COMPUTER TIPS

Top 10 Easy Tips To Speed Up Windows XP

Make Your Computer Faster !

1. Disable The Windows Indexing Service

To Disable Indexing:

• Click Start -> Settings -> Control Panel
• Double-click the "Add or Remove Programs" icon
• Along the left side, click "Add/Remove Windows Components"
• Un-check the "Indexing Services" box
• Click Next and follow the instructions
• You may need to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect

Remove the existing indexing

If you previously had the Indexing Services box checked, you can also remove the indexing that already exists to free up a little hard drive space:

• In Windows Explorer, click on "My Computer"
• Right click the entry for your hard drive and select "Properties"
• At the bottom of the Properties screen, un-check the "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching"
• Click OK
• Depending on how many files are on your computer, this can take a while as Windows un-indexes all of your files...

2. Optimize Windows Display Settings

Optimize Windows Display Settings

To change display settings:

• Right click on My Computer and select "Properties"
• Select the "Advanced" tab at the top right
• Under "Performance" click the "Settings" button
• Un-check to options you want to disable

Alternately, you can select the "Adjust for best performance" option at the top of the screen to speed up your computer.

3. Optimize Your Virtual Memory Pagefile Size

Optimize Your Virtual Memory Pagefile Size

To set the pagefile size to a fixed amount:

• Right click My Computer and select "Properties" - at the bottom of the screen, note the amount of physical RAM on your computer
• Select the "Advanced" tab at the top right
• Under "Performance", click the "Settings" button
• Choose the "Advanced" tab of the top
• At the bottom, under "Virtual Memory", click the "Change" button
• Click on your main hard drive at the top
• In the middle of the screen, select the "Custom size" button and enter a number that is 1.5 to 2 times the amount of physical RAM in both the "Initial size" and "Maximum Size" boxes
• Click OK

4. Run Disk Cleanup

Over time, Windows XP will collect a lot of data in files that are no longer being used. By running the Disk Cleanup tool, you can safely choose which of these files to delete, freeing up resources on your computer:

Run Disk Cleanup

To run Disk Cleanup:

• In Windows Explorer, click on "My Computer"
• Right click the entry for your hard drive and select "Properties"
• Next to the graphic showing your disk space usage, click the "Disk Cleanup" button
• After a few minutes, Windows XP will show a dialog box of files you can safely delete, along with an explanation of what type of files they are
• Read the explanations for each suggestion and delete the ones you no longer need

5. Remove Your Desktop Wallpaper

Remove Your Desktop Wallpaper

To remove the desktop wallpaper:

• Minimize all open windows and right click any empty space on the desktop
• Select "Properties"
• Click the "Desktop" tab at the top
• Scroll all the way up to the top of the Background list and select "None"
• Choose a color from the drop-down box on the right
• Click OK

6. Disable Automatic Network Search In Windows Explorer

Disable Automatic Network Search In Windows Explorer

To disable it:

• Open "My Computer"
• Go to the "Tools" menu at the top of the screen
• Click "Folder Options..."
• Under the "View" tab, un-check the box that says "Automatically search for network folders and printers"
• Click OK
• You may need to reboot your computer for the change to take effect

7. Enable DMA On All Drives

Enable DMA On All Drives

To enable DMA:

• Right click "My Computer"
• Select the "Hardware" tab at the top right
• Click the "Device Manager" button at the top
• Double-click the "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" entry
• Double click "Primary IDE Channel"
• Under the "Advanced Settings" tab, select "DMA if available" under Transfer Mode
• Repeat for each Device listed
• Click OK
• Double click "Secondary IDE Channel" and repeat the steps above

8. Disable Performance Statistics Gathering

Disable Performance Statistics Gathering

• Go the folder where you installed the tool (by default, C:/Program Files/Resource Kit) and doucle-click the file "exctrlst.exe"
• One by one, highlight each entry in the list and un-check the "Performance Counters Enabled" box
• Once all the entries have been un-checked, click "Refresh" at the top and make sure each is still un-checked
• Close the tool
• You may have to reboot for the changes to take effect

9. Run Microsoft's Free Online OneCare Scan Tool

Microsoft offers a free, all-in-one virus, spyware and performance checker at http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm
Firefox users should note that this tool is designed as an ActiveX control for Internet Explorer and won't run in Firefox. You should open IE and run this tool from there.

Run Microsoft's Free Online OneCare Scan Tool

Scroll down and select the blue "Full Service Scan" button.
You will need to install the ActiveX control - click the yellow bar at the top of the screen and follow the prompts.
Once the tool is installed and running, you can do a Complete Scan or Quick Scan.
If you already have a virus and/or spyware software on your computer, you can choose the "Customize..." option under the Complete Scan and un-check the virus and/or spyware scan, each of which can take several hours to run if you have a lot of files on your computer.

The tool will run for a while, depending on which options you choose. When it's done, you will get a report of any problems it found and options to repair them. The tool checks for viruses, spyware, disk fragmentation, unneeded files, registry entries that are no longer in use and open network ports that may make your computer vulnerable to hackers and viruses.

