OryHara Posted May 2, 2006 Share Posted May 2, 2006 Ive been repairing XP machines since they came out. I will tell you what I know about Tweaking XP. First step is to download nLite http://www.nliteos.com/. It will allow you to tweak XP to the bone before installing it. You can do things with it that I recommend like, having the option to not install Internet Explorer, Outlook, Windows Media Player. Turn off prefetch, and System restore. I recommend using this on an WPA cracked copy of XP Pro. Registration is for the birds, and using a normal copy of XP (not cracked) can cause all kinds of activation nightmares if you change too much hardware, like a motherboard. If you choose not to use nLight, and want to tweak your existing install. turn off system restore (leave it off always) then use the cmd tool and go to the windows/prefetch folder. delete everything in there. Go to windows/system32/dllcache/ delete everything in there. This will make windows boot slightly faster. Download this old open source Regcleaner utility that ive been using since the win95 days. You can find it here: http://www.kore-net.com/tmp/Software/RegCleaner.tar untar it using winrar, found here: http://www.kore-net.com/tmp/Software/wrar33b5.exe. Ive been using these tools forever. You can select everything in startup using the regcleaner and wipe it out. Be careful though. Don't blow away your AV software. Download Firefox and use it. Also do an about:config and change enable.disk.cache to no. That will keep your drive from filling up with garbage. Even though you are not using Internet Explorer, don't be a fool and let other applications that use it fill up your drive. Go to control panel -> internet options. Change temporary internet files to 1mb, and select the top option. change history to 0, turn the privacy setting all the way up, turn the security setting all the way up. To to the advanced page. Turn off "install on demand", turn off "enable windows authentication", turn on "do not save encrypted pages to disk", and check "dump temporary files at exit". Naviate back to the windows/prefetch folder, and remove all permissions from it. You should be good to go now. Do not use Norton, or McAfee. Those two companies are paid to not keep certain things off your Windows Install. Use AVG, its free, and updates as it should. You can download it at http://free.grisoft.com/. Norton can slow your machine to a crawl, and can cause more damage than a virus. Get ridd of it. I don't care what your 'opinion' is about Norton, this is fact. Its {censored}! Use thunderbird for your email, and not outlook. Firefox and Thunderbird can be found at http://www.mozilla.com/. If you don't want your family members mucking with your settings go to start->run type gpedit.msc and play with that. Be careful, you can lock yourself out. Make windows show "ALL FILES" otherwise you may miss something. Turn off active X on everything, and avoid using software that wants it. Remove the 2 windows media player executables, and install MPC. You can get it at: http://www.kore-net.com/software/mpc/MPC.msi. Associate it with all files under it's options. MPC is an open source project that my company ebraced and installs on customer's PCs replacing WMP. Its currently running channel 19 at the local cable company. Currently this all works on XP Pro. You may have to boot Home into safe mode to remove certain things. Home has an 'internal virus' as I call it, that replaces things you delete. Ill have more to come as I stop being lazy. Ill answer your questions if I can. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
knightinarms Posted May 9, 2006 Share Posted May 9, 2006 Wow, nice tutorial. But you sure it's all safe? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/#findComment-110019 Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolBits Posted May 9, 2006 Share Posted May 9, 2006 Nice tutorial, but i also have a lot of experience with xp and do not recommend to turn of system restore as it can help sometimes to restore system to previous state after some bad driver install for example. Other thing is prefetch, that is a nice function and if used properly can speed up system significantly. Other things are ok and i do it so also. Nlite is ok for making xp cd with all updates and patches allready on and you dont need to update anything after install. I also recommend having swap file fixed size and on another drive, but if another drive is not available make it at least on another partition cos this prevents swap file fragmentation. Swap file should be 1,5x size of phisical ram. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/#findComment-110024 Share on other sites More sharing options...
