Top 6 Instant and Simple Tweaks to Speed Up Windows-XP PC

Majority of people worldwide uses the windows as the operating system on their PC or laptop. All of us do face the performance problem i.e. we find the system starting up or running quite slow. Not many people know that this all happen because of some unwanted services, alerts starting automatically by windows besides lots of dump and temporary file getting accumulated in the system. I am sharing below some simple tips which can improve the windows performance almost instantly.

Disk Cleanup

You should periodically do this exercise of disk cleanup which can improve the performance by getting rid of all the temporary files and temporary internet files, recycle bin as well as compressing the old files.

Disk Cleanup

To start disk clean up;

Go to My Computer->Right Click the drive (e.g. C) to clean->Click Properties->Click Disk Cleanup

Choose the required disk drive for cleanup exercise. For example, if you have three partition -C, D and E, you have to choose one from the drop down. Ideally, you should run this for each drive one by one. After choosing the drive, it will scan the system and will estimate and inform on the screen as how much disk space you will be able to free up using this. Click OK on the final screen to proceed with the cleanup. Doing this exercise on regular basis really helps improving your system’s performance.

It is required that all the programs and applications are closed before doing this disk cleanup exercise.

Clearing the Prefetch Folder

Prefetch Folder

Go to Start -> Run -> Type Prefetch
Select All the files in the prefetch folder
Shift+Delete to delete them permanently

Defragmentation of Disks

Repeated installation and de-installation of software or addition and deletion of files from the system leads to fragmented data on the disk. This means, that data related to even a single physical file may be residing in the fragmented or scattered form across different blocks on the disk. So, whenever you use this file, system has to get it by reading from different areas on the disk which means extra effort and more resource utilization and hence, leading to slow performance. So, this is required that you shoudl defragment your disk drives from time to time. However, please note that this exercise may take a while to complete for all the drives (also, depends on how frequently you do it), hence you should keep sufficient time frame to complete this.

Defragmentation

This can be invoked as;

Double Click My Computer ->Right Click the drive letter (e.g. C)->Click Properties->go to Tools tab->Click Defragment Now

Disk Fragmenter screen shows up which has all the available hard disk drives displayed. Click on the drive letter to be defragmented and click button Defragment. You can also click Analyze before clicking defragment and it will analyze the selected drive and inform back if that drive requires a defragmentation exercise or not. Accordingly, you can proceed. However, depending upon the usage of your system, it is recommended to do this exercise bimonthly at least for each of your drives. It can really help improve system performance quite substantially.
It is required that all the programs and applications are closed before doing this defragmentation exercise

Stop Displaying Status Messages during Logon, Logoff, Startup and Shutdown

Go to Start -> Run
Type Regedit

(It will open the registry editor which contains all the system parameters and values. Take extra care to deal with this file because even a simple mistake can be disastrous for your system.)

In the Registry editor window- Go to Following path;
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SOFTWARE->Microsoft->Windows->CurrentVersion->policies->system
On the right hand side, find the parameter named named “DisableStatusMessages” and give it a value of 1. In case, this parameter doesn’t exist, you can create one yourself and assign it a value of 1

Boot without windows boot logo

Setting NoGUIBoot

Go to Start ->Run
Type MSCONFIG
Click Boot.Ini tab
Check the box named NOGUIBOOT

Get rid of extra unwanted Graphics

In the default settings, windows displays lots of extra graphics such as shadows, shades, fades etc with the menu items which can make your PC very slow. To get rid of all this unwanted graphics;

Removing Graphics

Right Click MY COMPUTER
Click Properties
Click Advanced Tab
In performance box, click Settings
Choose the Adjust for Best Performance

Hope, you will find all the above tricks very useful in speeding up your PC instantly to quite an extent. However, I advice, you should do it only if you are comfortable and have some knowledge about the underlying technicalities.. Take extra caution with Registry editor as that it the most vulnerable to mistakes and has the potential to make your system crash, if not done properly. In any case, however , please ensure to take the system and registry backups before performing any of the above or any other tweaks to your system parameters.

Do share your feedback about all the above tweaks and do let us know if you are using any more simple techniques to make your system faster.