Speed up PC

Virtual Memory & PC Performance

2009-10-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

You must be aware of the role the system memory plays in speeding up computer. My current post deals with how you can overcome the problem of limited RAM resources by using virtual memory.

Virtual memory is a space that can be reserved on the hard disk in a variable amount and it plays the role of an extension in physical RAM. Therefore virtual memory simulates as RAM when your system is falling short of RAM resources.

When this memory can help you?
Almost always... if you have small RAM installed on your system.

Where this memory is helpful?
When computer hangs or freezes frequently it is mainly because of small RAM. Virtual memory solves this problem.

The more amount of hard disk space you allocate for virtual memory, the better will be the PC performance. One important point to note is that the faster your hard disk performs, the better will be the virtual memory. This means that the faster data access speed of hard disk results in better virtual memory performance. Due to this very fact the whole amount of virtual memory should be kept on a single partition of the hard disk rather than multiple partitions. This will help in faster access speed to full virtual memory space.

Quick Guide to Tweak Virtual Memory

Right click My Computer > Properties
In "Advanced" tab on top click "Settings" under "Performance"
Select "Advanced" tab and click "Change" button
Select "No paging file" for D, E, F,... drives one by one, pressing "Set" button each time
Now select drive C and select Custom size then specify same Initial and Maximum value for the amount of space you want to reserve for virtual memory... say 4000 MB =~4 GB
Press "Set" button again and press OK.

Specifying the value subtracts the MBs of space from amount of space available on that drive. You should always make sure to leave at least 1 GB extra space on your system drive that is holding Windows operating system. The more space you allocate for virtual memory the better will be the performance of your PC and the lesser space you allocate the slower will be your PC.

Disk Defragmentation

2009-09-19T23:06:00.000-07:00

As it's an easier thing for you to read some info from adjacent pages of a book rather than to find it from several scattered pages across the book, likewise is the case with your computer.

If your computer is getting the required data from contiguous hard disk locations then it will show faster performance. Whereas if the data is scattered across the disk with free chunks of memory present in between, then it will make your computer slow.

Putting together the fragmented data and coalescing the free chunks of memory is termed as disk defragmentation. Disk defragmentation is a very vital utility for maintaining PC performance. Therefore Microsoft included this utility in windows and it is called Windows Disk Defragmenter. Performing disk defragmentation regularly is a great thing to speed up your PC
because fragmentation of data is one of the most important reasons involved in slowing down the PC with the passage of time. You should perform disk defragmentation with Windows Disk Defragmenter every second or third week in order to keep the PC performance optimized. To access disk defragmenter

Click Start > All Programs >Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

Choose the drive that you want to defragment and press the Defragment button. The defragmentation process will take time to complete, depending on how much your data was fragmented. For faster file access on all drives, fragment all drives one by one.

PC Performance Decline Over Time

2009-09-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

A new windows install always runs the computer smoother and faster. But with the passage of time the PC performance doesn’t remain the same. The factors involved in degrading the PC performance include reduced disk space, fragmentation of windows files and user data all over the disk, registry problems and increasing number of software programs installed on the system. The solution to fix all these windows problems are the windows system utilities. These system utilities include disk defragmenter, disk cleanup tool, file compressor, add / remove redundant windows programs and also different registry cleaners that are available for free.

System utilities are a key area of modern operating system designing. By using these system utilities PC performance becomes nearly as good as that of a PC with a newly installed windows.
Running these system utilities regularly ensures that the PC performance remains smooth. Also you will be able to increase trouble free life of your windows for much longer time.

What do you prefer: Windows Performance or Visual Effects?

2009-08-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

In Windows XP you will find visual effects which make its appearance nice. While these effects give an attractive working environment, they also consume your computer resources since they are merely graphical effects.

The Visual Effects settings in Windows Performance options let you liberate the resources being used by windows free and provide better windows performance when you disable these visual effects. To find visual effects settings:

Right click My Computer icon
Click Properties
Go to Advanced tab and click Settings button under Performance.
In Visual Effects tab choose "Adjust for best performance".

Note: There is just one thing that I don't like about choosing the "Adjust for best performance" option and it's that your desktop icons start appearing strange when you apply this setting. To fix this problem scroll down in the options under "Custom" and mark the second last option checked, i.e. "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop". Now your icons will look normal. Click Apply and OK.

Windows Startup

2009-07-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

Slow startup is one of the most common windows problems faced by many computer users. During windows startup, the startup programs load into the RAM. The more the number of startup programs designated to be loaded at windows startup, the longer it will take your computer to begin responding to you after boot up. Besides this, since the startup programs reside in RAM after they are loaded at windows startup, they occupy your computer resources and make your computer slow.

Startup programs are basically meant for providing the feature of speeding up application startup. This means that those programs which load at windows startup will be opened more quickly when you launch them. Besides this, security software like antivirus and firewalls are also startup programs and they run in the background. Some software updater items are also loaded into RAM at windows startup and keep updating the concerning program in the background, while consuming your network bandwidth, hence slowing down the connection speed as well. Not all startup programs are worth launching at windows startup.

Reducing the number of startup programs not only results in a faster windows startup, it also speeds up PC. Now you might be thinking to remove all your startup programs to attain the fastest boot up on your PC. But here it’s important to note that the security software are the most important programs in your startup list and extremely essential. Therefore the best setting is to keep your security software in startup list and remove all others that are not essential. In this way your PC will attain the fastest speed of windows startup without compromising the computer security.

