The Members Forum

This guide was posted by permission from the original author. The links currently do not work, but you can Google the sites if need be!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[size=3]Windows XP Maintenance and Optimization Guide[/size]
by Udedenkz
Last Update: May 23rd, 2009

NOTES AND WARNINGS,

I do not take any responsibility for your actions; Use common sense, make a backup, etc.

This guide is for Windows XP and XP64 only, if you have Vista or Windows 7 then this guide is not for you.

This guide is not meant for beginners (I can't stress this enough).

Part 1 - Removing Useless Programs
Fact - Just because you think you uninstalled it doesn't mean it is gone

I suggest removing any and all programs that you do not use. They take up hard drive space which can be used for other more important things. They also take up registry space and might even start up with Windows thus slowing down startup as well as reducing overall performance.

But wait! Do not use Windows Add or Remove Programs! Download Revo Uninstaller Instead!
Revo Uninstaller is better uninstaller as it not only uninstalls your programs but also removes left over traces. It also might remove programs that have broken uninstallers, something Windows Uninstaller is not capable off.

If you want a more of a power user approach, go to options and configure Revo Uninstaller as you want it. By default, Revo Uninstaller hides many things and does not show a lot of information.

Think about what applications you never used and do not need and uninstall those first. Do not remove any hotfixes, windows updates, or anything windows related!

If you are not sure what something is, right click on the application and go 'Search at Google For'

Part 2 - Clean Out Junk Files
Fact - The longer you run Windows the more space it takes up

Windows has a lot of places for temporary files, history files, and things like that. Removing all this useless temporary files, recycle bin files, history files, cache files and such will save you a lot of space - especially if you haven't cleaned your PC before.

But Wait! Do not use disk cleanup! Download and install CCleaner instead. CCleaner is faster and has many more features that disk cleanup.

At default, CCleaner will clean out everything which might not be the best idea, uncheck things you want to keep - especially Firefox and Internet Explorer things that you need. I would recommend checking everything in the Advanced section, especially if you are a power user, but know what you are actually checking.

You might be surprised about how much space you might have freed up!

Part 3 - Clean Out You Registry
Fact - The longer you use Windows, the bigger your registry is and the slower your system is.

Registry accumulates junk, useless information, history, links to missing files, etc and it is a good practice to clean it once in a while.

Assuming you did what was instructed in Part 2, use CCleaner to clean your registry as well. I never needed to restore a registry backup after cleaning, so it is a very safe procedure.

CCleaner is a good program but it does not actually get all the registry junk files and errors, I also recommend using COMODO System Cleaner to further clean your registry. If you consider yourself a power user, try to use OLECleaner as well to further purify your registry. All there programs are free and do a good job, but if you have the money on another good registry cleaner which offers great amount of options, I recommend using JV16 PowerTools - a very usefull program which cleans the registry / compacts the registry / clean out junk files / and modifies many aspect of the registry. With JV16 PowerTools, make sure you compact the registry as well after cleaning it.

Most of the time compacting registry does not do anything bad, but some things might happen after compacting such as Recent Documents working again even if you disabled them. This can be most likely be fixed by disabling the Recent Documents again.

Part 4 – Removing Viruses and Spyware
FACT – Contrary to popular belief, Macs get hacked as well as get malware too.

Although spyware and virus monitoring software does place a burden on your CPU cycles, if you are not a careful individual it is for the best to have an antivirus running in the background.
Power Users, I will take it that you do not babysitting software running in the background and as such I will address in the second part of this section.

Here some software that I recommend,
Avast! Antivirus – It can initiate a system scan before boot and delete the malicious software which I reccomend.
AdAware – The latest versions of this tool have became bloated, but it can help remove adware related items and cookies.
Hijack This - Got Infected? Post a log generated by this tool!
Malware Bytes - Functional Tool

Some that you should avoid (in my opinion),
AVG Antivirus – I never liked this tool, I think it is overhyped. It didn't have Vista support for some time...
Windows Defender – Microsoft Product. (So... if you trust Microsoft use it, otherwise do not)
Norton AntiVirus – Program will slow down your system.

Sorry but I am not an antivirus person, mayhap you should look yourself for a good tools.

Power Users,
Trendmicro offers online virus scan of your computer. It is not a good solution, but at least you do not have to install it
If not, you can install some antivirus programs and then scan the system, but most of them add a lot of startup entries as well as services – so you would have to disable those.

