Improving the performance and speed of Windows xp. How to speed up the Windows XP operating system

We have one PC at home, two laptops (one very old) and a netbook, two of them have Windows XP installed. Some of the following tips for optimizing the system, found on the vast expanses of the Internet, were useful to me. Maybe they will be useful for you too?

Tip 1. Getting rid of unnecessary things on the Desktop.

Beautiful picture and a large number of shortcuts take up a certain amount of memory because they are always displayed on the screen. Therefore, on “weak” computers, first of all, we can advise you to remove background picture from the desktop and, if possible, clear the desktop of unnecessary shortcuts.

Advice 2. We reduce the quality of color rendering.

In the screen properties, on the "Options" tab, from the drop-down list, select the Medium (16-bit) level of "Color Rendering Quality". The difference will not be very noticeable to your eye. But the load on graphics subsystem Your computer. With a resolution of 1024x768, you will thus save about 1.5MB of memory.

Advice 3. Setting up the user interface.

If you have an old computer or you don’t need all the beauties of Windows XP, or you just like the good old Windows interface 2000, then switch the window and button design style from “Windows XP” to “Classic Style” in “Display Properties”.

Experiment with the settings in more detail user interface You can go to "System Properties" on the "Advanced" tab, in the "Performance" section, on the "Visual Effects" tab. You can choose the visual effects you need. And discard unnecessary ones - and thereby reduce the load on your computer.

Advice 4. Disable unnecessary automatic startup programs.

One of the reasons for the slowdown Windows operation XP, at least at startup, are automatically loaded programs. These may be elements of some programs, the icons of which you can see in the lower right part of the screen.

You need some things. You constantly have to get rid of some, not very useful ones, by closing them manually.

And then the thought flashes: is it possible to simply turn off all these unnecessary things?

By removing unnecessary shortcuts, you will stop automatic start some programs.

What should you do if you have cleaned startup, but some icons in the taskbar continue to bother you?

Execute "Start-Run", in the window that appears, write MSCONFIG and press ENTER on the keyboard.

We uncheck unnecessary programs, and the next time we start we see that there are fewer icons in the “Taskbar”. This means that Windows will load a little faster, and there will be a little more free RAM.

Advice 5. Disable unnecessary services.

What else you should pay attention to when optimizing Windows XP is system services, which are launched by default.

Services are special programs that implement various functions operating system.

You can get rid of unnecessary services. Why waste CPU time and RAM computer to start and run unnecessary services?

Select “Start-Control Panel-Administration-Services” and get into the service management console of our computer.

To view services we can use Standard View viewing. True, for convenience, you need to expand the window to full screen and expand the “Description” field.

Or you can use the Advanced view by selecting the appropriate tab at the bottom of the window.

By double-clicking on the selected service, you can determine the Startup Type: Auto, Manual or Disabled.

I will list the services that, in my opinion, can be disabled or the startup type can be changed to manual mode, to improve the performance of your computer.

NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing;

QoS RSVP;

Telnet;

Automatic update;

Wireless setup;

Print spooler (if there is no printer);

Remote Desktop Help Session Manager;

Uninterruptable power source;

Task Scheduler;

Windows Time Service;

Service serial numbers portable devices multimedia;

Messaging Service;

Terminal Services;

Smart cards;

Remote registry.

It's a good idea to look at the Dependencies tab before disabling it to make sure that disabling a service won't affect other services.

Today we will talk about why optimization of Windows XP is needed and what points it actually consists of. Many modern programs also support work in XP, which indicates its relevance even today.

Some users use Windows XP on modern hardware - there's nothing wrong with that, but in this case Windows optimization XP for increasing productivity is of dubious benefit - it will already work very quickly. Very much, because modern computers are tens of times more powerful than those for which Windows XP was developed.

Personally, I have already switched to Windows 10 (one might even say that it was forced), but I would never have thought that I would ever leave favorite Windows XP, with which I spent more than ten years of my life. Well, that’s all lyrics, let’s move on directly to optimization. As I already wrote, even if you don’t configure anything after clean install(provided that you have at least 1 GB of RAM and at least a dual-threaded processor - I mean Hyper-threading technology) then high performance Windows XP is already provided for you. But there is no limit to perfection - you can do it even faster, and today I will tell you how.

Where can Windows XP optimization come in handy? better performance?

Optimizing Windows XP Performance

Increase Windows performance There are several ways to install XP, the main ones I will list below. Will the effect be strong? Well, to be honest, it’s noticeable. Personally, before, when I used XP, I used all the methods, I also advise you to try them, there is nothing complicated, at least I’ll try accessible language describe everything.

Hello, dear guests and readers of the blog site. Today we will talk about how to increase computer performance. I think that many of you have already noticed that over time, your computer begins to work worse and worse.

So, the operating system malfunctions, produces errors, and this despite the fact that the computer may be equipped, quite powerful processor and RAM. Some applications refuse to start at all, and so on.

