Windows Speed Boosters for XP?

Hey all,

I have WinASO for a registry editor and one option is to "speed up" Windows. Is this for real? Something about UDMA-66 support, speed up the shutdown, speed up the Windows Prefether service, etc.. Should I try that or are there any better "speed boosters" out there, and if so, what are they? Are there any downsides to this?

If anyone uses something else and it works, I'd love to know about it.

Thanks to all.

 

Its all bunkum.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html

 

This Speed Booster Works

Bill is right, for the most part. Most of the current programs and tweaks are bunkum.

This one works, PCBooster. I don't know why it works, but it does. It runs a test of your computer and makes suggestions as to what can be done to improve your performance. From what I can see, it only suggested things that I had tried many times before. I told it to make the changes, rebooted, and the response of my computer was noticeably quicker. I haven't noticed any bad side effects.

You can download from here: inklineglobal.com

Ed

 

FWIW, the best improvement in XP response time I ever had was when I unchecked all boxes in My Computer > Properties > Advanced tab > Performance > Settings > Visual Effects. Except leave "Use drop shadows for icons" checked for esthetic reasons. It makes quite a difference and I never missed any of whatever it was that those selections made possible.

 

Hi, CrunchDude.

I am not familiar with PC Booster. It's available from Major Geeks though with a 4.34 out of 5 rating.

 

Cleaning Temp files, the internet TIF, etc. can be done inside the XP Gui, or with freeware such as CCleaner. http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds.aspx
(Choose Basic, no Toolbar)

Shutdown speedup tricks are free:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305788
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307274
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314101

You can force prefetch and other boot-time optomizations just like this program does:
Start, Run, rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

You do know how to defrag your disk through the GUI.
Or: Start, Run, defrag.msc
Or, for multiple disks, see:
http://www.dougknox.com/utility/scripts_desc/defrag_all.htm

These are fairly valid things to do. Microsoft offers a way to do this for you on-line if you choose:
http://safety.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm

As for the rest of what the utility purports to do: bunkum.
Please read: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html

 

Thanks to all who responded. I read somewhere that you can supposedly turn off a bunch of Windows services to increase performance. Is this true? I remember, for example, the Messenger Service, amongst a few others. What do you guys think of that?

Thanks again!!

 

XP Service Pack 2 turns off the Messenger Service by default.
You can play with the Service entries if you like. This is not a speedup effort, but an attempt to preserve RAM.

Black Viper had a popular page, which is archived at several sites. E.G. http://martinz.wordpress.com/research/blackviper/

I warn you that it is quite easy to create an unbootable machine.

 

Hi, CrunchDude.

While keeping Bill's warning in the post above in mind, you can take a look at the following links for ideas about "tweaking" your services.

• Windows BBS Discussion: Services and pagefile tweaking worthwhile?
  
• The Elder Geek: Services Guide for Windows XP
  
• Simon Sheppard (SS64.com): Windows XP Services
  
• Someone's "Tweaks" of Black Viper's Services Configuration
  

 

Bill,

Having worked in several IT environments and doing a lot of experimenting with operating systems, I totally agree. One .dll file deleted or one registry key incorrectly modified can do it. Have you experienced an increase in general performance with any of the software mentioned in this thread?

Also, I see a tremendous improvement running Windows Vista RC2 vs. Windows XP SP2. If you are running Vista, I'd like to get your opinion.

Best wishes,

Crunch

 

Thanks for your suggestions. I appreciate it. I clicked on all of them and holy smokes, it looks like a lot of work. lol...Minor improvements I don't care to spend too much time on, but when I was first starting to use Registry Fixers, now that made a difference.

Thanks again!