Thread: !! Your XP tweaks !!

Know any good XP tweaks
Thought we could make a make a thread of everyone's favourite tweaks to make Windows XP run smoother, and perform better.
So if you've got neat tweaks you would like to share then please post them here

If you can live without Windows XP default colours and taskbar etc then setting your system to optimum performance makes things a bit slicker in my opinion.

To do this goto control panel, system, advanced
under the "performance settings", click on settings
under "Visual effects" , select adjust for best performance
then apply

You may have noticed that there is sometimes a slight delay when you open "my computer" to browse files.
This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers when you open Windows explorer. To stop XP from doing this follow the instructions below.

1. Open My Computer
2. Click on Tools menu
3. Click on Folder Options
4. Click on the View tab.
5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
6. Click Apply
7. Click Ok
8. Reboot your computer

Here is another one, It has deffinatly helped me.

Goto..

1. My Computer
2. RightClick Harddrive c:\ and goto Properties
3. Uncheck the box "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching"

4. Check the Box "Compress drive to save disk space" (This may take some time depending on how much used space you have on your hard disk

5. Apply
6. Reboot

You can repet the Following steps on other hard drive's on your computer



From
Scorpion

Prefetching (the reading of system boot files into a cache for faster loading) is a commonly overlooked component that can have a significant impact on system boot time. This tweak allows you to select which components will make use of the prefetch parameters. To see which files are gathered using each of the settings, clear the prefetch cache located at C:\Windows\Prefetch and then enable one of the settings listed in this hack. Clear the cache and repeat for each setting.

Set the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher to 0 to disable prefetching, 1 to prefetch application launch files, 2 to prefetch boot files, or 3 to prefetch as many files as possible.

Have you noticed how fast your computer boots when you install a fresh copy of Windows, but once you install all your programs it takes so much longer? The problem is that many programs also add a background program to run in the system memory for various reasons. Truth is, the only 3rd party program that should run in the background is the Antivirus. You can disable everything else. But how?

Just type msconfig in Start>Run and go to the "Startup" tab. Take a look at all these programs that startup there (none of them vital for Windows). Once you click Apply or OK you have to reboot and you will get a confirmation message. Make sure you check the checkbox there so it won't show up on next reboot.

To speed up accessing folders for common open/save file dialog
1) Download and install Tweak UI from http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstati.../NTTweakUI.asp
2) Run Tweak UI in control panel
3) Switch to "open" tab, select "Custom places bar"
4) You can edit the folder shortcuts by typing/pasting full folder name such as "c:\download"
4) Click "OK" button

Note: Max 5 folder shortcuts can be showed in the "Places bar"; if you need more, you can use Lightning Bar on http://lbar.leafpicker.com/down.htm

Here is another:

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't work for me. Here's what you do:

1. Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
2. Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

Hi, a nice tweaking tool is FreshUI from FreshDevices

Review from PCWorld

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...scription.html

Free, and the most options I have found so far.


One of the best Tweaks I found with this tweak tool is that you can save all settings and then import them into another computer. Of course you must have Fresh UI on both computers but...

You can easily change drive letters and Icons. That make "My Computer" look more cool ;P

There is a lot of info about every single option.

Fresh UI can be downloaded from

http://www.freshdevices.com/

/ Afo

Editing The Registry (note if your not comfortable within the Registry leave it, and if you do implement this edit do back up your Registry first)

Disable User Tracking - Free system resources.

A value of 1 prevents the system from tracking the programs users run, the paths they navigate, and the documents they open. The system uses this information to customize Windows features. As a result, the system disables customized menus and other features that require user tracking information.

Start > Run > type regedit > OK > in Registry Editor open [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer]

Set Value "NoInstrumentation"=dword:00000001