Boost your Windows XP startup speed

In this day and age we see all kinds of new and more and more powerful systems being unveiled or announced almost every day. But not all of us can afford such beasts and we have to make due with what we have. Because of the new applications with their ever-growing hunger for resources, the PC’s of yesterday become outdated and find it hard to even run Windows XP as they did in their prime. Here is a guide to give you a hand.

Before starting, we assume that no upgrades can (or will) be done so the solutions will all be software based.

The most obvious thing to do is run the msconfig utility so that all unwanted programs will be removed. Go to Start – Run and type ‘msconfig’. There, go to the ‘startup’ tab and look at the programs there. Each program that is unticked won’t load the next time you boot up. Be careful not to disable any important software though. My personal recommendation is to look at the icons in the system tray as most programs will have an icon there.

Use a drive defragmenter frequently and after you delete or copy big files. A free application for this task is JkDefrag. Or you can defragment once a week if no intense activity is present.

If the need for resources is high, try the following:
- change the Windows theme to Classic
- remove the desktop wallpaper
- turn off the Automatic Updates
- delete the temporary files

Also, try having the latest drivers installed as to reap the maximum rewards from your components.

Modify some of the services used by Windows. Go to Start – Run and type ‘services.msc’. This will list all the available services and settings. I recommend disabling the following:
Fast User Switching Compatibility
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Network Provisioning Service
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Registry
Secondary Logon (if you use only the Admin account)
SSDP Discovery Service
TCP/IP NetBios Helper

Try installing CCleaner to help you remove various useless files found on your hard drive. It’s free.
For optimal performance, go to Options – Settings and untick all the boxes there then go to Advanced and make sure all boxes except ‘Only delete files in Wndows Temp folders older than 48 hours’ is unticked.

Also, take care of the Windows registry. This is a bit tricky to to without software help (you can damage the Windows installation if you do something wrong) so install RegSupreme (again, free) and configure it by going to Options and select Normal; under Mode select Normal again and make sure that everything is unticked in the Advanced Options. Once a week I think is a good rule of thumb for a scan.