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Microsoft released it’s latest version of Windows – Vista recently. But IT professionals criticized Vista in many ways. Some of them even setup BadVista.Org website.

Anyways, this post isn’t about Vista, it’s about XP. Let’s take a look how we can speed up working XP machine by tweaking the OS and settings.

1. The default theme and visual effects that XP has, uses more memory then the standard classic theme. So by right clicking My Computer on the desktop, clicking Properties, Advanced tab and going for Performance \ Settings, pick Adjust for best Performance. You can also increase the Paging file size. This can be done by selecting Advanced tab. You can set the Paging file size somewhere between 512MB and 1GB depending on your RAM installed.

2. Access and browse files faster. Make the default view List or Details by opening My Computer and in View select List or Details.

Open My Computer, go to Tools\ Folder Options\ View uncheck “Automatically search for network folders and printers.”, apply the default view type by clicking Apply to All Folders.

3. Make sure your Windows uses NTFS file system.

4. Empty Windows prefetch folder, you can delete the contents of %systemroot%\prefetch periodically once in a month or so.

5. Do a disk clean up once in a month or so.

6. Remove the unnecessary start up services, click Start\Run type MSCONFIG click OK, in StartUp tab remove the unwanted services.

7. Update Windows periodically, follow the announcements from Microsoft.

8. Empty Temp folders, installation folders in C:\Windows

9. Using regedit open
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\
CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\
MemoryManagement\PrefetchParameters

On the EnablePrefetcher value, change the setting from 3 to 5.

Basically, there are other ways to make your Windows run, boot and shutdown faster. This is just a compilation of my own experience.

The best tip is to switch to Mac OS or Linux!