Make your computer safer,
- Slightly less programs and thus Viruses run on XP64 (keyword is slightly - mostly those malicious executables which use drivers get blocked by x64)
- Using Adblock Plus for Firefox (Or Adblock Plus Equivelent for your Browser) will keep you more safe. NoScript is another good one, although it might get annoying.
- Clicking on adds, surfing warez and pornographic websites is a bad idea.
- The less services/features enabled/running on Windows, the less chance of something bad getting in through a security hole or something. A virus might put itself into Task Scheduler list for example.
- Make sure that your XP is updated as Microsoft patches security holes
- Make sure your software is updated as its security holes are also patched sometimes
- That keygen might be a virus, buy the software dammit.
- You might also want to refrain from using Administrator account and create yourself a separate account with (or without for additional security) administrative rights
- Scan your computer from time to time and be aware of what is running at startup.
- Disable any networking services and protocols that you do not use.

What to do if you clicked on a virus-filled executable,

- Quickly (and I do stress quickly) restart your computer (the longer the worse the situation might become).
- Boot Into Safe Mode, (Safe Mode does not load startup entries, many services and 3rd party services, and many drivers - all those places might be infected)
- If you have an anti-malware / spyware / virus related software, run it now.
- Now if you do not have an antivirus or the malicious software has disabled it: malicious software hides in five main places - startup applications, scheduled applications, services, drivers, and startup libraries.
- Malicious programs might hide themselves in the Services, go check there for anything without a proper description or something just odd and disable it.
- Go to Start -> Run -> MSCONFIG and uncheck any malicious software in there. If you do not know what to disable, just disable everything as you can just enable anything necessary later on.
- Right Click On My Computer and Select Manage, go to Devices, select Show Hidden Devices and check for anything bad in there. If you cannot run your virus/malware software then the problem is in here.
- If you have jv Power Tools, then check the startup list for any dynamic link libraries that are malicious.
- Search %windir% and Documents and Settings for anything that was created when you clicked ran the executable. Delete these files at your own discretion.
- Go to %WINDOWS%\Tasks - the malicious software you ran might put itself in here.
- After doing the above, if you don't have an anti-virus (just in case), reboot again into safe mode with internet and download and run one - uninstall it later if you want.
- If your antivirus software did the trick and everything works, than you are done. Otherwise, run System Restore and restore the registry to the time before the incident or use a registry backup.
- If you still are having problems, seek help of a professional or reinstall Windows (Your system probably got badly damaged if you are still having problems).

Part 5 – Removing Startup Entries
Fact – Windows runs without any Startup Entries

There are a lot of programs that want to startup with Windows but they are not necessary to functionality of Windows XP. Removing these startup entries will speed up startup and increase system performance, especially if you have a lot of startup entries.

Instead of launching at startup, programs can be easily run after when they are actually needed. Some you might never use in the first place.

Some things like chat clients or driver related programs might be useful at startup so think before disabling things. If you have some anti-virus program, it might also be in the startup list. If you disable something needed, do not panic! You can either restore the startup entry again, or run the program after startup.

Run CCleaner, go to tools, and click startup. From there, disable things that you do not need as well as things that you do not need at startup.

Alternatively, you can go to Start → Run → MSCONFIG → Startup and disable them from there.

Not sure what something is? Google.com is very handy at helping you figure it out!

Power Users: you can just disable everything that startups, nothing is necessary – all startup entries can be invoked later on.

Part 6 – Stopping Useless Services
Fact – More of them are running than necessary

Some services are quite safe to stop as they provide extra windows functionality that you might never used and just take up resources. For example, you might be running Telephony which is a useless service unless you have Dial Up – thus, if you do not have Dial Up than you should stop it.

Some services are useful on the other hand, for example, DHCP and Network Connections are needed for easy connection to Cable / DSL.

Some are rather weird, for example Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) – I disabled this as well as deleted its files and nothing bad happened – what they hell was it? Don't know – Service Tweaking is Experimentation!

To configure services, go to Start → Control Panel → Administrative Tools → Services
Put the ones that you might need to manual, those that you do not need to disabled – restart.
Black Viper Has Good Guide To Windows Services – it is not complete or extensive but very useful indeed.

