Optimizing windows xp for better performance. Several ways to optimize Windows XP. Disabling unnecessary effects

Today we will talk about why you need to optimize the work of Windows XP and, in fact, what points it consists of. Many modern programs also support work in XP, which speaks of its relevance even today.

Some users use Windows XP on modern hardware - nothing wrong with that, but in this case, optimizing Windows XP to improve performance is of dubious benefit - it will work very quickly anyway. Very much, because modern computers are dozens of times more powerful than those for which Windows XP was designed.

Personally, I have already switched to Windows 10 (you could even say that it was forced), but I would never have thought that I would one day leave my beloved Windows XP, with which I spent more than ten years of my life. Well, that's all the lyrics, let's go directly to optimization. As I already wrote, even if you do not configure anything after a clean installation (provided that you have at least 1 GB of RAM and at least a dual-thread processor - I mean the Hyper-threading technology), then the high performance of Windows XP is already provided to you. But there is no limit to perfection - you can make it even faster, and today I will tell you how.

Where can optimizing Windows XP for better performance come in handy?

Old computers or very old computers can be useful if they have Windows XP installed on them, which is optimized as much as possible. As a result, you will end up with a computer that can do something useful - play the role of a file server, be in the role of a router, and perform monotonous routine tasks.

Windows XP allows you to keep your computer up to date, for example, for such entertainment as: watching movies, listening to music, playing old games, or just giving such a computer to children.

To this day, Windows XP is used in older office computers that run the same processes year after year, so there is no point in upgrading the hardware.

However, there is one unpleasant moment when using Windows XP - these are updates that are no longer available for this system. There is a way that can partially fix this problem and the system will be updated, how to do it, read this article.

Optimizing Windows XP performance

There are several ways to improve the performance of Windows XP, the main ones I will list below. Will the effect be strong? Well, in general, to be honest, it is noticeable. Personally, I, before, when I used XP, I used all the methods, I also advise you to try them, there is nothing difficult, at least I will try to describe everything in an accessible language.

Keep in mind that I will give all the working methods in my opinion, and at the same time I do not take into account the security, which may decrease after such a configuration.

The first thing to do is turn off System Restore... This allows you not to monitor the state of the system and not create restore points. Remember that by disabling this component, you will not be able to return the system "back" if necessary. To disconnect - press Start, select Control Panel, and in the window that appears, find the item System, click twice on it. Go to the tab System Restore and uncheck the corresponding box:

The next point is to turn off automatic updates. I advise turning it off, but before doing so, update the system completely. Secondly, you can do without these updates altogether, the main thing is that Windows XP was with a third service pack. By using a good firewall with proactive protection, you leave almost no chance for viruses. V Control panels choose Automatic update and disable it (if you do not disable the service, you can use the Windows Update website if necessary):

You can increase the performance of Windows XP by reducing the delay when the menu appears, it is best to set it to 0. Then any menus (by pressing the right mouse button) will open instantly. This parameter can be changed in the registry - we launch the window Execute(to do this, click Win+R) and enter the command Regedit, the Registry Editor will open. The setting is located along this path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop, the parameter has the name MenuShowDelay

Change its value to 0 (by default it is 400):

Disabling visual effects has a very good effect on performance, while if you disable all of them completely (that is, to the maximum), then the effect is very noticeable, but at the same time it is inconvenient to work. You can leave two parameters that will remove most of the effects, but at the same time leave a comfortable work. For this, in Control panels open item System in which go to the tab Additionally and choose there Performance > Options > Visual effects... Uncheck all the checkboxes for a start, this can be done if you select "maximum performance", then set two checkboxes so that working at the computer remains comfortable:

Enable disk caching. If your system and the computer itself are working stably, and if you have a UPS, then you can enable improved disk caching. This will increase the speed of working with the file system, in practice I did not notice any particular effect, perhaps because I already use the software cache for the disk.This can be done in the disk properties (tab Equipment, there select the drive and click Properties) - you can have both regular write caching (that is, one checkbox), or the ability to enable improved write caching (there will be one more checkbox) - check all the checkboxes in this window for maximum effect:

File system NTFS is reliable, but it has one thing - it updates the timestamp of the last access to the file. This feature can be disabled (it works only for NTFS, with FAT it will have no effect). This setting is stored in the registry along the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ FileSystem, parameter name - NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate, the value must be assigned 1 .

