Speeding up your pc

Noticed a number of entries lately regarding pc's 'going slow' so i thought i'd type the below.

DEFRAG YOUR HARD DRIVE:
As you'll see if you've ever done this windows will usually tell you not to bother, but theres reasons behind that:
-If you're not using a large percentage of the available capacity.
- If there's only a certain percentage of the files fragmented.

But it's worth doing as any pc is going to work faster if the data contained on the harddrive for a particular program you want to use is all in one place as it means the harddrive only has to 'seekout' the data once.

If it's fragmented it'll seek then find the initial bootup (.exe) file, then have to go searching for the next part and so on.

You can do this yourself manually, say once a week by:
-clicking 'start'
-clicking 'control panel'
-clicking 'performance and maintenance'
-clicking 'rearrange items on your hard disk to make programs run faster'
-then click 'defragment'

MOVE YOUR PAGE FILE:
Because XP is very resource hungry (ram in this instance) built into windows is a facility called a pagefile. This is basically where windows allocates space on your harddrive as ram to use as and when (even you 2gb ram users out there would be surprised how often the pagefile is used).

Now the pagefile is automatically allocated from the primary hard drive (C), but as these can become fragmented it can also slow the pagefile down because (as above) harddrives read sequential data faster than bits here and bits there.

It's a good idea to move your primary pagefile to a spare installed hdd if you have one as this will be used less. (But it might be an idea to have a smaller, secondary pagefile on the C: drive just incase the other harddrive develops a fault)
Also, because windows manages the pagefile automatically it can increase and decrease in size as and when which can slow things down.

So i would also recommend manually selecting the largest pagefile size (just over 3000mb) so the slow-downs are more seldom. But only if you have the room to spare on your harddrive.

To amend/move/create a pagefile:
-Click 'start;
-click 'control panel'
-click 'performance and maintenance'
-click 'system'
-click the 'advanced' tab
-Near the top of this tab, where it says 'performance' click 'settings'
-click on this page's 'advanced' tab
-Near the bottom of this tab you'll see 'virtual memory' click 'change' and away you go.

MSCONFIG:
If you bought your pc from PC World etc then you're more than likely going to have a load of useless programs (that you hardly use) running in the background along with windows. And do they tie up resources.

When you first boot into windows, DONT open anything else up and:
-Click 'start'
-Click 'run'
-Type "msconfig"
-Click 'ok'

You'll now see a load of tabs appear: General, SYSTEM.INI, BOOT.INI etc
Stay on the 'General' tab

-Select 'Diagnostic startup'
-Click 'Apply'
-Click 'ok'

Then restart your pc and see if it makes any difference. If it doesnt then just start the above instructions again but when in the 'General' tab select 'Normal startup' and reboot and your system will be back to how it was before running the diagnostic startup.

What the 'Diagnostic startup' does is just allows Windows processes to run. If you run this and you see a quicker boot into windows and see your other applications run quicker what you can then do is:

-Go back into the msconfig tabs (using the instructions above)
-click on the 'services' tab
-then 'tick' the box stating "Hide all Microsoft services"
(This will stop you inadvertantly stopping any process windows needs)

Anything thats left is more than likely just there to speed up '3rd party' applications such as iTunes or any sponsored-ads that the manufacturer has pre-loaded on your system.

Don't worry about breaking anything because if you do stop a process and your pc goes a tad funny you can always repeat the steps above and re-enable the process.

There are other things you can do (manually select ram-timings, make windows detect your cpu's second core, shutdown motherboard ports in the bios etc) but as the majority of people questionning are 'newbies' i'm not going to go into them unless asked as they are a bit more difficult to accomplish.

Thats it, hope it's helpful. :D

Also don`t forget to uprgrade your memory.

That's a good read, the selective startup really does work a treat.

Also memory upgrades are by far the cheapest, easiest and most beneficial way to boost your system.

Glad it was helpful.

I use SmartDefrag to defrag my pc. It works wonders. I also use Advanced WindowsCare V2 Personal to clean up any problems that show up. :)

hi i have just read through that and i have just sped my computer up quite nicley now, but i am curious about the whole make windows detect your cpu's second core, buisness any chance on a little info on this? i thought windows would have done this automatically??

Yep check this post

dont forget registry clearner use ccleaner and some registry hacks will speed it up also i have a shutdown scrit that deletes somethin or other to increase startup speed go to TweakXP

Hi
I am new here.
I messed up my PC a few days ago and have been doing serveral destructive reinstalls to get it working, without much success. I remove norton first (comes within compaq s/w) do the windows updates, load KIS and other programs. after serveral reboots my CD-ROMs stop auto loading, so I go into registry and change allocateallcdrom to 0 from 1 (this makes they auto load again). I have used registry mechnic or cccleaner and also perfectdisk8. Now perfectdisk8 can move metadata fragments, when I first scan disk it shows 100's or fragments and asks to do offline defrag (unmount drive) then it comes back and says the next time again and again, in the end support said stop windows restore and that worked. But either after cccleaner of using perfectdisk8 I few reboots later I loose my CD-ROM's, they have power but not displayed in my computer. If I do another destructive re install they are back. This time I have NOT loaded registry mechnic or cccleaner or perfectdisk and so far the problem has not come back, I wish I knew which of these programs is messing up by windows, when I find the cdrom in hardware, it says the driver is missing or corrupted.

I have been using perfectdisk8 for 6 months and registry mechanic for 1 year, either its a update or something
regards

krishan

why not just reinstall windiws - it get rid of all the crap and is heaps faster just backup your files that you want to keep or just repair windows.

its eaiser totry and fix it without reformating

you don't have to reformat to keep your data / files.

Hi Alex

I find your 'stickies' very helpful thankyou! However with regards to moving the Page File. I have carried this out but not sure if I got it right.

I have created a custom size pagefile in my 'D' backup drive of 3000 mb and reduce the 'C' drive file size to 1000 mb.

Your instructions didn't clarify if I needed to create/change or move any folders into either of the drives. Would this be done automatically by Windows when creating the memory spacing? Will windows automatically detect the D drive setting and use that? Or will it default to the C Drive pagefile size?

I would appreciate your advice if this action is correct.

Geo

For a detailed list of the services running on your pc google "black viper". He has comprehensive lists of which services you can safely disable within xp and vista. Be careful though!

You shouldn't really use registry cleaners unless you are absolutely sure you know what you are deleting.

You can also check for disk errors by running CHKDSK in "SAFE MODE" or from the Recovery Console.

For more tips on improving performance -- read the following:

• Restore Your Computer's Performance with Windows XP

• XP Performance Tweaks

• Performance Boost for XP

Regards Jason