OT: Definitive Guide To Optimizing XP

FTech wrote on 5/16/2007, 7:16 PM

Hello all,

I can safely say I've done some tweaking in the past couple of years on my XP machine. I would like to share some tips and tweaks that do work and the ones that do not. There are tons of tweaks floating around the net that claim to benefit in improving the speed of XP but some of them are false.

Firstly, there is a great guide that explains in great detail about these tweaks.

TWEAKS for Windows XP for Video Editing

Some tweaks offered on this web page you should not do.

#10 Turn Off System Restore: this one is very risky because in case if XP fails, you can safely revert back to a working state. A workaround would be to reduce the "Disk Space To Use" slider under "System Restore" Tab in System Properties and click "Settings".

#20 Disable Windows File Protection: this one is very very risky. DON'T DO IT.

#2 Clean Your Prefetch Folder Out (this is from Windows XP TWEAKS / Optimization for Video Editing Systems – PART II) This one was a HUGE myth from countless websites that preach this tweak. Click here for further explanation

Unload DLLs when closing programs. This registry tweak is NOT even supported in XP therefore is does not work.

Additional sources for the tweaks that do not work are found here. Click here for XP Myths

There is tons to read but well worth it. Furthermore one Windows XP setting to do that will give you (hopefully) trouble free video capture via IEEE 1394 is to disable it under Device Manager. This only disables the networking part of the device. You'ill still be able to capture video. This prevents XP from polling the IEEE 1394 constantly for looking for a network.

Cheers

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/16/2007, 8:17 PM

Why shouldn't I do #10 or 20? Turning off system restore is no different then any pre-XP os & if it's a big problem (only kind I've had) that won't be fixed by simply uninstalling/reinstalling/manually deleting via linux, etc. then sys-restore won't help. Same with protecting windows files.

FTech wrote on 5/17/2007, 2:45 PM

System Restore is just a safety measure which enables XP to revert to a saved working state. If you install lots of programs this can come in handy. If a piece of software makes XP wonky, you have System Restore to help you. There are tons of myths that preach to disable System Restore just to improve performance. To quote from XP Myths

[QUOTE]Myth - "Disabling System Restore improves performance."

Reality - "System Restore does not cause any noticeable performance impact when monitoring your computer. The creation of a Restore point also is a very fast process and usually takes only a few seconds. Scheduled System Checkpoints (every 24 hours by default) are created only at system idle time to avoid interfering with a computer during use." [/QUOTE]

Windows File Protection feature is a "hidden" service that runs constantly. It exists to protect the Windows system files from being modified, whether accidentally or otherwise. Another important reason for having this service running is Trojan/viruses that try to overwrite system files to then pass on information on your machine. If this happens windows file protection will kick in. Plus if you remember the days of earlier Windows OS's the so-called "DLL Hell" where programs overwrite existing DLL's in the system folder. The most common and troublesome problem was overwriting a working system DLL with a version causing some applications to fail. If one want to disable this feature (using the registry and using a kernel debugger) just to gain some system performance, go right ahead :)

Cheers