We open the register (using Win+R, then enter the command Regedit) and change the value (if this parameter is not there, then create - with the right mouse button - DWORD parameter- and indicate the name NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate):

When changing the parameter NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate you will not be able to find out when was the last work with this or that file.

Turning off error reporting may not speed up your computer experience as much as it makes it more comfortable. Suggestions to send a report appear constantly when all sorts of problems arise with the programs. To disable, go to Control Panel, select the item System- tab Additionally, there is a button error reporting, there we can turn off the sending of the report:

For security reasons, I advise you to disable autorun in Windows XP, then, for example, if you connect a USB flash drive, then if suddenly there is a virus there, it will not start automatically. This can be done through the registry ( Win+R- enter the command Regedit), the path where the parameter is located:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ Cdrom, parameter AutoRun- set the value 0 , by this we disable autoplay of disks in Windows XP:

Now go to the branch:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer, there is a key NoDriveTypeAutoRun(if it is not there, then you need to create), this parameter is responsible for autorun on many devices. Here is a list of values that can be applied to this parameter:

0x1
0x4- disable autorun of removable devices;
0x8- disable autorun of non-removable devices;
0x10- disable autorun of network drives;
0x20- disable autostart of CD-drives;
0x40- disable autorun of RAM disks;
0x80- disable autorun on drives of unknown types;
0xFF- disable autostart for all disks in general;

It is also worth turning off the disk indexing service - this can slow down the system due to frequent access to the disk partition. V Control panels select item Administration, there will be an item Services- we open it. A list of services appears, among which you need to find Indexing Service, click on it twice and change Launch type on Disabled:

You can also disable the ZIP archiver, it is standard for Windows XP, but since in most cases we use a third-party (for example WinRAR), you can disable it - open the window Execute(key combination Win+R or through the menu Start) and enter the following command:

regsvr32 / u zipfldr.dll:

Upon successful execution of the command, you will see a window like this.

Each operating system is installed, by default, with its own set of settings, which are far from optimal for ordinary users. This set is more aimed at people who first got acquainted with such an operating system as Windows. If you do not know how to configure Windows xp, then read on. In turn, I will tell you how, in my opinion, tuning and optimization should look like.

I think many people have met a window with a notification that some kind of error has occurred and with the question "Send" or "Do not send" a report describing the error, doubting that someone sent at least one such report to Microsoft :). Let me tell you a secret, no one there even waits for your report, it was relevant at a time when Windows XP had just been released and, taking them into account, the developers finalized the bugs and errors that were made and released new updates with all the fixes. But the majority got used to such a message, and out of habit they clicked "Do not send", not knowing that the appearance of this window can simply be turned off.

Also, at startup, a standard set of services is loaded, which, many users do not even use, as a result, they take on some of the resources, such as RAM, while reducing the speed and performance of your computer. Or when launching an application that is connected to the Internet, it was blocked by a firewall, as a result of which this application was simply abandoned.

To avoid such unpleasant moments, in this article, you will learn how to optimize and configure Windows XP for fast and comfortable work with your computer.

Configuring Windows XP SP3

1.Disable automatic updates.

The first step in setting up will be to turn off updates, because Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows XP, so there is no need to wait for new updates.

2. Disable Windows Firewall.

To avoid blocking any programs, disable Windows Firewall

3.Setting Date and Time.

We expose correct date and time and on the next tab we select the time zone we need. In the "Internet Time" tab, uncheck the time synchronization checkbox with the Internet.

4. "Taskbar and Start Menu."

Clicking on "Start" with the right mouse button and selecting "Properties", set and uncheck the boxes, as shown below. But this item is as you like, this is a setting appearance"Start", it's just that for me this is the optimal setting.

5.Properties of the browser.

In the "General" tab in the "Address" line, we can specify our start page for the browser, or just write "about: blank" to display a blank window. For temporary files, we set a small size so that the drive "C: \" does not become clogged in the future.

Go to "Contents" by clicking on the "Autocomplete" button, uncheck the "username and passwords" box.

In the "Advanced" tab, set the checkboxes as shown in the screenshot.