belgrano Posted May 9, 2006 Share Posted May 9, 2006 ...Swap file should be 1,5x size of phisical ram. I think that you are wrong here. The amount of RAM is not in proportion with the size of virtual memory. On the contrary, the more RAM you got, the smaller swap file (virtual memory) you need. Of course it's not recommended to set the virtual memory size to 0. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/#findComment-110180 Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolBits Posted May 9, 2006 Share Posted May 9, 2006 I think that you are wrong here. The amount of RAM is not in proportion with the size of virtual memory.On the contrary, the more RAM you got, the smaller swap file (virtual memory) you need. Of course it's not recommended to set the virtual memory size to 0. Please search on net and make sure, before you say something like this. That goes maybe for systems with more than 2Gb of ram. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/#findComment-110193 Share on other sites More sharing options...
belgrano Posted May 9, 2006 Share Posted May 9, 2006 You mean for 256MB of RAM you need a 384MB pagefile, while for 512MB of RAM the pagefile need to be bigger, like 768MB? Why? Where is the logic in that since the virtual memory is used simultaneously with the real memory? Here are my sources: http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/Articl...4494/14494.html http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGen...PageFileEtc.htm Where are yours? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/#findComment-110210 Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolBits Posted May 9, 2006 Share Posted May 9, 2006 First of all Microsoft recommends that and im sure they know why, second is my experience and http://www.google.com/search?hl=sl&q=optim...anje+Google&lr= Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/#findComment-110215 Share on other sites More sharing options...
OryHara Posted May 12, 2006 Author Share Posted May 12, 2006 I normally boot to a cd and use a rar tool to backup the registry files. System restore is a {censored} for customers (because they are too stupid to know how to turn it off ). And it can take up to 4 gig of space that could be used for something else. Viruses and crapware will restore themselves if its not turned off during a scan. As for prefetch. Try turning it off on a slower machine (Pentium III on a fresh install). That little bar goes across 1/2 time before it starts to the desktop. That slower machine will probably arrive at the desktop before your fastest machine. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/#findComment-111355 Share on other sites More sharing options...
fOZf8 Posted May 12, 2006 Share Posted May 12, 2006 Home has an 'internal virus' as I call it, that replaces things you delete. Hehehe, actually, all versions of XP have that...at least on the core system and driver files, and the i386 cache. Tis why you have to boot into to safe mode even on Pro to clean out video drivers before installing new ones. I'm not a big system restore fan myself either, but for family and friends who are not total PC dorks like myself, I keep it on...less saavy people tend to make bigger mistakes, and not many of them can figure out how to clean there systems from memory active scumware and stuff, which system restore can fix. Anyway, good tips, heres a few more.... If you have under 1gb of ram and/or a less then superb video card, disabling Themes and Visual Effects can make XP fly. Disable Disk Indexing...its a bugger of a hit to a hdd, and in the end is really not beneficial whatsoever...just cut it off right in services. If you never use the Last Time Accessed date for files, disable it (I unfortunately am crippled without it though) cmd FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 1 You can force windows to push more data into ram that it would normally page with these reg tweaks... [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management] add Dwords: "DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001 "LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001 This is only beneficial if you have more than 256mb of ram...very beneficial if you have 1gb or more...and it rocks if you use any super memory hungry apps like myself..think multi-track A/V programs...{censored}, my pageing times dropped significantly when playing Battlefield 2 even after doing this. (note: if you use autopatcher XP, these DWords should already be in your registry) Allow even more processor time to upfront applications over background processes... [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl] change "Win32PrioritySeparation"=dword:00000026 (default is 18) err, theres more...tons more, I'm sure you all know if you've used XP for awhile...it's default install is just a big loose piece of fat waiting to be trimmed and grilled til it's GBD (golden brown delicious!) Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/#findComment-111390 Share on other sites More sharing options...
OryHara Posted May 12, 2006 Author Share Posted May 12, 2006 Hehehe, actually, all versions of XP have that...at least on the core system and driver files, and the i386 cache. Tis why you have to boot into to safe mode even on Pro to clean out video drivers before installing new ones. On xp pro, it uses c:\windows\system32\dllcache for this. Turning off SR, then dumping that dir will cause it to ask you for the orig i386 source. Like removing iexplore.exe. On home however it will not, and automaticly restore it. Any idea where home stores it? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/16545-tweaking-xp-to-run-light-and-fast/#findComment-111610 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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