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19 Ways To Speed Up Windows XP

Started by sbspalding · 11 months ago

If you are lucky enough to be running Windows XP instead of Vista, you still might be wondering if there are any ways to squeeze a little extra performance out of your system. Other than hardware upgrade, there are several software tweaks you can make that will help your computer run more smoothly. Here are [...]




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16 comments

  • Anonymous

    11 months ago

    forgot to include "remove old system restore" entries.
    reply
  • Hostmonster Review

    11 months ago

    well you seriously don't know what a big favor you have done to me and many other people out there too..i really needed this tips..thanks
    reply
  • Polina

    11 months ago

    I do! I do have Win XP that sometimes is working slow as hell (I know I have too small memory and too slow processor for all the things I want working on my PC, but still). Thank you for the tips!!!!
    reply
  • Claire

    11 months ago

    This is really good. Thanks for this info! Vista is a terrible OS.
    reply
  • Yoohoo

    11 months ago

    Registry cleaners will do more harm then good. People take for granted that the software must know what its doing but I've seen a couple of programs that will tell the user "oh look we found something, not going to tell you what it is or what it does or where its located but you should delete it 'cause it'll speed up your computer uh-huh so just go ahead and click the OK " and the next thing you know the computer is righteously fubar'd. If you don't know what a registry is just leave it alone. Please. A lot of these are obvious, some don't work and running disk cleaner or defragging isn't going to make noticeable improvements for the average user and is really only helpful if done maybe twice a year. Ever meet users who insist on defragging weekly in a futile attempt to keep system performance up? If you want to replace your drive inside of 18 months be my guest.
    reply
  • sbspalding

    11 months ago

    Defragging isn't all it is cracked up to be, that's why I didn't mention it. It's great if you haven't run one in a year or so, but it's not the magic performance bullet.

    Registry cleaners are only bad if you hit delete without checking the log. I like C Cleaner because it shows you every single thing it will delete before deleting it. I spend a ton of time making sure the keys it's found are associated with programs and services that just failed to clean up after themselves. If you happen to do the shotgun approach you are setting yourself up for some really bad times.

    Disk cleaners will recover a lot of space, if you do it once every 6 months or so. Will it supercharge your computer? Sources say unlikely, however, if you are looking for non-hardware approaches to getting a few extra cycles it couldn't hurt.

    Great points though. To sum it up, if you really want to see noticeably improvements, get better hardware. All of these will "help" but they won't be night and day changes.
    reply
  • The SongStation

    11 months ago

    I agree. Defragging in my opinion, is overrated. It may work many years ago but with today's size of hard disks available. I'd say it might not be as effective as it was.
    reply
  • Computer Guy

    10 months ago

    Great tips. This should help any normal computer user speed up their computer.
    reply
  • Free Drivers

    10 months ago

    speed up windows by removing the startup programs will benefit also.
    reply
  • Custom web applications/design

    7 months ago

    Better not use registry cleaners. They tend do make a bigger mess then the one they clean. Such software can break existing applications in very subtle ways. You are not going to why they don't work or give unexpected errors, you will even blame the application developer..

    Best way to speed XP is defrag and to do clean reinstall once in a while. And whatever you do, don't upgrade to Vista. The best way to speed up Vista is to downgrade to XP :))
    reply
  • Fashion Shop

    6 months ago

    Using msconfig to disable startup components that are normally not in use, also help to boost the speed.
    reply
  • Driver

    5 months ago

    removing some startup programs from registry will also the job
    reply
  • Andrew

    4 weeks ago

    Cleaning the prefetch folder is a myth, the folder is self cleaning by Windows. Cleaning it will REDUCE performance.

    http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html
    reply
  • Registry Cleaner Download

    2 weeks ago

    Great Tips! Using CCcleaner will definitely help the PC owner to boost it's speed. I would not go with manual registry cleaning.
    reply
  • data recovery

    3 days ago

    I do have Win XP that sometimes is working slow as hell
    reply
  • Free Registry Cleaner

    2 days ago

    Instead of CCcleaner, I would recommend other registry repair softwares like Regsitry Mechanic. Though CC is free to use, it suffers from a lot of disadvantages. Similarly, real time protection is not provided in such freeware applications.
    reply

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