INCREASE WINDOWS XP PERFORMANCE

Microsoft’s Windows XP Professional and Home Editions can be made to perform faster than their default installed configurations by making a few modifications at the user level. Imam Nirwan shows you the steps you need to take to increase Windows XP’s overall performance.

When Microsoft defined the default configuration of Windows XP Professional, assumptions were made regarding how the operating system needed to be set up out of the box for the broadest possible levels of compatibility. In defining a wide breadth of support, Microsoft had to trade off performance fine-tuning for each individual's needs. The good news is that this operating system provides access to many configuration options that you can use to accentuate the performance of Windows XP Professional and Home Editions. The intent of this article is to provide you with pragmatic advice about how to get the highest levels of performance possible from the Windows XP Professional operating system by changing memory management and menu system variables.


This is articles that will define how you can get greater performance from your Windows XP Professional system. Starting with memory management and graphics, this series of articles will progress through processor scheduling, disk usage, and network fine-tuning.

This article covers the guidelines for increasing system performance by doing the following:

1. Optimizing Memory Management
2. Streamlining The Menu System



1. OPTIMIZING MEMORY MANAGEMENT

Like many other operating systems, Windows XP Professional addresses memory from both a physical and virtual level. Physical memory is the amount of random access memory in your workstation, whereas virtual memory is the amount of memory than can be written to your system's hard disk. Integral to the development of the Windows NT operating system, Microsoft has always relied on virtual memory for increasing baseline performance.

The virtual memory paging file, called PAGEFILE.SYS, can be modified in size through a series of steps shown here. For the best possible performance, it's best to have a virtual memory partition on each disk drive. When defining the size of the PAGEFILE.SYS file for each disk drive, it's best to set this file's size at double the physical memory in the system. To optimize physical and virtual memory, follow these series of steps:

Double-click on the System icon in the Control Panel. The System Properties dialog box appears.

1. Click once on the Advanced page tab at the top of the System Properties dialog box. Figure 1 shows this specific page of the dialog box.

2. Figure 1 Configuring your Windows XP system for higher performance using the Advanced tab of the System Properties dialog box.

3. In the Performance segment of the Advanced page (the first entry on the top of the page), click once on Settings. The Performance Options dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 2.

4. Figure 2: Using the Performance Options dialog box, you can define the virtual memory paging file size.

5. Click once on the Advanced tab of the Performance Options dialog box. Figure 3 shows the contents of the Advanced tab: Processor scheduling, Memory usage, and Virtual memory.

6. Figure 3 The Advanced page of the Performance Options dialog box gives you control over setting virtual memory sizing

7. Notice that at the bottom of the page there is an entry for defining the virtual paging size for your Windows XP system. Click once on the Change button. The Virtual Memory dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 4.

8. Figure 4 Using the options in the Virtual Memory dialog box to define paging file size.

9. The purpose of this dialog box is to define the size of the paging file your system will use. You can, for example, toggle Windows XP Professional to not provide any paging file by selecting the No paging file option (although it will save on disk space, it will inhibit your system's overall performance). The best selection in this area is to select System managed size because Windows XP will calculate the size of the virtual paging file for you. After you select the option you want for this specific option, click once on Set in the Paging file size for selected drive section.

10. Click once on OK to close the Virtual Memory dialog box; then, select OK in the two other dialog boxes until the main desktop is again shown.

11. Reboot your system, and PAGEFILE.SYS will be created. You'll notice that the file appears in the partition as defined in the Virtual Memory dialog box. Your system should now run more efficiently, especially when several concurrent applications are in use at the same time.




2. STREAMLINING THE MENU SYSTEM

Although the navigational aspects of Windows XP Professional have been around since the days of Windows 95, their graphical nature has progressed—they are more extensive in their use of colors and shading, and they drain more system resources. Trimming back the level of graphical representation in your Windows XP desktop can save system resources and boost overall application and network performance.

Follow these steps to get greater performance from your Windows XP system by trimming back the visual effects:

1. Select the System Tool from the Control Panel. The System Properties dialog box appears.

2. Click on the Advanced tab of the System Properties dialog box.

3. Click once on the Settings button in the Performance section of the dialog box. The Performance Options dialog box is next shown, with the Visual Effects page highlighted by default (see Figure 5). Notice that this dialog box lets you select between four options: Let Windows choose what's best for my computer, Adjust for best appearance, and Adjust for best performance, and Custom. Select Adjust for best performance, and click once on Apply.

