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10 things to make Windows XP Professional run better
In XP, it's also a good idea to make a "Restore Point"
(click Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance/System Restore)
and select "Create a restore point" before each and every
change. System Restore can roll back many minor system changes
without requiring you to restore your full backup.
Also, it makes no sense to try to tune and tweak an operating
system that's fundamentally incomplete or broken. So, before you
start changing anything, right click on My Computer and select
Properties/Hardware/Device Manager to ensure all your hardware
is set up and running properly. In addition, use Windows Update
to download and install all current patches and driver updates.
1) Tune XP's Visual Performance
Depending on how you set it up, XP may have reserved a
substantial amount of your CPU horsepower for things like
animating various desktop elements, placing shadows under menus
and cursors, and rounding the upper corners of open windows. In
the aggregate, these visual effects can slow down screen drawing
operations significantly. Also, XP may have selected a "color
depth" for your video system in excess of what you really need;
this, too, can slow down screen operations.
To adjust the color depth, right click anywhere on an empty
portion of your desktop and select Properties/Settings. For most
normal business users, the Color Quality setting should be set
to Medium (16 bit). Higher settings do matter in photo/video
editing and similar applications, but for mundane things like
Web browsing, E mail, and word processing, the Medium setting is
fully adequate, and it's faster.
To adjust XP's desktop animations and visual effects, right
click on My Computer and select Properties/Advanced/Performance
Settings. You can choose to activate/deactivate individual items
or use the general "best performance/best appearance" buttons.
When you've made a change, click Apply, and you'll see the
effects almost immediately. (By the way: Selecting Best
Performance makes your desktop look very much like the classic
desktop in Win98/Win2K.) Experiment until you've found the mix
of speed and visual effects that works best for you.
2) Improve XP's Folder Views
Windows XP's default folder view, with its giant icons, makes me
feel as though I'm staring at a coloring book instead of a
business computer. But you can easily change the folder view to
something more restrained, space efficient, and useful.
Open My Documents. In the View menu, select Status Bar, List,
and Arrange Icons by Name. Next, right click on an empty spot in
the My Documents toolbar and select Customize. Choose any of the
Available Toolbar Buttons you wish and click Add. (I select the
Undo, Delete, Cut, Copy, and Paste buttons.) Exit the dialog.
Now click to the Tools menu and select Folder Options. Under the
View tab, tell XP to show you the full path, to show hidden and
system files, not to hide any file extensions, and not to hide
protected folders plus any other settings you want. When you
have the folder options set the way you desire, click the "Apply
to all folders" button at the top of the dialog. This adjusts
all windows opened by Explorer, so they'll inherit the visual
choices you made for this one window.
3) Customize the Taskbar
Right click on an empty spot in the Task Bar (the bar next to
the Start button). Uncheck Lock the Taskbar. This lets you
resize various portions of the taskbar the way you want them.
Now, explore the other Taskbar settings to see if any will work
for you. One I always select is Toolbars/Desktop. I place the
new Desktop toolbar far to the right on the Taskbar, over by the
clock area. Whenever I want access to something on the Desktop
that's covered with open windows, I can use this new Desktop
toolbar as a shortcut to get to the item on the Desktop without
having to close or move any open window.
4) Just Say "No" To Phoning Home
By default, XP wants to contact the Microsoft servers to auto
search for patches, downloads, and updates. It also wants to
send Microsoft information about any crashes you experience. The
former can be an annoyance if the auto update cycle kicks in at
an inopportune time. The latter is a potential security hole,
because the crash reporting information includes a mini dump of
XP's memory contents; it can include snippets of open documents,
passwords you've recently typed, and so on.
You can turn off both behaviors by right clicking on My
Computer, selecting Properties, and first choosing the Automatic
Updates tab. Select either Turn Off or, minimally, Notify me.
Now select the Advanced tab and click on Error Reporting. Check
"Disable error reporting," but leave "notify me when critical
errors occur" checked.
5) Control Your Trash
By default, both the Recycle Bin and Internet Explorer's Cache
want to consume ridiculous amounts of your hard drive space.
Right click on the Recycle Bin, select Properties, and on the
Global tab, decide how much space you want the Recycle Bin to
consume, either for all drives in your system, or on a per drive
basis. (It's a percentage of the total space. I adjust the
slider way to the left, so I'm using "only" a few hundred megs
of space for trash.)