Quick Guide to Speed Up Your Windows Startup

Click Start > Run
Type msconfig and press OK. System Configuration Utility will be opened
Click Startup tab on top. All startup items will be listed under it
To disallow a program to load at windows startup uncheck it and to allow it to load at windows startup mark it checked
Press OK and restart your computer

In Startup Items list, you must necessarily identify the items that are associated with your security software like antivirus programs and firewall programs and any other essential program like internet connection software or utilities associated with your hardware devices. It is strongly recommended that you allow all these programs to load at windows startup otherwise you will loose functionality of the concerned item or anything that depends on it.

Other programs such as Yahoo Messenger and Live Messenger, Adobe Reader, Microsoft Office and various update programs are recommended to be disallowed to load at windows startup in order to speed up pc and have faster windows startup. To find out about the origin of an item present in your startup list, just Google it. By doing so, you can also discover virus components residing in your startup list if your PC is infected. This is a standard way to detect viruses and trojans that reside in your system memory from the startup time. From here you can disable them from being active at windows startup.

Fix Slow Computer Browsing

2009-07-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

You may be experiencing a little delay in browsing the files on your computer when you open folders. To fix this problem disable the function “Automatically search for network folders and printers”.

This feature searches for shared printers and folders on your network every time you open a folder in windows explorer, thus making computer slow.

This function is useful only if your PC is part of a network that allows you to use a resource such as an online printer or a shared network folder.
If you are not connected to a network that allows you access to a shared folder or printer or you own a portable PC then usually you will not require this service (since either you would be either off the network or you use different networks at different times, in which case you will have dead links of resources in My Network Places, that were previously detected on the network.)

To speed up folder browsing by disabling the subject service, do the following:

Open My Computer. In menu bar on top click Tools > Folder Options. Under Advanced Settings uncheck “Automatically search for network folders and printers”. Press OK.

Speed Up PC by Customizing Windows Services

2009-06-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

You can speed up your PC by disabling redundant windows services.
There are different services running in the background of Windows XP. Many of them are handy for a user in one environment and completely irrelevant for users using XP in another environment. While these services are running in the background of Windows XP, RAM resources are being consumed by each of them whether they are coming into your use or not.

For example, there is a windows service called "Print Spooler" whose job is to queue up the printing tasks that are pending. For a user who has a printer, it is an indispensable windows service. But on the other hand there are users who never need to use a printer with their PC. In their case this windows service is just a useless consumption of RAM. These windows services are set by default so that a standard windows installation never lacks services necessary for the diverse needs of different users who use windows in different environments.

Many windows services are really not useful for majority of common computer users. You can disable many of them very safely to speed up PC.
By disabling one such service, you set your computer's memory resources free, each time. Hence there is more RAM space available for your programs to run smoothly, as a result the PC performance speeds up and the windows startup is also faster. When you customize these services you can see a very major difference in the performance speed of your PC.

Windows Service Customization - Quick Guide to Speed Up PC

Click Start > Run
Type services.msc and press OK. This opens the windows services management window that lists all windows services.
To disable a windows service, double click it in the list. Then in Startup type drop down menu select Disable.

The following is a list of carefully selected windows services that you can safely disable in a common windows user environment. Reverting back to default settings is as easy as 1 2 3. Below I will provide you with a resource that lists the default status of each service, so that you can revert back to the previous configuration if you want.

List of Services that Can be Safely Disabled to Speed Up PC

Application Layer Gateway
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Error Reporting Service
Help and Support
Indexing Service
Logical Disk Manager (Set to Manual)
Messenger
Net Logon
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network DDE
Network Provisioning Service
Portable Media Serial Number Service
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Registry
Removable Storage
RPC Locator
Secondary Logon
Smart Card
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service
Telnet
Uninterruptible Power Supply
WebClient
Windows Time
WMI Performance Adapter

Note: You may not find some of these services listed in your windows service management console due to the difference of services in different Windows Service Packs. To revert back to the default windows service settings, refer to the link given below. It also provides a few-click solution to reset windows services to default status.

For information on removing additional windows services that may not be useful specifically for you (certainly there will be some, since the above windows services are the most carefully sorted out services that can be disabled), I feel appropriate to present you link of a site I've come across where the author has very intelligently presented windows service settings for three different levels of Windows users.

These settings are provided for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 separately. Here is the link that takes you to the settings page for Service Pack 3 users.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Service Configurations

A Windows XP Edition with Optimum Performance

2009-06-15T00:24:00.000-07:00

Speed up your PC with "Windows XP Performance Edition", which makes your computer speed optimum. It comes with all the needless windows services and features already removed from it and that's why it's the Windows XP with optimum performance. It's the same "Windows XP Professional" that is released by Microsoft but some smart person has tweaked it for the most common user environments.

As I will explain in detail in following post that there are redundant services running in the background of Windows XP which needlessly consume computer resources and make computer slow. Besides that some very unwanted things like media files, Windows Movie Maker, NetMeeting, Windows games etc. are also saved on hard disk which don't come in to use by majority of users.

By removing the redundant windows services and files of the original windows install we get a great solution for overcoming the lack of system resources (for those old PCs) and limited hard disk space.
Thus there is no reason for not trying this performance edition of windows; whether you have a slow computer or whether you have a system with abundant hardware resources.

Now if there may be any doubt in your mind about the capabilities of Windows XP Performance Edition, I would like to share how was my experience with it. My friend provided me with Windows XP Performance Edition when I had to install operating system on my PC. So I installed it on my Pentium 3, 1 Ghz, having 256 MB of RAM. This windows install was not only quicker but also the windows files occupied very little space on the hard disk and most importantly it sped up my PC very significantly. I had to install the graphics driver and nothing else extra.

I use an internet connection shared through LAN. There was no problem whatsoever with the networking or internet connection. And last but not the least, this windows install lasted smoothly for 2 years without any problem or significant reduction of computer speed until I bought a new system and had to have a new windows install.

If you have some familiarity with torrent download, then you can easily grab Windows XP Performance Edition by using torrents.