In general, we put a tick on the use of regular Windows folders, as a result of which, the graphical menu on the right will be removed when opening any folders, but if it is convenient for you to work with it, we leave everything as it is. Go to the "View" tab, put and remove the marks in the selected items.

7. "Network Connections".

In network connections, turn off the QoS packet scheduler; it will not be needed for a home computer. And we put a tick at the bottom of the window to display the connection status. By clicking on "Properties" we set the receipt of the IP-address automatically ( Some providers give their users static IP addresses, in which case you will need to register the settings provided by your provider manually).

8.Configuring System Properties.

We customize visual effects depending on the quantity random access memory... The recommendations for computers with 256MB memory are shown below.

Going to "Advanced", click "Options" where we uncheck the boxes for sending administrative notifications and performing an automatic reboot in case of failure or an error with a blue screen. Disable it in the "Error Report" menu.

I think that it is unlikely that someone will be remotely connected to you, so we just turn off this item.

To restore the system, we put only the "C: \" drive for monitoring and set about 10% of the spare space on the disk ( if your system is on the "D: \" drive then only select it accordingly).

Disable all notifications from the Security Center, which constantly shouts that the antivirus is not installed and the computer is in danger.

10. "Screen"

Go to the desktop settings where we disable automatic cleaning every 60 days. Next, we remove the splash screen by indicating in the "No" field, and go to the "Power supply" item - for stationary machines, turn off the "sleep mode", and on the "Parameters" tab, set the optimal screen resolution.

11. "Language and regional standards"

In this menu, we set the location and language standards, and on the "Additional" tab we set the language "Russian".

12. "Services"

To speed up the computer and turn it on, it is imperative to configure the Windows xp services, for this we put the following services in the "Disabled" position:

Machine Debug Manager (will appear after installing the MS Office package);
Automatic update (due to lack of support for Windows XP);
Wireless setup (leave on for laptops);
Uninterruptible power supply (if there is no UPS);
Smart Card Helper;
Smart cards;
Remote registry management service (it is unlikely that someone will tinker at your registry remotely);
Fast user switching compatibility;
Help and support (The service is always on, but usually never used);

Here is a roughly basic list of services that can be disabled on your home computer. Of course, you can pick up a couple more for each computer, depending on how it will be used.

I also forgot to describe one moment, after installation in the lower right corner the window "Getting to know Windows" constantly appears, just click on it and wait until the browser opens with a description of XP, if you close it with a cross at the next reboot it will appear again. Also, if you have not yet installed the necessary drivers, I recommend reading the article Installing drivers for Windows XP. This completes the basic setup of Windows xp, in my opinion the OS after installation should look like this. What would you add or remove from the above guide?

Optimizing and tuning Windows XP

Despite the end of official support from Microsoft, Windows XP is still quite popular and is used on many computers. It is often installed on older devices. Over time, computer performance begins to degrade due to many system errors, a high degree of disk fragmentation, and incorrect settings. This article describes how to optimize the performance of Windows XP.

What is optimization?

Optimizing Windows XP is a set of actions designed to speed up your system. This includes:

Scanning your computer for viruses.
Disable unnecessary tools.
Disable unnecessary visual effects.
Defragment the system disk.
Setting up the paging file.
Removing unused programs.

There are also special programs, with the help of which it is easy to improve the performance of your computer, for example, the CCleaner utility for fixing errors in the system registry and uninstalling stuck programs.

Of course, you can and regularly reinstall your OS. The new system will work very efficiently for a year, but then performance will still start to decline. To avoid such problems, you need to learn how to fix all errors that affect the speed of your computer in a timely manner.

Antivirus protection

Every virus is, first of all, a program. When it is running, it consumes a certain amount of system resources, making them inaccessible to other applications and services. In addition, some malicious scripts specifically perform a huge amount of computation and, possibly, the exchange of information over the Internet, greatly reducing the speed and performance of your personal computer.

This is not to mention the fact that viruses can independently change computer settings, disable important services and interfere in every way while working with the operating system.

That is why it is very important to take care of the anti-virus protection of your device. Of course, a constantly running antivirus will slightly reduce the performance of your computer, but will reliably protect it from possible errors, breakdowns and emergencies.