Similarly, open Internet Explorer, and select Tools/Internet
Options. Under Temporary Internet Files, click the Settings
button and select a reasonable size for this cache area.
Generally speaking, if you have a fast connection, 5 Mbytes to
10 Mbytes is adequate; 25 Mbytes or so is usually enough with a
slower dial up connection.
6) Rein In System Restore
Like the items in No. 5, above, System Restore is an incredible
space hog. It might be worth it, if System Restore were a truly
complete and foolproof form of backup, but it's not. At best,
System Restore can and will get the core operating system
running again after a bad crash, but it doesn't return all files
to the pre trouble state, and it can't remove all traces of a
program that went bad. As a result, System Restore's usefulness
is limited, and so should be its appetite for disk space.
Right click on My Computer, select Properties, and select the
System Restore tab. Select your main drive (usually C:), click
Settings, and move the slider to reserve a reasonable amount of
disk space. With a good regimen of daily backups, you can even
move the slider all the way to the left. (I do.)
If you have more than one drive, you may wish to turn off System
Restore entirely for non system drives. There's little, if any,
benefit to be gained by having them monitored. And if you're
really religious about making a full backup before you alter
your system or install new software, you may wish to completely
turn off System Restore for all drives.
7) Improve XP's Virtual Memory Settings
On its own, Windows places your "swapfile" or "paging file" (a
portion of your hard drive that's used as a kind of pseudo RAM)
on your C: drive, and sets it up so it can grow and shrink as
needed. However, you may be able to do better. For example, if
you have more than one physical disk in your system, you may get
better performance from either placing the swapfile on the
lesser used disk (assuming it's the same speed as the primary
disk) or by splitting the swapfile across two disks. You also
may see modest improvements in responsiveness if you set the
swapfile to a fixed size, so Windows won't waste time growing
and shrinking the file on demand.
Swapfile management has been somewhat of a black art in previous
versions of Windows, but the XP Help System actually has good
information on the subject (a first for Windows!). Select Help
And Support from the Start menu, and do a search for "virtual
memory." Be sure to check out the "related topics" delivered by
the search for additional good information.
8) Control XP's Hidden Devices
For reasons known only to the programmers in Redmond, XP may
deliberately hide certain system devices from you. While this
might make a kind of sense in, say, XP Home edition, these
devices remain hidden even in the Professional edition.
For example, if you're used to Windows 98's networking applet,
you may be surprised by how clean and uncluttered XP's
networking applet is. But XP may simply be hiding lots of
networking elements from you. To see if this is the case, right
click on My Computer, select Properties, Hardware, and Device
Manager. In Device Manager, select View and Show Hidden Devices.
Depending on how XP was set up, you may find a number of
networking devices "Miniports" that the Networking applet didn't
display. In my case, I found unnecessary PPOE, PPTP, L2TP, and
Dial Out elements. I disabled all these unneeded elements,
leaving only the IP miniport enabled, and thus restored some
sense of control over my networking setup. Depending on how your
system is set up, you may find other hidden devices, or no
others. It varies hugely. But at least now you'll know if XP is
hiding things from you.
9) Take The Brakes Off Your Network Settings
XP's default network settings for Maximum Transmission Unit,
Receive Window, and such, may or may not be ideal for your
circumstances. The only way to know is to take a close look: For
example, DSL Reports and SpeedGuide have excellent free
information, online tests, and even one click tweaks that can
automatically optimize all or some of XP's internal plumbing for
high speed connectivity. DSL Reports also offers a free, simple
network tweaking tool called DrTCP that lets you instantly and
easily adjust a variety of parameters; this tool makes iterative
testing a snap, as you experiment to find the best settings for
your particular setup.
(Incidentally, when WinXP specific solutions aren't offered, use
those for Windows 2000; that's the closest match for XP.)
10) Lock The Door
XP has a built in desktop firewall, but it's turned off by
default. To turn it on: Right click on My Network Places,
Properties, right click on your connection (e.g. Local Area
Connection), select Properties again, then Advanced, and then
click the box for Protect My Computer. But note that the built
in firewall is very basic, as the free LeakTest tool will
demonstrate for you. A third party firewall (such as ZoneAlarm
will do a much better job than XP's built in firewall. |