To disable all non-windows related services, to to MSCONFIG → Services → Check "Hide All Services". These services are safe to disable and will not cause problems with Windows as they are related to 3rd party applications – disable anything you do not need or power users – everything. Besides, if you will need some service for some reason, you can just enable it back. I recommend putting services that you might need on manual, disabled services cannot be started by other applications/services that need them as well as you cannot start them from a batch file.

For example, if you use NVIDIA – you will have an NVIDIA service and startup entries but they are actually useless and all your games will run just fine without them. Just make sure to configure your NVIDIA settings correctly beforehand.

Do not know what something is? Google.com
Here are just some of my tips,
Themes – Gives you that cool looking desktop, not necessary, if you use classic then disbale this.
Telephony – Dial Up - Don't User It? Disable it!
Uninterruptable Power Supply – Unless you have one, disable it.
* Wireless * – Keep running if you have wireless. Otherwise disable anything with "Wireless" in it.
Workstation – Network Related, if you are not on one, feel free to disable. TCP/IP works without this.
Server - Network Related, if you are not on one, feel free to disable. TCP/IP works without this.
Secondary Logon – Multi User Environment Related, if you don't know what this is or do not use it, then disable.
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper – Helper is the keyword, disable.
Fast User Switching - Switch Users Without Logging Off
Print Spooler – Don't Have A Printer? Disable!

Here are my tips for power users,
Security Accounts Manger – If you never "log off" then disable this
Security Center – The thing that nags you, if you know what you are doing then disable. (I stress - if you know how to safely use a computer)
Automatic Updates – There is no point in running this anymore, XP does not get many updates nowadays, and if you followed the other parts of my guide, your windows is up to date. Feel free to disable. Enabling once in a few months to install updates might be a good idea though.
Indexing Service – Searching Will Take Longer – but there will be a definite performance increase – pretty useless if you have a very fast Hard Drive or SSD anyway.
Help and Support – If you do not use Windows Help then disable it. Google is your friend for your problems.
Widows Firewall – Might Interfered With Games and FileSharing Application, Safer to disable if your router has a firewall. There are better alternatives to windows firewall anyway.
Event Log - Very Useful for Diagnosing Problems with the system - can be disabled, if you really want to.
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service - Windows CD-Burning, if you use a 3rd party program to burn disks, disable.
Logical Disk Manager - Windows Tool that allows you to rename/make/format partitions/drives. I would recommend putting it on manual and enabling only when using those features.
Windows Management Instrumentation - Try Disabling This. The keyword is try.
Terminal Services - Remote Desktop, Fast User Switching, Remote Assistance, and Terminal Server


Here are some you might want to keep,
Cryptographic Services - Keep This One, Problems Might Arise Otherwise
DCOM Server Process Launcher - If you disable this one, some files might not open. Winamp will not work right for example. Otherwise, disable.
DHCP Client - Automatic Internet, unless you want manual, keep this one! Don't have Internet? Disable.
Network Connections - Once again, kinda useful for Internet. Don't have Internet? Disable.
Plug and Play - The Name Says It All, Plug and Play. Might also be necessary for some other things. Do not Disable.
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) - This one can't be disabled, don't try unless you really want to risk it.
Windows Audio - Audio, do you use audio? If not, disable. Audio is sound BTW, you will have no sound in most everything if you do disable this.
Windows Driver Foundation - User-mode Driver Framework - Can't be stopped.
Windows Installer - Many installers will not work ( .MSI Files)
Application Experience Lookup Service - Nothing will work right if you disable this one.
Shell Hardware Detection - Self-evidently Bad to disable.

Follow a Simple Rule - If Windows does not allow you to stop a service, don't try to stop it by setting it to disabled, you might not be able to boot. Everything else can be disabled at the cost of loosing some useful or useless functionality.

If you bork up your system and can't boot anymore, try booting in last known safe configuration.

Part 7 – Defragmanting the Hard Drive and Tweaking the Paging File
Fact – The longer you use a hard drive the slower it will become

Note, Solid Sate Drives do not need defragmentation because of things like a seek time of 0.2ms as well as because they are more easily wearable down by such things. It might help, but you did not hear it from me.

Once again, do not use the Windows application for defragmentation. Install and use JKDefrag instead as it is more efficient.

Start Windows in Safe Mode and run JKDefrag (or JKDefrag64 for 64-bit). In Safe Mode, Windows loads less stuff so less files are locked/used so defrag can get more files. Feel free to run it twice for even better defrag! It will make files load faster / less lagg / faster applications. Run defrag once a month, or if you use the hard drive a lot, maybe every two weeks.

