particular system configuration and in a worst-case scenario, cause havoc with your combination of hardware and software.
Some tweaks will require the use of the Windows Registry Editor. Be forewarned, incorrect editing of the registry can severely damage your operating system and render it inoperable. Thus, for maximum compatibility and stability, use the latest service pack with Windows XP and install all critical patches released by Microsoft from the Windows Update feature.
Also, ensure that you have backed up all your important data onto a removable device or an entirely different hard disk. Furthermore, with System Restore enabled, you should create a new restore point prior to tweaking. To do so, click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore and create a restore point.
In case System Restore is disabled on your system, you can re-enable it by right-clicking on “My Computer”, selecting “Properties”, followed by the System Restore tab. Simply uncheck the box next to “Turn off System Restore on all drives” and hit OK. Then proceed normally to create a restore point. Using System Restore, even if you make quite a few changes to your configuration, it’s quite easy to revert your system to its original state. To restore registry (if required) just select “Restore my computer to an earlier time” and you’re done. Lastly, you must check your hard drive for errors using XP’s built-in error checking utility as well as defragment it periodically, making disk access faster and easier.
Let’s start
To keep everything organized and simple, this guide has been broken down into separate chunks based on major areas of the operating system. For instance, if you wish to tweak the memory, look under the memory performance settings section and so on. Also note that you will have to reboot for most of the tweaks to take effect.
Improving startup speed
1. Eliminate unneeded startup programs: Whenever you start windows, you’ll find that a plethora of programs always fire up automatically at each session, consuming valuable system resources and significantly increasing startup time. Since it is generally unnecessary to have any programs running in the background at each boot-up, apart from virus scanners or firewalls, you should disable all such unwanted items to regain your startup speed.
First, in Windows XP, click Start > Run and type “msconfig” (without the quotes). Once the System Configuration Utility window opens, click the Startup tab. Simply uncheck boxes on the left handside to keep items from loading. You’ll need to experiment to see what you can do without.
The name and location of each file can help you figure out what it does. For instance, you can safely disable programs such as MSN, Windows or Yahoo messenger, as well as disregard entries from Real Player and QuickTime. Normally, you shouldn’t have more than four or five programs on this list.
Next, head over to the Startup directory (go to Start > Programs > Startup) that XP uses to launch application shortcuts on boot-up and remove any extraneous shortcuts by right-clicking and selecting delete. When you boot-up after this, these applications will not load.
2. ZapAdware and Spyware: Without knowing about it, various malignant programs may also be operating on your system, transmitting information about your surfing habits to interested commercial parties. Some of these often load at startup, slowing down the boot process. Your best bet is to zap these pests with a program such as SpyBot — Search & Destroy or Lavasoft’s Adware. In addition, be wary of spyware-enriched freeware programs, such as Kazaa Media Desktop and its variants.
3. Disable unnecessary services: With each Windows startup, tons of components or “services” run in the background, slowing down boot-up and gobbling up system resources voraciously. Though some of these perform vital functions, you just don’t need all of them running in your day-to-day PC operation.
To adjudicate for yourself, click Start > Run and type “services.msc” (without quotes) to see a list of all services installed in your machine. Click the Startup Type column heading to sort out the services into three groups: Automatic, Manual and Disabled. The ones that start automatically with Windows are placed on top by default. To stop a service from running, right click on it and select “properties,” and make the startup type “disabled.”
4. Use Bootvis: This is a performance trace visualization tool for Windows XP that can be used by anyone to identify areas of slowdowns during the boot-up phase and optimize for a speedier startup. Once you have the program installed, go to the “trace” menu and select “next boot and driver delays.” Click OK and Bootvis will prompt to reboot. When you reboot, wait for Bootvis to automatically launch. Now go to the “trace” menu and select “optimize system.” Reboot again. Once you restart, wait for Bootvis to complete its analysis. Your boot times should now be optimized.
Normally, Windows waits for a certain amount of time before loading to display a list of available operating systems (OS). In case you are running just one OS, you should get rid of this delay. Right-click “My Computer,” select “Properties,” followed by the “Advanced” tab and open the “Startup and Recovery” option. In the “time to display list of operating systems” box, set the default value to “0”. Hit OK and exit.
Improving shutdown speed
You must have noticed the slow pace at which Windows shuts down every time. Moreover, sometimes Windows even prompts the user for input — asking that a program is still running and if it’s ok to shut it down. A crashed application like this halts the shutdown process. To fix this, you need to edit registry and adjust the amount of time Windows takes before it shuts down services and any running as well as non-responsive applications.
Open up the Windows Registry Editor. Click Start > Run and type “regedit” (without the quotes). Find “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Desktop\”. Double-click the value “HungAppTimeout” and in the box that appears, set its value to 5,000. Then locate “WaitToKillAppTimeout” in the same folder and set it to 4,000. Also find “AutoEndTasks” and set the value to 1.
Next, navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\” and double-click the option called “WaitToKillServiceTimeout.” Change its value to 4,000 and exit.
Optimizing memory
For memory performance tweaks, ensure that you have a large amount of RAM (256MB or more; preferably 512MB). In case you are unable to find the values mentioned, create a new REG_DWORD value with that name. Right-click on an empty area in the right pane and select New > DWORD Value.
First up, using the registry editor, navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management.” To stop Windows XP from paging memory contents to the hard drive and theoretically improving performance, locate the value called “DisablePagingExecutive.” Double-click on it and change its value from “0” to “1, while keeping all other options unchanged.
Next, to increase efficiency while performing large file transfer operations, locate or create a value called “IOPageLockLimit.” Many have reported success with this set in the 8-16MB range. Keep in mind that the unit of measurement is bytes, so whatever amount you want allocated in megabytes, multiply that by 1,024 squared and remember to enter it in the “decimal” view, for example, 16x1024x1024 = 16777216.
Once you’re done with this, go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer.”
Windows XP can cache DLL files in memory even after a relevant program has closed, thereby wasting memory space instead of simply unloading DLLs. To change this, create a new key named “AlwaysUnloadDLL.” Right-click an empty area and select New > Key and set the default value equal to “1.”
This concludes part one of the guide. The next part to this will apply the finishing touches to your system, giving you a fast, trouble-free machine in no time. For more information you can take a look at the links given below:
1. Ad-Aware
2. Spybot — Search & Destroy
3. Black Viper’s site
4. BootVis
The writer
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