Making Windows XP More Faster - Part 2

1. SPEEDUP FOLDER ACCESS - DISABLE LAST ACCESS UPDATE If you have a lot of folders and subdirectories on your computer, when you access a directory XP wastes a lot of time updating the time stamp showing the last access time for that directory and for ALL sub directories. To stop XP doing this you need to edit the registry. If you are uncomfortable doing this then please do not attempt.
   1. Go to Start and then Run and type “regedit”
   2. Click through the file system until you get to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem”
   3. Right-click in a blank area of the window on the right and select ‘DWORD Value’
   4. Create a new DWORD Value called ‘NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate’
   5. Then Right click on the new value and select ‘Modify’
   6. Change the Value Data to ‘1'
   7. Click ‘OK’
2. MAKE YOUR MENUS LOAD FASTER This is one of my favourite tweaks as it makes a huge difference to how fast your machine will ‘feel’. What this tweak does is remove the slight delay between clicking on a menu and XP displaying the menu.
   1. Go to Start then Run
   2. Type ‘Regedit’ then click ‘Ok’
   3. Find “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\”
   4. Select “MenuShowDelay”
   5. Right click and select “Modify’
   6. Reduce the number to around “100?
   7. This is the delay time before a menu is opened. You can set it to “0? but it can make windows really hard to use as menus will open if you just look at them - well move your mouse over them anyway. I tend to go for anywhere between 50-150 depending on my mood
3. IMPROVE XP SHUTDOWN SPEED This tweak reduces the time XP waits before automatically closing any running programs when you give it the command to shutdown.
   1. Go to Start then select Run
   2. Type ‘Regedit’ and click ok
   3. Find ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Desktop\’
   4. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
   5. Right click and select ‘Modify’
   6. Change the value to ‘1000'
   7. Click ‘OK’
   8. Now select ‘HungAppTimeout’
   9. Right click and select ‘Modify’
   10. Change the value to ‘1000'
   11. Click ‘OK’
   12. Now find ‘HKEY_USERS\ .DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop’
   13. Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
   14. Right click and select ‘Modify’
   15. Change the value to ‘1000'
   16. Click ‘OK’
   17. Now find ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\Control\’
   18. Select ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’
   19. Right click and select ‘Modify’
   20. Change the value to ‘1000'
   21. Click ‘OK’
4. IMPROVE SWAPFILE PERFORMANCE If you have more than 256MB of RAM this tweak will considerably improve your performance. It basically makes sure that your PC uses every last drop of memory (faster than swap file) before it starts using the swap file.
   1. Go to Start then Run
   2. Type “msconfig.exe” then ok
   3. Click on the System.ini tab
   4. Expand the 386enh tab by clicking on the plus sign
   5. Click on new then in the blank box type”ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1?
   6. Click OK
   7. Restart PC
5. ENSURE XP IS USING DMA MODE XP enables DMA for Hard-Drives and CD-Roms by default on most ATA or ATAPI (IDE) devices. However, sometimes computers switch to PIO mode which is slower for data transfer - a typical reason is because of a virus. To ensure that your machine is using DMA:
   1. Open ‘Device Manager’
   2. Double-click ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers’
   3. Right-click ‘Primary Channel’ and select ‘Properties’ and then ‘Advanced Settings’
   4. In the ‘Current Transfer Mode’ drop-down box, select ‘DMA if Available’ if the current setting is ‘PIO Only’