If you have the money, there a professional programs like Perfect Disk or O&O Defrag which offer much more functionality and abilities. They might want to run in the background though.

Now, on to page file,

If you have two hard drives the same performance, put the Paging File On the Second Hard Drive.

If you have two hard drives where one is faster than the other, put the Paging File on the faster one.

Putting the Page File unto a different partition on the same Hard Drive is just a waste of your time though.

Power Users – if you never use more RAM that you have, feel free to disable the Paging File – it might slightly speed things up or at least give you some extra free space. Be warned, if something tries to use more RAM that you have without a Paging File – that application will crash. Also, some applications might rely on the Paging File. I would not recommend disabling the PF with less that 2GB RAM on XP. I think it is fully safe with 8GB as I do not fathom anything that can use that much memory. Note, Microsoft limited XP x86_32 to about 3.5GB RAM but XP x86_64 does not have that limitation. You will save Hard Drive space that way as well. :)

This registry tweak will be useful for people with large amounts of RAM, although it might do nothing, (Should be irrelevant if you disabled your Page File)
[codebox]
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001
[/codebox]

Part 8 – Update Your Operating System
Fact – SP3 is in fact better than SP2

Service Packs provide bundles of bug fixes, stability patches, security patches, and new functionality such as better multi-core support.

First of all download and install the latest Service Pack for your Operating System. I do hope no one here needs Service Pack One, if you do Google it or something.

Windows XP x86_32,
- Service Pack Two
- Service Pack Three

Windows XP x86_64
- Service Pack Two
- There is no Service Pack 3 – No Need For It

Next either do Windows Update or run Autopatcher and update the system further, although honestly I would reccomend Windows Update - Auto Patcher is trash. Make sure you install Internet Explorer 8. It is the latest version of the dominant internet browser which has some cool features over the older version. Do not just auto install, some thing you might not like that you will get without looking such as privacy issues.

Gamers, download the latest version DirectX.

If you use Windows Media Player, download WMP11 here.

Other downloads that you might want,

Windows XP x86_32,
.Net Framework 3.5 x86_32
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 x86_32

Windows XP x86_64,
.Net Framework 3.5 x86_64
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 x86_64


Part 9 – Registry and Other Tweaks
Fact – Windows can be faster / more friendly / more secure with a few tweaks
Important: make a registry backup or a system restore point before proceeding - you might not like the changes that a tweak makes - with a backup you could go back.

There are two parts to this guide, registry tweaks - which you can download below as an attachment as well as registry tweaking programs which do wonders.

Download the attachment that I included with this guide, it has all the registry tweaks from this section. All the tweaks are named by what they do. To use a registry tweak that you like, double lick on it and confirm that you want to add it to the registry. Tweaks taken from Kelly's Korner, TweakXP, Boldfortune forums, Neowin forums, and other places.

Attachment Includes,

- Speed Up Explorer Tweak
- Speed Up Main Menu Tweak
- NTFS Performance Tweaks
- Super Fast Restart Batch File
- Super Fast Shutdown Batch File
- Disable WinKey Tweak
- Disable Performance Counters Tweak
- Disable Confirm Delete Tweak
- Disable WBEM Logging Tweak
- Disable Prefetch Tweak
- Disable Zip Files Tweak
- Disable Thumbnail Cache Tweak
- Disable File Association Web Check Tweak
- No ICMP Tweak
- No Recent Documents Tweak
- No Check Signatures Tweak
- No Tracking Of Broken Shortcuts Tweak
- No Remember View Setting in Explorer Tweak
- No MRU Tweak
- No Balloon Tips Tweak
- No Remote Computers Tweak
- No Shortcut Prefix Tweak
- Classic Search Tweak
- Do Not Highlight New Applications Tweak
- Shrink Recycle Bin Tweak
- Gamer's Service Setup Batch File
- OleClean Registry Cleaner
- Shell Ex View Application and Guide
- Power User's Explorer Settings
- Remove Shared Folders Tweak
- Remove NetMeeting Tweak

Windows XP Tweaking Software

Here are some software titles that I highly reccomend for you,

XP-AntiSpy - Allows you to easily modify a bunch of options that can or cannot be set elsewhere.
Most of these a privacy and a few performance related tweaks that you can turn on or off for Windows, Network, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player.