There are a large number of both paid and free antiviruses. Pick the one you like, install it on your PC, and run a full XP system scan. From this point on, it is strongly recommended to ensure that the protection is always working and regularly checks your hard drive and connected external media for the presence of suspicious scripts.

Defragmentation

During copying, deleting, transferring and editing files, they can be divided into parts (clusters), be scattered throughout the hard disk. This does not in any way affect the reliability and safety of data, but it negatively affects the speed of the computer. That is why every user needs to regularly defragment their HDD to improve PC performance.

During this process, different pieces of files are placed next to each other, which makes it easier to find them while performing any actions on the PC. This can be compared to cleaning the house: the things scattered on the floor do not get worse in quality, but it becomes more difficult to find them at the right time.

In order to start this process, you must do the following:

Disabling unnecessary effects

The graphic effects in Windows XP, of course, do not match the design of later versions. operating system, but still slightly slow down the computer's performance. If speeding up your work is more important to you than the beauty of the design and visual effects, it is recommended to do the following:

With this program, you can scan the XP system registry for errors and fix them with just one click. Install and run the application, then open the "Registry" tab in the side menu. Click "Scan" and then the "Fix" button.

If you, dear reader, own a computer, which can be safely called a beast with huge system parameters and a non-straining speed of work, I am sincerely glad for you. But I am sure that among you there will be those who, daily cursing fate, curse at the speed of their iron friend. You can't live like this!
What is the way out of this situation? You can go to the store, pay a decent amount of green American presidents, and upgrade yourself. But there is another way to squeeze the maximum out of your computer, switching it from processing a large number of unnecessary tasks to several more important ones. Trust me, your computer still has gunpowder in its flasks. Well, this article of MirSovetov will help you to scrape it off the walls.
Note, the methods given here do not have to be applied all at once. But the increase in the performance of your computer depends on how much you do.

Attention! Before optimizing Windows XP, I recommend that you make a checkpoint and backup your important files.

The Windows experience version (XP, tobyish experience) has acquired a much more pleasant interface. But, unfortunately, all this creates a load on the system resources of your computer. Therefore, to improve performance, we need to disable all this (or some part).
Let's start with the desktop. As someone said: a good table is a clean table, so let's start methodically cleaning it. First, you need to move all the necessary icons to some other place, for example, to the quick launch panel (below, near the start button), and simply delete the rest. As soon as everything you need on the desktop is saved, let's see what is left. If there is nothing left on the desktop and, as you might expect, nothing will appear, click anywhere on the empty space of the same table. In the Arrange Icons tab, uncheck the Show Desktop Icons checkbox.
Then you should remove the wallpaper and cancel the display of the screensaver. Why, in any empty place on the desktop, right-click and select "Properties". In the "Desktop" tab, select "no" instead of the background image. Then the next step is to enter the "Screensaver" tab and select there either the absence of a screensaver, or a blank sheet as it. In the next tab "Design" we select the classic theme, since it remained from the old versions of windows and therefore is not so demanding on system resources.
At the next step in optimizing Windows XP, MirSovetov recommends switching off unnecessary graphic effects. Right click on any of the My Computer icons and click Properties.
In the window that appears, select the "Advanced" tab, then click the "Performance" button. In the Performance Options under the Visual Effects tab, select "Provide Best Performance." You can dig yourself and leave the desired menu items. Click "Apply" and "OK".
This way you take the load off your graphics card. We also recommend installing the latest video card drivers. They can also provide a small performance benefit. Your RAM constantly contains a huge amount of all kinds of loaded programs and services that may not be used, taking away your precious resources.
Let's start with services. Go to "Start" - "Run". In the line that opens, enter: "services.msc" without quotes. A window will appear in which a list of services with a description will be displayed. How to disable them is shown on.

Below is a list Windows services, which, in principle, can be disabled. Read the description and see which of them can be turned off for you.