Naturally, the user has a desire speed up your computer? Therefore, today we will look at ways to speed up a computer running the Windows XP operating system. Although, some tips are also relevant for users of other operating systems.

There are different ways to speed up your computer:

1. You can dig deeper into BIOS settings, however, this is dangerous and beyond the capabilities of a novice PC user.

2. Also, you can apply physical methods and significantly speed up your computer. I mean replacing its components with more modern models. But this method requires an investment of money, so why change it if the majority is the problem? modern computers not in the hardware.

Any computer, even a powerful one, will work slowly due to the heavy load on the system. Let's just optimize your Windows Xp operating system to speed up your computer.

How to speed up your computer with simple steps?

For Windows to run successfully, your HDD, should be as free as possible, and also divided into local sections. So that you can select a separate local partition, for the operating system, and the second local partition, for your other files that are stored on the hard drive.

If, however, this disk is full, you need to free the local disk (C) from all unnecessary things.

To do this: Move everything from the desktop extra files to local drive “D”, leave only the shortcuts. You can create a shortcut to any folder or file by right-clicking on it and selecting “Create shortcut” from the drop-down menu.

Empty the folder “My Documents”, “Shared Documents”, “My Music”, “My Pictures”.

You can do this by going to "Control Panel"? "Installation and removal of programms", but it is more correct to do it as described.

But I want to warn you that you only need to delete those applications that you know. Since by deleting the wrong program, you can cause unstable work computer. If you are not sure which applications can be removed , better not touch anything and skip this point by going to next method speed up your computer.

You need to monitor autoloading, because when Windows startup, programs that you do not use often start automatically, and they eat up RAM. Accordingly, they cause a decrease in computer performance.

Such programs are usually located in the startup section, which can be opened by going to the menu. But, we will use a more reliable way, go to the “Start” menu, go to “Run” (You can use the Win+R key combination) and enter the command “msconfig”:

This is one of those simple and effective ways to speed up your computer. . I recommend doing it at least once a month defragmentation of hard disk. This will help the system quickly search and find the files you need.

To enable defragmentation, you need to right-click on hard section disk. In the drop-down menu, select “Properties”, then go to the “Service” tab and select just below "Disk Defragmenter". Learn more about defragmentation hard drive read .

When working on a computer, we perform many different actions: install, create, install, move, delete, and so on. However, Windows does not complete all these actions; remnants of these files and actions remain in the system. Which, for example, allows you to restore this file after deletion. If there is a lot of this garbage, it will therefore cause unstable operation of the computer. In order to clean the system of this garbage, just use one of the many system cleaning utilities, such as Ccleaner,.

To be honest, many novice users do not even know about the need to clean their computer. This is also due to the fact that Microsoft company, not included in any version Windows function cleaning the system.

Another way to speed up your computer is to use a program to fine tuning Windows. For Windows XP, it is better to use the XP Tweaker program, which is free program. You can find out more about it by visiting the official website of the program:.

Tweakers should be used with caution, because these programs can significantly change the way Windows works.

By turning off visual effects, you can significantly speed up system performance. To do this go to " Control Panel"? "System" ? "Additional"? "Performance" ?“Options and select”? "Provide the best performance".

Well, so that everything doesn’t look so dim on the computer. You can, after turning off visual effects, change Windows theme, go to the Control Panel? Screen? Design and change it.

This optimization method is more complex, but the right approach, you can significantly speed up the system. Learn more about how to disable unnecessary Windows services, read .

I would be grateful if you complement me in the comments or express your opinion about accelerating the operating system.

Optimizing Windows XP is a whole set of measures that need to be carried out periodically on your computer so that it always works quickly and without failures. Conventionally, Windows optimization can be divided into several stages:

1. Cleaning the system disk.
2. Defragmentation of the hard drive and registry.
3. Clearing the cache.
4. Cleaning the Temp folder.
5. Installing and working with utilities for optimizing Windows.

How to speed up Windows XP using the built-in Disk Cleanup feature

First of all, let's look at the built-in Windows tools, for this Windows XP has its own capabilities, such as disk cleanup and cleaning system files.

• Open " Mycomputer"and on the local disk, right-click with the mouse, context menu we need a section - " Properties».

• In the window that opens there is a button “ Cleaningdisk", click on it, the system will analyze those available in the system junk files, after which you can delete the found files.

Below there is a column where it is suggested to compress this disk forsavingsplaces, it is not recommended to mark this item. This can negatively affect the performance of the system as a whole, and will save no more than 100 megabytes of space. Uncheck this item and clean it.

• If you switch to the tab here Additionally", then you can find several more partitions for cleaning system files, recovery files, temporary Windows components. You can also delete it here unnecessary programs on the computer.

Defragmentation of the hard drive and registry

In the properties window local disk, in the " Service", we can check the disk for errors and fix them if any are found. The built-in utility is responsible for this function. CHKDSK.