TweakUI / Tweak UI x64 - Allows you to modify some parts of the look and feel of your operating system, some performance realted tweaks. Allows you to remove shortcut arrows!

jv16 PowerTools - not free, but very usefull and overall encompassing tool. I reccomend this for keeping your Operating System in check.
There is a registry cleaner, registry compactor, startup tool, junk cleaner, context menu editor, duplicate file finder, etc. It allows me to disable many hidden components of the system from starting up!

ShellEX View -Allows you to disable Part of the Explorer / Shell itself.
Disable or enable thumbnail previews easily with this tool! (Guide and Tool Included in Attachment)

If you have any more tweaks, please please to PM me them to be featured here. Thanks.

Part 10 – Freeing Up Extra Space
Fact – Windows Grows In Size

Space is quite important as you would never want to end up with a situation where you cannot install something due to a lack of Hard Disk Space.

Please make sure that you already uninstalled all the useless junk, cleaned up your system with CCleaner as those steps are necessary for a good free hard drive space boost.

If you do not use hibernate, go to control panel → power options → hibernate → uncheck hibernation. This should save you some space.

Go To: c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386\ and delete all the files in this folder – they are just backup files left over from Service Pack Installers.

If your Windows is updated and everything seems to work, go to Windows Directory and Search for "$Uninstall*$" (without the quotes) and delete all the folders that come up.

Power Users, if you do not use/need Windows Help, go: to c:\windows\help\ and delete all the files inside this folder.
Power Users, if you use the classic search (backup this first though), go to: c:\windows\srchasst and delete everything in this folder.
Power Users and Nut Cases, if you disabled system restore, go to: c:\windows\system32
estore\ and delete everything here.
Power Users – Go To: c:\windows\system32\dllcache\ and delete all files in this folder – they are just backup files – free space without consequences.
Power Users - Got more RAM than you ever used? Disable the Page File, save space.
Now, if you are scared of deleting the above files, you can always just NTFS compress them to save space.

You can also right click on recycle bin -> properties -> Global Tab, form there on you can configure how much space the recycle bin takes up

Shrink Recycle Bin to 3% (Recycle Bin Uses Less Space With This Tweak),
[codebox]
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BitBucket]
"Percent"=dword:00000003
[/codebox]

Enjoy More Free Space.

Taken from guide from Neowin, as well as Bethesda Community Forum.

Part 11 – Updating the Drivers
Fact – Most People Do Not Have Latest Drivers and Complain Anyway

Newer drivers might offer more stability and bugfixes so if any problems arise you should spend some time updating the drivers. Drivers might also offer new features or better performance, so it is always important to keep in touch with drivers.

Nvidia Drivers
ATi Drivers
Intel Drivers
Use google.com to find drivers.

Unidentified Devices might prove problematic. Get out your driver disk (it should have came with your computer) and let windows scan the disk for the proper drivers for the device and install them. After installing, check on google that the drivers provided by the driver disk are the latest drivers for that device.

If you do not have a driver disk, then try DriverMax a freeware program that might identify your unknown devices.

Sadly, sometimes drivers are just not present no matter how hard you search for your Operating System. This mostly applies to XP64 though.

Note: Drivers for your video card might be a different story as newest drivers might not mean the best drivers. To evaluate, I had a GeForce4MX and installed the latest drivers NVIDIA recommended for me and in turn god massive graphical corruption. Newer drivers also offer less performance in older games it seems, but they do offer higher performance in newer games.

Got devices that you do not use? Disable Them, for a plausible boost in performance.

Part 12 – Getting most power out of Software
Fact – Just because it is popular does not mean that it is the best

There is a lot of software out there and a lot of alternatives to popular software. It is important to choose the best and most efficient programs.

Make sure you are using latest versions of your software titles. For example, Photoshop CS3 has an update which fixes some bugs and speeds up the program.

XP x86_64 users, make sure that you are using the 64-bit version if one is available. 64-bit enabled software is faster than 32-bit software, if done right. For example, 7-Zip 64-bit is faster than 7-Zip 32-bit version. You need 64-bit versions of some software for them to function with your 64-bit OS, but most of the time you don't.

Internet Browsing,
Make sure that you are using the latest version of Adobe Flash Player, version 10. It is supposed to be faster.

