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Services You Can Disable There are quite a few services you can disable from starting automatically. This would be to speed up your boot time and free resources. They are only suggestions so I suggestion you read the description of each one when you run Services and that you turn them off one at a time. Some possibilities are: Alerter Application Management Clipbook Fast UserSwitching Human Interface Devices Indexing Service Messenger Net Logon NetMeeting QOS RSVP Remote Desktop Help Session Manager Remote Registry Routing & Remote Access SSDP Discovery Service Universal Plug and Play Device Host Web Client -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cleaning the Prefetch Directory WindowsXP has a new feature called Prefetch. This keeps a shortcut to recently used programs. However it can fill up with old and obsolete programs. To clean this periodically go to: Star / Run / Prefetch Press Ctrl-A to highlight all the shorcuts Delete them -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not Displaying Logon, Logoff, Startup and Shutdown Status Messages To turn these off: Start Regedit Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system If it is not already there, create a DWORD value named DisableStatusMessages Give it a value of 1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clearing the Page File on Shutdown Click on the Start button Go to the Control Panel Administrative Tools Local Security Policy Local Policies Click on Security Options Right hand menu - right click on "Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile" Select "Enable" Reboot For regedit users..... If you want to clear the page file on each shutdown: Start Regedit Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\ClearPageFileAtShutdown Set the value to 1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No GUI Boot If you don't need to see the XP boot logo, Run MSCONFIG Click on the BOOT.INI tab Check the box for /NOGUIBOOT --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Speeding the Startup of Some CD Burner Programs If you use program other than the native WindowsXP CD Burner software, you might be able to increase the speed that it loads. Go to Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Services Double-click on IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service For the Startup Type, select Disabled Click on the OK button and then close the Services window If you dont You should notice -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting Rid of Unread Email Messages To remove the Unread Email message by user's login names: Start Regedit For a single user: Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail For all users: Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail Create a DWORD key called MessageExpiryDays Give it a value of 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Decreasing Boot Time Microsoft has made available a program to analyze and decrease the time it takes to boot to WindowsXP The program is called BootVis Uncompress the file. Run BOOTVIS.EXE For a starting point, run Trace / Next Boot + Driver Delays This will reboot your computer and provide a benchmark After the reboot, BootVis will take a minute or two to show graphs of your system startup. Note how much time it takes for your system to load (click on the red vertical line) Then run Trace / Optimize System Re-Run the Next Boot + Drive Delays Note how much the time has decreased Mine went from approximately 33 to 25 seconds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Increasing Graphics Performance By default, WindowsXP turns on a lot of shadows, fades, slides etc to menu items. Most simply slow down their display. To turn these off selectively: Right click on the My Computer icon Select Properties Click on the Advanced tab Under Performance, click on the Settings button To turn them all of, select Adjust for best performance My preference is to leave them all off except for Show shadows under mouse pointer and Show window contents while dragging --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Increasing System Performance If you have 512 megs or more of memory, you can increase system performance by having the core system kept in memory. Start Regedit Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive Set the value to be 1 Reboot the computer --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Increasing File System Caching To increase the amount of memory Windows will locked for I/O operations: Start Regedit Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management Edit the key IoPageLockLimit ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Resolving Inability to Add or Remove Programs If a particular user cannot add or remove programs, there might be a simple registry edit neeed. Go to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Uninstall Change the DWORD NoAddRemovePrograms to 0 disable it 4096 - 32megs of memory or less 8192 - 32+ megs of memory 16384 - 64+ megs of memory 32768 - 128+ megs of memory 65536 - 256+ megs of memory