10. Install Service Pack 3 to Optimize Windows XP

If you haven't already, you can install Service Pack 3 to speed up your computer. Many users report up to a 10% increase in performance just by doing this one step! You can find all the details about the Service Pack at Microsoft's website.

9 Essential Tips To Speed Up Windows 7

1. Using minimal Visual Effects

Disabling certain (or all) visual effects can definitely enhance performance. To disable visual effects, do the following:

1. Press Windows key and while holding it down, press Pause/Break key.
2. In the window that appears, click on Advanced system settings in the left side pane.
3. In the Advanced tab, under Performance Section, click on Settings
4. In the Performance Options window (refer figure) that appears, under Visual Effects tab, disable the options that you do not need. Or simply selecting ‘Adjust for best performance‘ will disable all options.
5. After disabling the option, click Apply and then OK.

Doing the above might make the screen less attractive. But, the performance will surely get a boost.

2. Using minimal Sound Effects

For disabling sound effects, do the following:

1. Click Start. In the search box type mmsys.cpl and press Enter
2. In the Sound window (refer figure) that appears click on Sounds tab
3. Set the Sounds scheme to ‘No Sounds‘
4. You could set only the essential sounds if needed in the Program Events, by selecting the specific event and then choosing the sound from the Sounds drop-down menu below.
5. You can as well disable the "Play Windows Startup sound" option.
6. After the settings are done, click Apply and OK.

Software and Services related

1. Run a trusted Anti-Virus program

Ensure that you have a good anti-virus software loaded on your laptop/computer. This will ensure that no malware or spyware gets planted in your system. Without such protection software, there are chances of third party malware and virus being installed or stored on your system, causing harmful effects and also eating up precious space.

2. Install only essential software

Ensure that you install only that software which you need. If you install any trial software and find out that you don’t really need it, uninstall and delete it immediately. Else, they might hog precious disk space, RAM and processor cycles. If you’ve installed a software, which you are unable to get rid of, and which is hampering the normal functioning of your laptop, then you might have to format your hard drive. Be aware that formatting your hard drive might wipe out all your data. Therefore it is best you take a back-up before going ahead with formatting.

3. Disable or make unneeded services Manual

Some processes and services, which might not really be necessary, are by default made to start automatically once the system starts up. They will consume RAM as well as the processor’s attention, slowing down other important tasks. It is best to disable them. For this, do the following:

1. Click Start. In the search box type services.msc and press Enter
2. Go to Services & Applications > Services. You’ll see the Services window (refer figure).
3. Right-click on a service that you wish to set to manual or disable. If the service is already started, Stop it first.
4. Once the service is stopped, again right-click on it and select Properties.
5. In the Startup type, you can either set the service to Manual, if you would be using it later, or Disable it, if not needed.
6. Once done, you can close the window.

4. Disabling Unwanted Start-up programs to speed up System Start-up

Some programs are set to start during system start-up. These might slow down the start-up process. Programs that are not really needed during start-up can be disabled. For this, do the following:

1. Click Start. In the search box type msconfig and press Enter.
2. In the System Configuration window (refer figure), go to Startup.
3. Uncheck the box next to those processes that are not important for start-up. This will disable them.
4. Once you’ve disabled the processes, click Apply and OK.

Hard Drive related

1. Clean up the hard drive

Remove unwanted files, like temp files, downloaded program files, recycle bin, etc. You could use Disk Cleanup option to do this, as follows:

1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup
2. The system will first calculate how much space can be freed up this way. In the Disk Cleanup window (refer figure) that appears, select the files in that need to be deleted under the Files to delete list.
3. For deleting ‘System Restore‘ and ‘Shadow copy‘ files, click "Clean up system files" and then on "More Options" tab
4. Finally click OK. You’ll be prompted again before the deletion. Click Yes.

2. Enable Write caching on device

This is an option which allows the OS to flush changed data to the hard disk when the system is idle, so that performance is not affected when in use. For enabling this, do the following:

1. Press Windows key and while holding it down, press Pause/Break key.
2. In the window that appears, click on Device Manager in the left hand pane.
3. In the next window that appears, expand Disk drives.
4. The drop-down list will show the hard drive. Right-click on it and select Properties.
5. Click the Policies tab in the Device Properties window (refer figure).
6. Check the box next to "Enable write caching on the device"
7. You can as well check the box next to "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device" and then click OK.

Note: However, there is one disadvantage in enabling these options – if there is a power outage or a system crash, data might be lost or corrupted. If you have a secondary power supply, like a UPS, you could go ahead with checking these options.

3. Perform Disk Defragmentation

When there is no sufficient space to store in a hard drive, the OS splits the file into parts and stores it in different areas on the hard drive. Defragmenting allows all these parts to be stored in contiguous memory locations. For defragmenting disk do the following:

1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter
2. In the window (refer figure) that appears, click on the drive that you want to defragment and then click Analyze disk.
3. This will estimate the time required for the process. When done click on Defragment disk.
4. Once done you can either View Report or click Close.

These pretty much sum up the small things that you can do, to make a big difference to your Windows 7′s performance. If you have some personal tips you’ve done yourself to improve the performances, we’d like to hear from you.