Windows XP Ten Useful Tips and Tweaks

1) Easy Way to Adjust Large SystemCache Normally, the tweak I've seen asks you to go into HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and change the value to either O or 1 to the adjustment the LargeSystemCache. However, in Windows XP, all you have to do is: Right-click My Computer. Select Properties. Click Advanced. Choose Performance. Click Advanced again. Select either Programs or System Cache under Memory Usage. Programs = 0 for the registry tweak equivalent System Cache = 1 for the registry tweak equivalent

2) Disable XP Boot Logo It is possible to disable the XP splash screen, which will slightly speed up the overall boot process. Be aware that removing the splash screen will also cause you not to see any boot-up messages that might come up (chkdsk, convert ... ), but if your system runs without any problems then it should not matter. Edit boot.ini. Add " /noguiboot" right after "/fastdetect". Upon restarting, the splash screen will be gone. It can be re-enabled by removing the new switch.

3) Turn Off Indexing to Speed Up XP Windows XP keeps a record of all files on the hard disk so when you do a search on the hard drive it is faster. There is a downside to this and because the computer has to index all files, it will slow down normal file commands like open, close, etc. If you do not do a whole lot of searches on your hard drive then you may want to turn this feature off: Open My Computer. Right-click your hard drive icon and select Properties. At the bottom of the window you'll see "Allow indexing service to index this disk for faster searches," uncheck this and click ok. A new window will pop up and select Apply to all folders and subfolders. It will take a minute or two for the changes to take affect but then you should enjoy slightly faster performance.

4) Clean Your Prefetch to Improve Performance This is a unique technique for WinXP. We know that it is necessary to scrub registry and TEMP files for Win9X/ME/2000 periodically. Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP. However, after using XP some time, the prefetch directory can get full of junk and obsolete links in the Prefetch catalog, which can slow down your computer noticeably. Open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete those junk and obsolete files, reboot. It is recommended that you do this every month.

5) Performance Increase Through My Computer Easy enough tweak to usually find out about it on your own, but still, some of us still don't find it right away. So here it is: Start > right-click on My Computer and select Properties. Click on the "Advanced" tab. See the "Performance" section? Click "Settings". Disable the following: Fade or slide menus into view Fade or slide ToolTips into view Fade out menu items after clicking Show Shadows under menus Slide open combo boxes Slide taskbar buttons Use a background image for each folder type Use common tasks in folders There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster.

6) Reduce 10 Second Scandisk Wait Time Start MS Dos Prompt (Start run CMD), and type: CHKNTFS /T:4 where 4 is the amount of wait time. CHKNTFS /? for more info.

7) DMA Mode on IDE Devices Just like Windows 2000, Windows XP still fails to set the DMA mode correctly for the IDE device designated as the slaves on the primary IDE and secondary IDE channels. Most CD-ROMS are capable of supporting DMA mode, but the default in XP is still PIO. Setting it to DMA won't make your CD-ROM faster, but it will consume less CPU cycles. Here's how: Open the Device Manager. One way to do that is to right-click on "My Computer", select the Hardware tab, and select Device Manager. Expand "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" and double-click on "Primary IDE Channel". Under the "Advanced Settings" tab, check the "Device 1" setting. More than likely, your current transfer mode is set to PIO. Set it to "DMA if available". Repeat the step for the "Secondary IDE Channel" if you have devices attached to it. Reboot.

8) Load Internet Explorer the Fastest Way Possible Edit your link to start Internet Explorer to have -nohome after it. For Example: "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" -nohome This will load internet explorer very fast because it does not load a web page while it is loading. If you want to go to your homepage after it is loaded, just click on the home button.

9) Cracking Windows XP Login Password download the nice and easy Nt/2k/xp password cracker from our community or other way is if u get acess to the computer then go to Start>Run and type “control userpasswords2” without Quotes and a new pop up windows will open and u will reach to user account properties. Here u can Reset the Administrator and any Users password so anytime when u Want to use the Computer start it in safemode pressing F8 at Booting get into the xp as u have Administrator password and go to Controlpanel>Useraccounts and create a New Account .Start Computer Normally and get into WinXP with ur newely made account and do ur job. (Don’t forget to Delete ur newely made account Otherwise u will be in trouble) Delete ur account again starting the computer in Safemode as Administrator and Delete ur Account.

10) Shutdown XP Faster Like previous versions of windows, it takes long time to restart or shutdown windows XP when the "Exit Windows" sound is enabled. To solve this problem you must disable this useless sound. Click Start button. Go to settings > Control Panel > Sound, Speech and Audio devices > Sounds and Audio Devices > Sounds. Then under program events and windows menu click on "Exit Windows" sub-menu and highlight it. Now from sounds you can select, choose "none" and then click Apply and OK. Now you should see some improvements when shutting down your system.