Desktop

Try these articles


http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=304

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/category06

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,,5155,00.asp

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1590

You may also want to check the titles

"Windows XP Pro - The Missing Manual" and "Windows XP Annoyances" both from O'Reilly Press

Speed it up doing what? Your love of brevity bites.

Oh, well. More memory if you have less than 512mb, for web surfing, gaming, many processes running and for multimedia. Reduce the number of background apps starting up if you don't need them all the time. Make sure you have a large enough pagefile, or virtual memory set aside on the disk.

Defrag, defrag, defrag. HDD should be of ample size for what you are storing on it. Use an ATA133 or better. SATA is faster. Ensure system partition is large enough to allow for windows files, install SP2. Don't compress files or folders.

If you can upgrade the processor, use the highest speed your budget and motherboard allow.

Ad nauseum. Now you're going to tell me you want to speed up your dialup connection, right?

Fill your mobo with as much ram as it can hold.

Hi

As well as the suggestions above, if you are trying to speed up the machine for game play then you will need to increase your RAM to at least 512MB and also get a graphics card with at least 128MB.

Essentially, the more RAM you place in your machine, the happier it will be.

Good luck

Go to your desktop properties. Disable the pretty effects like "show contents while dragging", etc. Taskbar properties can be reverted to classic look. Check blackviper.com for services and what you need them for...some can be disabled.

Run Adware from Lavasoft
Run Spybot S&amp
Empty your temp and temporary internet folders
Make sure you have the latest patches
Repeating above add more ram
defrag the drive, even if defrag says it does not need it.

run msconfig.exe and disable all startup items
it works
find it
bye.....
mak
:-)

I'm assuming want to speed up XP by software tweaks rather than upgrading hardware. Heres some suggestions,

Make sure you have all the latest drivers/patches.

Defragment regularly.

Move the swap file to another PHYSICAL drive and set to a static size.

Convert the filesystem to NTFS.

Turn off all UI effects and lower the colour depth and resolution to a level appropriate for your needs. Remove desktop wallpaper.

Turn off any unwanted services.

Clear the prefetch folder periodically.

Remove any unwanted startup programs from startup folder and registry.