Do not use Adobe Reader, instead use Foxit Reader to open PDF files and read them from within your browser. Foxit reader is significantly faster than Adobe Reader and free; it has plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Firefox users should get Fasterfox lite (recommended for faster PCs) as well as adblock plus. These two extensions will make your browsing experience much more enjoyable. You can also try playing around with the beta version of Firefox, for example Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is faster than 3.0. There are also custom SSE/SSE2 build of Firefox that you can try out if you wish.

I wouldn't recommend using Internet Explorer as it is the most popular browser and the most popular browser for spyware / hijacking / bad things.

I DO NOT recommend a 64-bit browser as Adobe is lagging behind supporting 64-bit and there is no Flash Player for 64-bit browsers. Blame Adobe. Although when Adobe released Flash Player x64, then it is time to get a 64-bit browser (Make sure you download Sun Java x64 as well).

Music and Movies,

I would recommend using Winamp for music files and functionality, but if you want to keep it really light, there is XMPlay which is a very tiny and very awesome music player - check it out. For Video, on the other hand, I recommend Windows Media Player Classic Home Cinema (x64 version here) for Video.

For those willing to pay, there is CoreAVC codec which will make certain video files take up significantly less CPU processing power. Make sure you configure WMP Classic Home Cinema correctly to use the codec – 32bit players only. CoreAVC can also take advantage of CUDA enabled GPUs for even more performance!

Microsoft Office,

If you are not willing to fork over a significant amount of space and money to install Microsoft Office, there is a solution for you! OpenOffice.org is a free alternative to Microsoft Office. It is lightweight, offers similar functionality, and offers significantly faster performance.

There is also a go-oo build of OpenOffice.org which is supposed to be slightly faster. It is lighter on functionality I think; I use it for .doc and this writing this guide and it works without a problem. Spellcheck sucks though.

File Sharing Applications

uTorrent - Lightweight Torrent Program
Frostwire- Frostwire - LimeWire Alternative With Less Nagging and better performance

Part 13 – Creating a batch file
FACT – These things are useful

Creating a batch file is easy, type in code to a text document, save as *.bat file, run.
Now I am not going to tell you how to make a bat file from the baby steps up, but here are the neat commands that you must know,

net stop
- Stops a Service
net start
- Starts a Service

For example, you can stop lots of services useless to playing a game then start them all over again.

Another one is,
taskkill /F /IM

This will instantly kill off any process running for example, run "taskkill /F /IM application.exe" and application.exe will not be running any more.

Start application.exe
- This will start application.exe and continue on to the next action in the Batch file
application.exe
- This will start application.exe and wait till it exists to continue unto the next action in the Batch File

You can start things back up by making a bat file to navigate to the directory and run the application, so with bat files you can easily stop a lot of processes and services and then start them all up again! I use two bat files, one to start Wireless and one to kill it.

End a Batch File With The Following to Quit Command Prompt,
Exit

Part 14 - Speeding Up Boot and Shutdown
FACT - It can be slightly faster

In the BIOS, make sure that the Hard Drive with your Operating System is first - this will speed up load as well as make the system more secure. Disable any other device that can be booted from. Disable legacy USB support as well. I found that doing these things might help. Some people, like me, just have a damn slow BIOS so sometimes you have to deal with it. Also, if there is an option to disable any other checks at startup then do it, it might help.

In Windows, run msconfig, and on general tab select selective startup, uncheck system.ini and win.ini - they are useless from what I can tell. Go to boot.ini tab, select your operating system (users with one OS should have it already selected), and check /noguiboot.

Disable devices that you do not use, in device manager. Power Users: Disabling Network Connections and CD/DVD drives that you might have will also help, as long as you do not need them.

Disable any fonts that you do not use, but be warned disabling more of them than necessary might cause problems. Fonts slow down your boot time. To remove fonts, I recommend Font Frenzy, which is a tool that is capable of removing extra as well as vanilla fonts from your system.

Software Vise, the less that runs the better, Here are some things that slow down Windows

Power Users, Registry Tweak To Speed Up Shutdown,
[codebox]
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"
"HungAppTimeout"="100"
"WaitToKillAppTimeout"="1000"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control]
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="1000"
[/codebox]
Warning, make sure you save your work before shutting down! This registry tweak will most likely not give enough time for applications to close down properly, you might want to increase the value of WaitToKillAppTimeout and WaitToKillServiceTimeout to give applications more time. On the other hand, at a cost of system stability but very fast shutdown, feel free to decrease those values.