Figure 5 Using the Optimizing visual effects performance to streamline the performance of your Windows XP system

Your system will take a few moments to redefine color schemes. The majority of the colors will now be grayscale, yet the performance of your system will be noticeably faster.

4. Click once on OK. Your system is now configured for the highest performance possible from a graphical interface standpoint.

Now if the grayscale is just too bland for you, you can also toggle up the performance of your system by using the following steps:

1. In the Performance Options dialog box, select Options instead of Adjust for best performance.

2. Clear the following options to still retain a colorful appearance to the desktop while getting greater performance:

Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
Fade in taskbar
Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show shadows under menus
Show shadows under mouse pointer
Show translucent selection rectangle
Show window contents while dragging
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop

3. Click once on Apply and then click OK. Now you have retained the appearance of Windows XP, yet also greatly increased its performance.
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10 way to save phone battery energy

1. If truely you don't require it, better turn off the vibrate. For example when is you reside in the workbench or at home.

2. Don't activate the facility vibrate and ring concurrently because this matter can lost alot of your phone battery energy

3. if you are waiting for SMS or important telephone, better think twice to compile or make the melody manually. Section of this action will spend more battery energy.

4. Don’t play game in phone, if you very need your phone and impossible to recharge battery during near by.

5. Turn off GPRS facility, this matter also make phone use the battery energy redundantly.


6. Don’t excessively turn on or turn off your phone. It’s Section, required energy to look for network again very big. This matter will lessen the time of phone standby among 1-2 hour.

7. If you reside in the difficult area to get signal, better just turn off your phone. Because the phone will continue to try searching the signal, what cause can lost a lot of battery energy.

8. To get the optimal result, better turn off your phone when recharge the battery. Though be in fact there is no prohibition to turn on the phone when recharge.

9. Don’t ever recharge the battery a long of night, because this matter will have an in with battery performance.

10. Turn off the phone is otherwise needed, for example nighttime.
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Make Windows XP boot, FASTER!

1. Eliminate unwanted programs from boot up:
You will find that many of the programs you install on your system set portions of themselves to run automatically when you start up your computer. Each program that runs on startup not only consume system resources but also extends the length of time it takes your PC to fully boot.Since it is generally unnecessary to have any programs running in the background (other than security software like virus-scanners or firewalls) disable your unwanted startup programs to increase your startup speed and conserve system resources.

The easiest way to go about this task is to use the MSCONFIG utility, which may be familiar to users of Windows 9x. This handy program contains a list of software which is set to start when you boot your PC. You can then easily disable and re-enable (if necessary) these items.

Go to ’start\run’ and type ‘msconfig’ to access the utility.

The ’startup’ tab in MSCONFIG provides access to several other applications that are started at boot up and are running in the background. By examining their Filenames and directories, you should be able to get a feeling for what is necessary and what is not.

Be aware than several viruses and worms have a habit of disguising themselves with authoritative sounding Windows system file names, such as the Win32.spybot.worm as MSCONFIG32.EXE. Leave these for now if you are not sure.

The next place you should go is ’start\programs\startup’ which is a directory Windows XP uses to launch application shortcuts on boot-up.

If you remove the shortcuts from this directory, the applications will not load on startup. This directory can also be a repository for various badness such as spyware and virus software, so if there are files here which are not shortcuts and you don’t recognize them, you may wish to consider removing them anyways, as Windows will not place critical files in this directory.


2. Eliminate unwanted fonts to increase boot speed:
The Windows XP control panel contains a ‘fonts’ directory which holds all the fonts currently installed on your system. These can come from Windows itself or from an application such as Word.Windows checks and loads these fonts during the startup process, therefore having a large amount of font files can cause performance to drag during startup. The simple solution for this (if you do not expect to use the majority of these fonts constantly) is to move the unnecessary fonts to a new directory elsewhere on the hard disk, preserving them in case they are needed, but preventing them from loading upon startup.To do this:

Create a new directory called ‘font backup’ or something similar on your C: drive.