Automatic Updates. Undoubtedly, it should be disabled, as it is better to update the system manually.
Browser of the network (Computer Browser). Network service. Disable only if there is no network.
Cryptographic Service A service that provides security on a local network. If there is no network, or you think it is safe enough, then you can safely turn it off.
Event Log A service that records system events. If you have not used it before, then you can safely turn it off.
Messenger service. A service that sends messages to the network administrator. In the absence of either a network, or an administrator, or both, you can turn it off.
Print Spooler If there is no printer and will not be - turn off.
Portable media serial number. Obtaining the serial number of the music device connected to the computer. No device - no service needed.
Protected Storage. Responsible for protecting sensitive data. If there is no way to get into your computer, or there is nothing to steal, turn it off at your discretion.
Remote Registry Service. Service, needed by administrators networks. If you are not, we can safely turn it off.
System Event Notification. Tracks system events. If the system is working properly, you can turn it off.
Task Scheduler. Ensures that applications are launched at a specified time. If you haven't used it, disable it.
Telephony. Only needed if you have a modem.
Telnet. Provides connection and remote operation via telnet protocol. If you have never heard of this protocol, feel free to turn it off.
Uninterruptible power supply. Manages the operation of uninterruptible power supplies.
Terminal Service. Serves for remote control of a computer over the network. It is unlikely that this service will be useful to a home user.
Windows time. Time synchronization on the computer and on the windows server. If you do not consider it necessary to perform this function, turn it off.
Wireless zero configuration. Service for automatic configuration of 803.11 and 803.11b wireless networks.

Actually it is not full list all services to be disabled. Read the description of the services that are on your computer, it is possible that some of them seem useless.
After optimizing the services, you need to free them from unnecessarily loading programs. To do this, in the "Start" menu in the already familiar "Run" line, enter the command "msconfig" (without quotes). Then, in the window that opens, go to the "Startup" tab. You will see a complete list of programs that are loaded with the system. Uncheck unnecessary programs. Just follow the download path carefully. It is better not to cancel the download of programs located in the system folders, especially in the "Windows" folder.
If any of the startup items seem unfamiliar to you, MirSovetov advises you to search for its location through "Start" - "Search" (or "Find"), for example, find "NvCpl", and see which of the programs is responsible for. Again, all the programs that you see located in the system folders should not be disabled.

Optimizing Windows XP is a whole range of activities that need to be periodically carried out on a computer so that it always works smartly and without interruptions. Conditionally, the optimization of Windows can be divided into several stages:

Cleaning up the system disk.
Defragment your hard drive and registry.
Cleaning the cache.
Cleaning the Temp folder.
Installing and working with utilities for optimizing Windows.

How to speed up Windows XP with built-in Disk Cleanup

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

We open " Mya computer"And on the local disk we perform a right click with the mouse, in the context menu we need a section -" Properties».

In the window that opens, there is a button " Cleaningdisk", Click on it, the system will analyze the garbage files in the system, after which you can delete the found files.

Below there is a graph where it is proposed 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. We remove the mark from this point and perform cleaning.

If you switch to the tab “ Additionally", You can find a few more partitions for cleaning system files, files for recovery, temporary Windows components. Here you can also uninstall unnecessary programs on your computer.

Defragment your hard drive and registry

In the local disk properties window, 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.

This is where we can defragment the hard drive. Usually, when we are actively working at the computer, we download something, delete something, and so on over and over again. The hard drive itself consists of many mirrored drives, which are divided into sectors. Each sector is the minimum 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 up and new files are written to this place. If the sector is small for recording a file as a whole, then this file is divided into parts and written in different parts of the disk.

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

Clearing the 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 order of clearing the cache and clearing the browsing history in each browser is different). Here in the image is a short list of hotkeys for invoking the specific browser settings menu and the path to clear the browser history.

Cleaning the Temp folder

There is such an interesting Temp folder on the computer, it is located on the system drive in the Windows folder. And it serves as a temporary storage of files intended for updating, restoring the system. This folder contains temporary files for installing 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 an incredible size of tens of gigabytes. Naturally, noticeably reducing the speed of the computer, when the 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 from 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, of course, this will be system optimization using third-party software. There are a lot of utilities that help optimize Windows on the Internet, both good and not so - both paid and free. Which program to choose for solving the optimization problem is, of course, only for the user to decide. But there is a wonderful program among them that should be on the computer of every user - this is CCleaner. As part of the Free version, 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, just a few clicks. Has a clear Russian-language interface. The program is free and easy to use. Even an inexperienced user can handle it.

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

In terms of its properties and capabilities, it is difficult, probably, to find a better one. It's easier to say what this program does not know how to list all its capabilities.