I also have included two batch files for quick (not safe) shutdown and restart in the attachment.

Part 15 - Windows XP and Nlite
FACT - Nlite can make your Windows installation faster and/or screw it up badly.


I reccomend that after a few years of, even clean usage, you should invest some time in backing up your things and reinstalling Windows. There are many reasons for doing this, junk still gets accumulated no matter what, something might break after heavy usage, etc.

This is where Nlite comes in; Nlite allows you to make an up-to-date Windows XP or XP64 installation disk.
Simply, all you need is your old Windows XP installation disk, the downloaded service pack, a pack of the latest fixes (link to which can be found on the nlite forum), as well as things like Internet Explorer. The interface is quite simple, but do not use any other options except for "Serive Pack" as well as "Hotfixes and Update Packs". You might also want to enter the CD-Key to avoid having to enter it during the installation, but do not try to make an Unattended installation as I found that feature to not work right. The rest of this section is for Power Users Only.

Power Users, Nlite is capable of tweaking system components and removing system components.

If you decide to remove Windows Components, although you will gain performance and have a smaller windows installation, keep in mind that you will loose that functionality and you might damage other functionality that Windows has. Think very carefully before removing a component! For example, you can remove almost all networking and dialup components and still have a connection through TCP/IP and functioning DHCP client but it will take you a few minutes to connect to the Internet. If you remove fonts from other nations, you will get boxes with numbers instead of letters. Most common things to break when removing components is Wireless (You might not be able to see wireless networks to connect to), Drivers (Windows will not be able to recognize official drivers, or ask you to install drivers that it should install automatically - EVERY reboot), and Windows Installer might break. I recommend testing your nlited Windows in a Virtual Machine before installing it for real.

You can also add drivers for your components to Windows - as long as that driver does not have any additional dynamic link libraries or anything.

In the tweaks section, you might want to skip the WMP and IE tweaks as they apply to older versions of those programs. You can also set which services you want and do not want to start.

For further safety, do not try to make the Windows Installation go faster by making it skip disk space check, or having a black background and classic interface on, or anything of that sort as it might cause problems. Also, do not remove old BIOS information or AMD/Intel related components. Trust me on this, it managed to not install my Intel C2D Driver! D:

I recommend disabling Windows File Protection and applying the TCP/IP patch for performance. You might also want to apply the uxtheme patch (to install custom themes - some look really cool) and the USB polling frequency patch (for those high-end mice) if you prefer.

Part 16 – Misc Tweaks and Such
FACT – I am awesome, lol

Software Tweaks,

To greatly speed up Photoshop, go to where you installed photoshop (IE: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3), go to plugins, and delete the Digimark plugin. Presumably you can move some of the plugins to a different folder so they would not load with Photoshop and make Photoshop faster, unless you need those plugins. Photoshop directory also has a lot of other files, like readmes, copyright and stuff. My Photoshop directory is 293MB and I just lack that one plug-in Digimark something something.

If High Definition video laggs, make sure you tell it to skip deblocking. Yes there are ways to speed up video decoding on slow CPUs.

Winamp has a lot of extra settings that you might want to mess with to increase the program's performance. Press Ctrl-P and go to plugins, review all the plugins, and uninstall those that you will not use. Winamp will use less RAM and be slightly faster. You can also configure the visuals to run at the FPS rate of your monitor - Winamp has pretty cool visuals.

Internet Browsing

Youtube actually hides High Quality and HD Quality Buttons on many videos that sound and look much better in HQ or HD. For YouTube Videos after 2006, add fmt=18 to youtube video links to watch them in high quality. For Widescreen Videos, try adding &fmt=22 for High Definition! :)

Did you know that you could configure Firefox to have small icons, hide toolbars, and move everything around? If no, you should, you can save some space that way.

Speeding Up Interface

Did you know that you could disable animations and other similar effects to make the UI seem faster? You don't have to enable Classic look to speed up the User Interface!. XP interface will feel faster and still look awesome! I recommend the Royale theme; I think it looks pretty damn awesome.

Right Click On My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> (Under Performance click) Setting -> Visual Effects -> Uncheck Everything but,
- Use drop shadows for Icon labels on desktop (Icon text will look very ugly without this checked)
- Use Visual Styles on Windows and Buttons (This is the only thing you need to have checked to have a Royale or Luna theme enabled!)

TweakUI can also help you speed up the interface.

