Increase the performance of Windows XP!

Deleting unwanted startup items.
Go to Start menu->Programs->Startup. Delete the unwanted startup items in this menu . For eg: MS Office. Now let’s do it in a more advanced way. From the start menu click on Run and type msconfig and cilck ok. This will launch the system configuration utility. Now click on the startup tab. A list of programs starting along with windows can be seen. Enable those ones which you want (for example antivirus software) and usually 95% of the startup items are useless. So disable all those useless ones. Remember that by doing this you are only preventing the software from starting along with windows. You can start them manually at any time.

Deleting Temporary files and cleaning up the registry.
Temporary files are residual files that remain after program installations, or that are created by programs when the programs shut down abnormally. These files will slow down your system and will occupy a lot of space too. These files can be deleted using several methods.

Registry is another very important part of the operating system. It stores very important information about the software, users, their settings etc. Sometimes unwanted keys pile up in the registry. Usually this occurs due to improper removal of software. Manually editing the registry is too dangerous.

It is better to use a software in this situation. It is easy and will take no time. CCleaner or Crap cleaner is probably the best option. You can download it from here.
Download and install it. To delete temporary files, run ccleaner, go to the cleaner tab and click on the analyze button and after the analysis click on run cleaner. Done!
Now to clean the registry, click on the Registry tab and after that click on the scan for issues button. When the scan gets complete, click on Fix selected issues button. You should always backup the changes you have made to the registry. Crap cleaner can be used for deleting startup items also. Some other functions of Ccleaner are not described here since they have nothing to do with the performance of a computer.

Note: Cleaning up registry will not increase the speed of your computer by much. There are 1000s of keys in the registry. So removing 50 or 60 of them will not make your system run faster. But your computer will become more stable. Thats for sure.

Changing the file system.

File system plays an important role in the performance of a computer. It is of two kind : FAT and NTFS. FAT is the older one and NTFS is relatively newer. NTFS has so many advantages over FAT. It is quick, safe… Still most of the people are using the FAT file system. To know which file system your computer has, right click on my computer icon on desktop->manage->Disk management (under storage tab). Now on the right side of the window the list of partitions and their details will appear.If you have FAT file system, you should convert it into NTFS. Here is how you do it without losing data (I mean without formatting the drive).
Start->Run->type cmd and hit enter. The command prompt will appear. Now type convert driveletter:/fs:ntfs Eg. convert c:/fs:ntfs. Done! This is a very useful tweak.


More tips will be posted in the next post...