Here we can defragment the hard drive. Usually, when actively working on a computer, we download something, delete something, and so on again and again. The hard drive itself consists of many mirrored disks, which are divided into sectors. Each sector is a minimal addressable unit of information storage into which we write something, and then we delete something from it. Initially, on new system all information is recorded in order, but after deleting some previously recorded files, disk space is freed and new files are written to this space. If the sector is too small for writing the entire file, then this file is divided into parts and written to different parts disk.


This is fragmentation, when one file is divided into many parts and scattered throughout the disk. Defragmentation collects all fragmented files together and arranges them in order on the disk. The process is quite long, in some cases may take several hours. The same applies to defragmenting the registry, but it is better to do it using third party utilities, which we will talk about later.

Clearing cache

In this case, we are talking about clearing the browser cache. This can be done manually, directly in the browser itself, simply by deleting the history (the procedure for clearing the cache and clearing the browsing history is different in each browser). Here in the image is short list hotkeys to open the settings menu for a specific browser and a path to clear the browser history.

Cleaning the Temp folder

There is one on the computer interesting folder Temp, she's on system disk V Windows folder. And it serves for temporary storage of files intended for updating and restoring the system. This folder contains temporary files to install programs, drivers and utilities. Some programs delete temporary files after installing themselves, but most do not. And over time, the size of this folder grows to incredible sizes of tens of gigabytes. Naturally, noticeably reducing the speed of the computer when free disk space tends to zero, and it is not clear what exactly takes up so much space. Advice, look into this folder and delete everything that is there. The folder itself cannot be touched, but its contents can be safely deleted.

Installing and working with utilities for optimizing Windows

The most in a simple way for a novice user this will, of course, be optimizing the system using third party software. There are a great many utilities that help optimize Windows on the Internet, both good and not so good - both paid and free. It is, of course, up to the user to decide which program to choose to solve the optimization problem. But among them there is a wonderful program that should be on every user’s computer - CCleaner. Within Free versions it copes with the bulk of the user's system problems perfectly. For example, clearing the cache of all browsers at the same time, fixing registry errors, defragmenting the disk and registry, working with scheduled tasks, and much more.


Installing CCleaner, like any other program, is very simple, literally in a few clicks. Has Russian speaking clear interface. The program is free and easy to use. Even an inexperienced user can handle it.


How to speed up Windows work XP - for these purposes, you can also pay attention to another program, of the so-called cleaners it is very good utility- This AVG TuneUp- it is, of course, paid, but it has a trial period when you can test it before buying.


In terms of its properties and capabilities, it is probably difficult to find better. It’s easier to say what this program can’t do than to list all its capabilities.

The Windows XP operating system, unlike older operating systems, is well-balanced and optimized for the tasks of its time. However, there are ways to improve performance a little more by changing some of the default settings.

To perform the actions below, no special user rights are required, and special programs. However, for some operations you will have to use. All settings are safe, but still, it is better to play it safe and create a system restore point.

Operating system optimization can be divided into two parts:

• One-time setup. This includes editing the registry and the list of running services.
• Regular actions that need to be performed manually: defragmenting and cleaning disks, editing startup, deleting unused keys from the registry.

Let's start with the service and registry settings. Please note that these sections of the article are for advisory purposes only. Here it is up to you to decide which parameters to change, that is, whether such a configuration is suitable specifically in your case.

Services

By default, the operating system runs services that we do not use in our daily work. The setup consists of simple shutdown services. These steps will help free up your computer's RAM and reduce the number of hard drive accesses.

The first candidate for shutdown is the service "Telnet". Its function is to provide remote access via a network to a computer. In addition to freeing up system resources, stopping of this service reduces the risk of unauthorized entry into the system.

In the same way, we disable the remaining services on the list:

1. "Remote Desktop Help Session Manager". Since we turned off remote access, then we won’t need this service either.
2. Next you should disable "Remote Registry" for the same reasons.
3. "Message Service" also subject to stopping, since it only works when connected to the desktop from a remote computer.
4. Service "Smart cards" allows us to use these drives. Never heard of them? So, let's turn it off.
5. If you use programs for burning and copying discs from third party developers, then you don't need « COM Service for burning CDs".
6. One of the most “gluttonous” services - "Error Logging Service". It constantly collects information about failures and problems, obvious and hidden, and generates reports based on them. These files are difficult to read regular user and are intended to be made available to Microsoft developers.
7. Another "information collector" - "Performance Logs and Alerts". This is, in a sense, a completely useless service. It collects some data about the computer, hardware capabilities, and analyzes it.

Registry

Editing the system registry allows you to change any Windows settings. It is this property that we will use to optimize the operation of the OS. At the same time, you must remember that rash actions can lead to system crash, so remember about the restore point.
The registry editing utility is called "regedit.exe" and is located at

Default system resources equally distributed between background and active applications(those with whom we are in this moment we are working). Next setting will allow increasing the priority of the latter.

Cleaning the registry

During prolonged work, creating and deleting files and programs, in system registry Unused keys accumulate. Over time there may be great amount, which significantly increases the time required to access necessary parameters. Of course, you can delete such keys manually, but it is better to use the help of software. One such program is CCleaner.