Deleting Undeletable Files

In Windows XP x86_32 you can use unlocker to delete files, but it does not work for x86_64. What do you do? Download yourself Ubuntu and burn it on a disk, run Ubuntu (from the disk, no need to install) and you will be able to access your NTFS files (sometimes you would need to mount your NTFS partition though - that is a pain in the ass) and delete them. Warning - Did I mention that you could indeed delete anything, even Windows itself like this? Use caution. If you have a dual boot setup, boot into your other system and attempt to delete files from there.

If you have Professional addition of Windows XP, you can check the NTFS permissions of the file to see if that is the problem.

Solid State Drive Tweaks
Solid State Drives offer very good read rates as well as virtually 0 seek time. It is as if RAM and the HD had a baby! Well, almost: the write speeds to SSD drivers are bad and Windows XP is not optimized for SSD drives. You might experience hickups, and when copying large files or installing applications - everything else might get stuck. What can be done? Nothing much about having to wait out while installers finish installing applications, but you can remove hiccups.

You need to disable the NTFS Change Journal,
Run Command Promt and Type In,
fsutil usn deletejournal /d C:
where "C:" is your SSD drive. If you have more then one partition on your SSD, than delete NTFS Journal on all your partitions
(Thanks to OCZ forum for the tweak)

Format your SSD with the smallest NTFS cluster size. This will help with writing to an SSD.

Power Users, to further improve performance and remove hiccups, tweak windows so it would use the SSD the least. You can try removing the paging file (details in a different section of this guide), disable recent documents (see the registry editing section), disable indexing, disable the performance counters, disable other history / logging things, etc. An Nlited Windows Installation will help.

Disabling Even More Components

Power Users, if you have JVPower Tools (or an evaluation version of that program), go to System Tools -> Startup Manager, select "All Starting Applications and Libraries".
This will show you applications, drivers, and dynamic link libraries that are loaded at startup. Many do not have descriptions and you might regret blindly disabling them, but many of them can be disabled if you do not use them. This might give you a performance boost if you do disable the right components and this is great for finding startup malware/viruses and removing them. I would recommend Googling a component if you do not know what it is. This is fairly safe as you could enable them if something breaks.

I do not know if any freeware application is capable of doing this, if you know of one PM me.

Reduce Ping for Gaming Purposes

There are a few things that you can do to reduce latency and thus reduce lagg in PC Games.

First thing, disable Nagle's algorithm. Scroll down the page and follow the instructions. This should help you reduce your ping without any dangerous side-effects.

Power Users: Firewalls usually add a few points to your ping, so if you feel confident with disabling your firewall, do so. Modern routers usually have firewalls enabled by default as well as attack / hack prevention features, from my own experience disabling both of these features can effectively reduce your ping in games.

Power Users: Clearing Out CatRoot and CatRoot2 folders might decrease your ping. This might have some bad side effects though, such as Windows Installer borking up.

Finally, you can ask (or better yet NAG, otherwise they might not listen) your provider to turn off interleaving. This will decrease your ping. Never use Quest!!!

Part 17 – Game Optimization Suggestions
FACT – Nothing is Optimized, Ever

First of all, make sure that you have the latest patches installed for all your games and that you actually went through with this guide.

Morrowind,
Morrowind Code Patch - Fixes a lot of bugs and it turn speeds up loading and enchanced performance.
Morrowind FPS Optimizer

Oblivion,
Oblivion Tweak Guide
Streamline
Operation Optimization
OblivionScriptOptimization
PyFFI-ed Mesh Patches

Fallout 3
Tweak Guide
Tweakin It Out - Textures

Grand Theft Auto IV
XLiveLess

Source Engine (HL2: EP2 / TF2 / L4D)
NVDIA Users: If you experience problems (hitching / game getting stuck) with multithreaded rendering turned on - try the 182.50 drivers.

Part 18 – Other Tweaks Sites
FACT – This guide is nothing, it is small and only offers a few tweaks

So, this guide introduced you to tweaks, here are some more for you to continue tweaking your system to perfection!
Kelly's Korner - XP Tweaks
PCTools Registry Guide
Bold Fortune's Slimming Down XP – The Complete Guide (Power Users Only)
Neowin Forum
Black Viper's Guide
Speed Guide
Tweak XP


Suggestions Welcome. Thank you everyone for contributing to the guide! :)


-- Edited by barney on Sunday 24th of May 2009 07:20:28 PM