Website that shows how to mod windows XP and make it faster... ?

Journier

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 29, 2003
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I remember after windows xp came out all these mod sites came out... could someone point me to any?

I forgot all the urls etc.

thanks,
 
If you're talking about Blackvyper or blackviper whatever .com, then I suggest staying away from it unless you really know which services you are disabling.

A lot of problems arise from it.
 
Direwolf20 said:
If you're talking about Blackvyper or blackviper whatever .com, then I suggest staying away from it unless you really know which services you are disabling.

A lot of problems arise from it.
Sure, if by "a lot of problems" you mean "there was one guy who disabled RPC and then couldn't defrag".
 
well my problem is that, the start up for win xp "for me" has slowed down... big time..

Im not talking a small amount im talking by 5 seconds or more..

Ive defragmented multiple times... so thats not the problem :)

Right before the windows loading screen with the bar thingy... i get a dos window with the little _ doing a little flashing for atliest 5 seconds....

its starts at the top of the screen

then moves to a second line

then it hits a 3rd line down on the screen (invisible line) and then the computer boots up...

its takes forever and its farely annoying :(

IM thinking that since i installed Norton System works that it is the culprit :(

but since im on a little binge of speeding up my computer i wanted a few helper sites for me :)
 
Alot of tweaking sites give you false information and have terrible advice. Windows XP is tweaked out of the box. You don't really have to tweak it for performance as much as the 9x days. Even though this one has some false info and some bad advice it is still the most complete optimization guide.

http://www.tweakguides.com/XPTC.html
 
MeanieMan said:


Do not follow the pagefile advice though. It is best to have the initial size of the pagefile about 4x the amount of PF you actually use. Then the max should be about 2x that amount. This gives room to grow if need be, but with a high enough mininum it will not need to expand most likely.

You can use this to determine how much is actually written to the pagefile:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

To determine the amount of data written to the Pf run a couplek of your most intensive applications then run that to actually see how much is written to the PF.

Also a service that is not in use is not using up any memory or CPU cycles. So do not go crazy trying to disable as many services as you can thinking it will increase performance. It is OK to disable a few such as Themes, System Restore, Security Center etc. but do not go overboard as you will not gain anything from it and may run into problems later when something fails to run because of a required service.
 
KoolDrew said:
Do not follow the pagefile advice though. It is best to have the initial size of the pagefile about 4x the amount of PF you actually use. Then the max should be about 2x that amount. This gives room to grow if need be, but with a high enough mininum it will not need to expand most likely.

You can use this to determine how much is actually written to the pagefile:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

To determine the amount of data written to the Pf run a couplek of your most intensive applications then run that to actually see how much is written to the PF.

I keep my pagefile a constant. Of course I have 2gbs of ram so I rarely end up using it.
 
I keep my pagefile a constant. Of course I have 2gbs of ram so I rarely end up using it.

There is no benefit to really having the initial and max the same. It removes the ability to expand when needed, but this most likely is not needed with 2Gb of RAM when set to a respectable level.

With my reccomendation the pagefile will rarely need to be resized unless you are under a very heavy load. So it basically gives you the same benefit of a fixed PF, but can expand when needed.

/me grabs lawnchair, Seven&7, popcorn.

This will not turn into what it did last time if that is what you are thinking.
 
Well if your startup time has increased(takes longer now than it used to) then I don't think tweaking windows will help much, since it doesn't sound like it is an issue of windows being slow. It sounds more like a problem with other software. Check the programs that are run at startup(using msconfig or whatever you prefer) and see if there is anything unnecessary or out of the ordinary in there. See if norton system works threw anything in there and try disabling it to see if that is the culprit. One shouldn't have to tweak anything to get back to near regular speeds.
 
I have been playing around with things and figured this is a pretty good way.

Yes, but I have tried to explain how to do it that way to some people and some people can understand it, but others don't get it. With what I reccomended it says the exact amount written to the PF, peak, size of PF etc. Both will give you the same amount of data written to the Pf, but what I reccomended is just easier for some people. Not everyone wants to go into perfmon and multiply the % and the size of the PF.