Go to ’start\control panel\fonts’ and select all fonts. Drag and drop all the fonts into the backup folder you just created. Things will get garbled for a moment, never fear. Windows XP will automatically re-install the base fonts that it needs to display text into the fonts folder in a second or two.

Now you have the bare minimum of fonts installed. Go through the backup folder and cherry pick the fonts that you are sure to use (like Times New Roman or Arial).

If you removed a large volume of fonts, your system should now boot faster.

3. Turn off BIOS disk detection:
Most modern motherboards will attempt to detect any IDE devices, such as hard drives and CD drives, during the POST sequence each time the computer boots. By configuring the BIOS with the correct drive information, you can shave a few seconds off your boot time by avoiding this detection process.To do this enter your system’s BIOS setup screen.Depending on your motherboard, you may have an IDE drive auto-detection menu. If you do, simply select it to automatically set your drives. If not, configure the drives through the ’standard CMOS settings’ menu.

Note that some motherboard chipsets (like Nvidia’s Nforce 2) do not allow this auto-detection to be disabled.

4. Use the Intel application accelerator:
If your computer has an older Intel chipset (pre-865) you may benefit from downloading and installing the Intel Application Accelerator .This software replaces the Windows XP ATA (hard disk and IDE device) drivers with ones specially designed for Intel chipsets, improving disk performance and boot time.Please make sure that your computer conforms to the system requirements before installing the accelerator.

5. Disable unneeded devices in device manager:
A quick fix that can make XP boot faster is to disable any unused devices in the Windows XP device manager. For example if you have a integrated sound card or video card that you have upgraded, or if you do not use a floppy drive on your system, it pays to disable these devices in device manager.The same goes for extra network cards. Of course, the standard rule of thumb applies here: If you do not know what it is, leave it alone.To disable unneeded devices in device manager:

Right click on ‘my computer’ and select ‘properties.’ From the ‘hardware’ tab, select ‘device manager.’ Expand the various categories to locate unused devices. Right click the devices and select ‘disable.’

6. Disable auto detection for empty IDE slots:
Another quick trick for a faster boot up is to disable the auto detection that Windows XP uses to determine if there are IDE devices present in any of the IDE slots on the motherboard. More specifically, disable this feature on any empty slots to prevent the operating system wasting time and resources checking them.Right click on ‘my computer’ and select ‘properties.’ Go to the ‘hardware’ tab and select ‘device manager’ to open the device management window.Expand ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers’ and highlight the ‘primary IDE channel.’ Right click the highlighted entry and select ‘properties.’ Go to the ‘advanced settings’ tab.

If either IDE slot on the controller is empty, the ‘device type’ dropdown box will be not grayed out. Set it to ‘none’ to disable auto detection of IDE devices on that particular slot.

Repeat the above steps for the ’secondary IDE controller.’

Note that if you wish to add a new IDE device, you will have to reset the ‘device type’ setting to ‘autodetect’ in order for Windows to use the new drive.

7. Reduce wait time after XP boots:
A common performance problem with Windows XP is ’start lag,’ in which the operating system boots up normally, the desktop is visible and usable, but programs will not start, and selecting icons and using the start menu are extremely slow. This can take anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes to clear up, and can make using the operating system extremely frustrating, especially if you are in a hurry after the reboot.This delay is generally caused by Windows XP’s networking services looking for other computers and advertising their functions over the computer’s network connections.

If this problem is driving you nuts, there is a way to reduce or eliminate the delay, though if you are attached to a home network, it will reduce your computer’s functionality on that network.

8. If your computer is not attached to a home network:

Right click on ‘my computer’ and select ‘manage.’
Expand ’services and applications’ and select ’services’ to open the services window.
Highlight the ‘workstation’ service, right click and select ‘properties.’ Set the ’startup type’ dropdown box to ‘disabled.’ Click ‘ok.’

Note that you will need to re-enable the workstation service should you wish to network your PC in the future.

9. If your computer is part of a home network:

Go to ’start\control panel\network and internet connections\network connections.’

Right click your current network connection (should be ‘local area connection’ unless you have more than one network adaptor) and select ‘properties.’

Uncheck the ‘File and Print Sharing’ box and press ‘ok.’

Note that this will disable your computer’s ability to share files and printers over the network, though it should not affect your ability to access such resources on another system.
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