Make Windows XP Run Faster! - Comments Page 1

Hey there pup. After all these years on computers and picking other nerds brains I've finally found A guy that writes answers to many window problems for this dirty old 80 year old bugger in Maine. Some day when you get a little older and maybe forgot most of the internal commands I'd like to take you on one and one in all the little sneaky command critters in PRE-DOS. Actually my experience started long before DOS and the early versions of dos operating systems.

Another good site to "Turn Off Extraneous System Services" is blackviper.com where he has 3 Configurations to pick from: "SAFE" "Power User" "Bare Bones" for XP Home and Professional Service Pack 2. I do like the Walk Through at the beginning of jasonn.com. //bob

I tried the PC-on-point PC cleaner. It found 109 items, and said that it could only fix 53 of them unless I bought the software. So I said go ahead and fix the 53 items. Nothing happened at all. So I quit the program. It is misleading to say that it fixes the problems free, when it doesn't do that at all.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Some programs advertise free SCANNING, but you have to pay for the CLEANING. I suggest you stick with the (completely free) MS Anti-Spyware, Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy.

Another good cleaning site I found is Trend Micro's Housecall - searches for viruses, spyware, & adware, and cleans them.
It also identifies Windows security holes and suggests fixes, but doesn't actally fix those.
http://housecall60.trendmicro.com/en/start_corp.asp?id=scan

(must be run in IE)

please help me, my windows xp machine booting slowly.give me proper advice to solve the problem

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ummmm, did you read the article?? I mentioned a whole bunch of things you can do to help with that problem.

Hej!
One thing I came across regularly are oversized pictures as Windows desktop background. Digital cameras nowadays produce millions of pixels, far more than the screen can show. Not so computer savvy people often use the original file which causes Windows to recalculate the shown picture to a lower resolution on every redraw. Just resizing the picture to the screen size gives a much faster UI response.
Bye
Hauke Ingmar

I use ADVANCED WINDOWS CARE [http://www.iobit.com/WindowsCare.htm]

It Free. It seems to speed things up.

Thanks for the advice. After 4 years of a slow computer running XP home. Everyone told me it was because I was on dial-up, but it was slow starting even before I got on-line. I did almost everything you had on your receipe,,defraged, cleaned up the registry and programs, except for the hard drive and memory. I was a bit worried about doing this myself, but it was a piece of cake. I added 512 MB of memory and that did it!!!! Thanks!

My boot up time is about 7-8 minutes on a Sony PCG-R505EL with added memory. I've tried everything you suggest & see no improvement. A PC service/retail outlet operater claims that my problem is the Norton Internet Security 2005 that I use & that the 2006 version isn't as slow but it still won't be fast. Does this sound reasonable?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You should be aiming for 1-2 minutes boot time. Drop the Norton and see how that affects it. Then get the free eTrust anti-virus I mentioned in http://www.askbobrankin.com/should_i_buy_antispyware_or_antivirus_software.html

AVG Anti Virus is very good. And it is free for 30 days. It brings you directly to the core of the virus, then you can just press delete. And when you download things, it automatically scans it for viruses. Hope it helps!

I changed my Virtual Memory to System managed size and it helped a lot.

I followed most the steps ( not the last 3 ) and my computer is running ALOT faster. Great advice...thanks!!!

Well i have a much easyer and even better approch. REFORMAT YOUR COMPUTER. you can run all the programs you want you will never get your computer running as well as it did when you first got it with our restoring it with a reformat. All you do is put in your windows disk, or restore disk. You run the setup making sure to delete the old partion.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Not recommended! This drastic approach will wipe out ALL your personal files, ALL your installed software, and ALL your security updates. You will start from scratch, as if you just installed Windows on a new hard drive. It will take many hours to re-install your software, download & reapply the security patches, and restore your personal files.

Thanks, almost bought a new computer since mine is a dinosaur (3 years old). Did what you said and up'd to over 1 gig RAM. I honestly can't believe the difference. In fact, I told a friend that I could speed up his computer if he wants me to. Now I'll have an "owe me one" thanks to you.

I followed the steps mentioned in your advice and find my computer running faster. Thanks.

Gregory, AVG Free is in fact... well... free. I use it on my home machine and don't recall the last infection I had, well ok, the last infection I had was tonsillitis (I don't recommend it) but my PC has been fine. Reformatting has it's place but the essence of Bob's article is speeding your machine up without having to go through that process.

Great summary Bob, one thing I might have added, with the adage that prevention is better than the cure, is also to warn people about downloading and installing bits and pieces willy nilly. The internet is swarming with this app and that app that you can download and install. I think often people get sucked in by the fact that so much of it is free. If it isn't going to drastically change your experience, why bother. Keep your installs to a minimum and hopefully your machine won't get clogged up again for a while. Of course, even still just through general usage, some sludge is inevitable. Ick.

Bob, you forgot one. You should clear out the prefetch area (c:\windows\prefetch) periodically.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Nope, I didn't forget that one. I didn't mention it because it's a myth and will probably DECREASE performance. See http://www.askbobrankin.com/windows_prefetch.html

I must admit that's a world of difference in performance for my PC using the tips on your last newsletter. Before tuning 5 minutes were needed to boot my system and webpages with Quicktime took an eternity to load.

Now it's takes about more than a minute to boot and the same webpages load almost instantly. You're an angel coming from heaven. ;-) There's only one drawback. My system crashes when I try to install RegSeeker.

Hi Bob, I read somewhere that another way to help speed up your system is to thin out all the fonts that you don't need. Is this just the case with older versions of windows, or is it still a valid point for XP also. If this cleaning out fonts does make a difference, how does it actually help.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't think it makes an appreciable difference in newer versions of Windows. Here's a link with more info: http://desktoppub.about.com/od/fonttechnologies/f/toomanyfontswin.htm

I found that Norton Security caused utter havoc on my computer - did strange things to the view, regularly gummed up my Internet connection (I have a DSL line), and caused things to crash. My brother the techno geek spent a chunk of time trying to figure out the cause, with no luck. After a VERY unsatisfying call to its help desk (which was really hard to find), I uninstalled it. Every problem I'd had disappeared - I had no idea Norton had been causing the problems. After some on-line digging (during which I found comment after comment about the problems Norton can cause), I found a great free program called Avast. (I ended up upgrading, because I was so impressed with it.) I can't recommend this program enough - Bob you should plug it in a Tourbus mailing!

www.avast.com