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Rev up your Windows Performance
Many of our clients use Windows XP. Most machines have been updated to Service Pack 2 by now. This combination places all sorts of additional workload on your hardware, so we thought we might talk about some things you can do to restore performance lost to this resource hungry operating system.
We will be discussing methods to get the most out of your PC hardware when it’s running Windows XP. Windows XP is the current desktop operating system from Microsoft and it’s recently announced replacement product, Windows Vista, will not be released until 2007 at present indications.
A simple hardware adjustment
A default installation of Windows XP, straight out of the box, is not optimised to run on your specific PC hardware or to undertake the tasks you might expect it to perform. Those of you running PCs with the minimum specifications will notice that performance is extremely sluggish compared to a better endowed, newer PC.
The single biggest cause of a newly installed Windows XP PC running slowly is a lack of RAM. RAM is an easy component to upgrade and, depending on your hardware, can be very cost effective. Access to freely available RAM closely effects how many programs you can run simultaneously on a single machine.
Before Service Pack 2 (SP2) was released for Windows XP, 256 Mb of RAM was acceptable for normal workstations. Once SP2 is installed, anyone with 256Mb of RAM or less will notice a significant reduction in performance of their PC. Whilst Service Pack 2 is strongly recommended to resolve many security issues, it can really slow down an older, under-configured PC.
A practical real world minimum specification for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 is
• 800Mhz processor or higher
• 512 megabytes of RAM or higher.
Some software adjustments
The following tweaks to your Windows XP installation will improve the general performance of your workstation. If your PC is new and has plenty of memory (RAM), you will notice less improvement from implementing these changes. As some of these changes can effect the functionality of your PC, it is suggested you try them one at a time and re-enable the feature or revert to the old setting if you miss or need the functionality or something stops working.
• Themes - All those pretty graphics and automated windows openings take system resources to run. Removing some of the sparkle from your desktop will make it look more utilitarian but run faster.
• Background picture - Whilst it’s nice to have a personalised picture behind your icons, a large file can slow your PC down. The larger (in bytes) the picture file, the slower the PC will run.
• Services - Programs automatically started by Windows that run in the background of your PC hog resources. Whilst many are crucial, some can be disabled. Tailor the services running to your PC’s needs. Warning, some services are critical to make your PC work. DO NOT disable a service without specific knowledge of what will be affected.
• Startup programs - Every program running at startup slows XP down. Older, no longer required and unnecessary software should be removed.
• Page file - This is special space reserved on your hard disk to help run programs. The page file is heavily related to how much RAM you have. Incorrectly set, this can really affect performance, causing your PC to constantly read from and write to the hard drive.
Maintenance
These tasks are recommended on all PCs. They are general maintenance steps. If not undertaken every so often, the system performance will suffer.
• Hard drive fragmentation - The more fragmented the data on your hard drive, the longer it takes to read and write data.
• ScanDisk - This check on your hard drive helps to identify problem areas, find and fix files that are incorrectly set.
• Scan for viruses - One virus can not only cripple your PC, it can also bring your entire business network to it’s knees.
• Scan for spy/ad/malware - Different to viruses, these are the new computer threat of the 2000s. Masquerading as helpful toolbars or just hiding in the background, these badly written programs can slow your PC and internet experience to a crawl.
• Remove temporary files for both Windows and Internet Explorer.
Some Notes of Caution
Beware of products which profess to be fix alls for Windows XP. Many of these products are set to promote themselves and other packages rather than fix your operating system
The most common of these are registry cleaners. There are some good registry cleaners, but there are many more destructive registry cleaners.
On another note, beware of products which just turn up on your machine professing to be able to clean up a trojan or virus. It is almost always a trojan or virus itself. Seek help to remove it safely. DO NOT run the proffered link. It will almost certainly do your system some harm.
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Thank you.
Stewart Rankin Pty Ltd – ACN 007 972 901 & DL & LD Greenhough trading as
TRIPOS IT
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