99 ways to speed up Windows XP

[dparm]

All 99 steps can be found in this article. (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1590&page=1)

Please note that you can seriously screw up your Windows install if you make a mistake, so I only recommend this for people very familiar with editing the registry and the inner-workings of NT-based operating systems (2000, XP, Server 2003).

I knew of many of the tweaks, but the ones below I did not:

19. Keep Windows operating data in main memory
21. Disable performance counters
28. Force XP to unload DLL files after closing a program
39. Use the prefetch switch to load applications faster
75. Make 'my computer' open faster
89. Use the Bootvis utility

I ran a benchmark before and after...just from these few tweaks my system performance went up 5%. That may not sound like a lot, but bear in mind my system was pretty heavily tweaked to begin with. If you perform all their tweaks, you should be able to get a lot more.

Post your benchmarks, if you want. I'm curious what kind of benefits are possible from a clean XP install.

[abudhu]

28. Force XP to unload DLL files after closing a program

Check the times on how long it takes to reopen the same program. I have tried this tweak before, as well as many others there, but this one was the worst. The fact that for people like me, who close and forget something and reopen a program makes that tweak terrible. XP is able to load back the program slightly quicker when it doesn't unload all the DLL's on close. Just food for thought.