EDIT:
I also realized the blackvipers site reccomends defraging. I suggest O&O defrag. Just defragging does very little compared to arranging the files in a particular order. O&O's COMPLETE/Name is great.
 
If you delete all your extra fonts that you dont need, windows will boot faster because it loads all fonts when you start your comp.
 
Phoenix86 said:
/me grabs lawnchair, 7&7, popcorn. :p
Why do we even bother showing up any more? We've rehashed all these time and again. I need an auto-text.

Service-wise, you can throw anything BlackViper says about speed out the window. Only one default service measurably affects speed, and that's the Indexing Service. Unless you regularly run full-text searches of your hard drive, disable this.
 
thanks for the info guys :) and all the pagefile discussion.... which ive read many posts on already... :/
 
lomn75 said:
Why do we even bother showing up any more? We've rehashed all these time and again. I need an auto-text.

Service-wise, you can throw anything BlackViper says about speed out the window. Only one default service measurably affects speed, and that's the Indexing Service. Unless you regularly run full-text searches of your hard drive, disable this.
At this point...? The best way to handle this type of thread is the write some good stickies (my PF sizing one does need some work, for example). Problem with that is, it's going to take much more research to convince some people, even myself. I'm on the fence on some debatable settings...

Anyways I want to see if new input comes out of them, so I'm going to *try* to stay out of the details. :)

MeanieMan, while I want to stay out of the details, there are lots of sites with good, bad, and VERY confusing (incomplete) information. Blackviper is one of those. Because of that, read everything with a grain of salt. It doesn't mean everything on the site is trash, and you can't learn a thing or two from it, but I wouldn't recommend his setups at all.

 
If you truly want to make XP the best it can be, the only real solution is to gut it for all the useless BS it has in it, and that is done with...

nLite, the premiere tool for creating a small footprint XP installation CD

Why waste time and effort spending countless hours deleting stuff, tweaking settings, doing Registry edits, etc. trying to make XP work faster after it's installed? If you think you can really tweak XP after it's installed, well, you can. I've done it thousands of times on countless machines over the past few years. But someone finally discovered a way to strip out the BS code you'll never need or use or want before the OS is installed - so it's never on the hard drive to begin with - and they wrote a tool to do it.

That tool is nLite.

Wouldn't it be so much better to create a custom XP installer CD that has only the items you want on it that are installed by default? Wouldn't it be nice to know your drivers can be integrated and already installed when the OS boots for the very first time, and leaving behind no additional drivers for hardware you don't have and nothing you truly don't want?

EDITED to add:

nLite also allows total customization of the services in Windows also. You can enable, disable or totally and absolutely delete a service so it's never installed in Windows to begin with.

If this sounds like a plan to you, and you recognize the benefits of having a small footprint customized version of XP to install on your PC to keep it streamlined and lacking in the crap it comes with from Microsoft, give nLite a go. You won't be sorry you did.

Paul

ps
Just so you know, the standard XP SP2 CD is roughly 584MB in size, with *almost* 7,000 files. After I used those installer files on the CD and nLite to customize it, the ISO I made is 146MB in size, it's about 3,600 files and it has all the drivers for all my hardware already integrated (the latest ones, btw), the Sun Java VM, Windows Media Player 10, and some other goodies I use on a regular basis. All those are already integrated into the i386 directory.

The final ISO installs XP in about half the time due to the lack of some fairly large files on the original CD, like that huge driver.cab file - it's history because I integrate only the drivers I need for the hardware I actually have and not drivers for 300 modems, NICs, video cards, soundcards, etc etc ad nauseum I don't have and never will.

Give nLite a try. I'm sure you'll love it and enjoy making XP what it can be - a lean mean computer OS.

pss
nLite works on 2K, XP, and Windows Server 2003.

Hope this helps someone. :)
 
uninstall systemworks. the best tweak you could possibly do.
 
Dump excess hardware/update your drivers. In a very general way, the less hardware to initialize/load a driver for, the faster Windows will boot. Do a clean install and clap your hands at how fast it boots. Then install all your drivers and note the difference. :(
 
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