Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking

[Gladiator]

Taken form www.overclockers.co.uk forum

Much of the XP tweaking and Services info is thanks to: (the now closed, but still available in PDF) Blackviper.com .Screen shots of most of the processes described can be found at their website.



============================
A Fresh Install

Ok, you’ve F-disked your HD, set up your partitions and you’re installing Windows, here’s the most common install order people use (inc me) on the forums:
1. Install Windows
2. Any Service Pack from Windows
3. Motherboard / Chipset drivers
4. Direct X update
5. Graphics Card drivers
6. Other Hardware drivers inc. sound, modem, LAN (etc)
7. Critical Updates from Windows Update

8. Install all your other programs and update them / set them up as you go
8. Full Defrag

If you have Antivirus and/or firewall software it is worth installing them early on, perhaps before you go online to get MS Critical updates. Do a Antivirus update early on too, to make sure u are fully protected.

Perhaps throw in a defrag for good measures after stage 4 just to get things running nicely from the beginning, but it’s debatable whether it will make much difference, certainly doesn’t hurt though!

============================


Defragmenting

Windows built in Defragmenter is pretty bog standard. Some good and much faster alternatives include Vopt XP and Diskeeper, try those for a good quality defrag. Before defragging it is always a good idea to delete all temporary files, temp internet files, empty your recycle bin (all in system tools > disk cleanup). There’s no need for Windows to be moving these files around, get rid of them. Also empty your windows\prefetch folder every time you want to defrag,.........emptying it will speed up your performance, and defragging with it empty helps move all your system files around without moving unnecessary files like these

============================
Pagefile Size and Location

Ok, a very common one this…..generally it is considered that Windows is perfectly capable of organising you pagefile size so leave it to be ‘system managed’. If you really want to save on pagefile size, and have enough RAM (>512MB recommended) then u can decrease the size of your pagefile. It is generally not advised to totally disable the pagefile, but if you have 1GB of RAM some ppl say they can disable it with no adverse effects.
The location of the pagefile is also a common question. The only real performance advantage is if you move the pagefile to a separate partition on a separate physical HD.

To change your pagefile size and location with the default Category Control Panel:

1. Head to Start
2. Select Control Panel
3. Select Performance and Maintenance
4. Select System
5. Select Advanced Tab
6. Under Performance, select the Settings button
7. Select Advanced Tab
8. Under Virtual Memory, select the Change button
9. Adjust as needed, or select "No paging File," then select the Set button
10. Select the Ok button to apply the settings
11. You must reboot for the changes to take effect
--------------------------------------------------------------
[According to Blackviper.com:]
From Fastest to Slowest, these are the configuration you can try:

* No swap file at all. Some software may fail. You also need "much" memory to do this. Greater than 512 MB.
* A static swap file on a separate hard drive (and preferably, controller) from Windows and frequently accessed data.
* A dynamic swap file on a separate hard drive (and preferably, controller) from Windows and frequently accessed data.
* A static swap file on a separate partition, but on the same physical hard drive as Windows.
* A dynamic swap file on a separate partition, but on the same physical hard drive as Windows.
* The Default: A dynamic swap file on the same partition and physical hard drive (usually C) as Windows.

Microsofts own article about Pagefile

http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/...es/03june16.asp

=======================================

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

Which Antivirus Program is the best?

Testbed consisted of 321 Viruses, Trojans and Worms, all for the Windows32 environment, and all reasonably new samples. I don't have any data on whether some of these are zoo, or ITW, but they are all real threats I feel someone is likely to encounter, since I got them off the internet (and i've verified they are real as each sample must be detected by at least 4 AV's for me to consider it). All scanners were installed on a clean system, without any traces of other anti-virus softwares - between each test the system and directories were cleaned, and the registry was sweeped. Each AV product was treated with a double-reboot, one before, and one after installation. Each scanner was set at its highest possible settings, and was triple checked for proper options and configuration. Most products were the full registered version when possible, others were fully functional unrestricted trials. All products were tested with the current version as of 6-14-04, and the latest definitions for that date. Each product was run through the test set a minimum of 3 times to establish proper settings and reliability, the only product to exhibit some variance on this was F-Secure, which had one scan come up less than the other two without any settings changes indicating a possible stability issue.

The final standings:

1) MKS-Vir
1a) eXtendia AVK
2) Kaspersky 5.0/4.5
2a) McAfee VirusScan 8.0
3) F-Secure
4) GData AVK
5) RAV + Norton (2 way tie)
6) Dr.Web
7) CommandAV + F-Prot + BitDefender (3 Way Tie)
8) ETrust
9) Trend
10) Panda
11) Avast! Pro
12) KingSoft
13) NOD32
14) AVG Pro
15) AntiVIR
16) ClamWIN
17) UNA
18) Norman
19) Solo
20) Proland
21) Sophos
22) Hauri
23) CAT Quickheal
24) Ikarus

Heuristics seemed to play some of a roll in this test, as no AV had every virus in my test in their definitions, and products with stronger heuristics were able to hold their position towards the top of the test. Double/Multi engined products put up strong showings as well, proving to me that the redundacy method works, and I think more AV companies should considering double-engines. The strongest heurisitical AV I noticed was F-Prot/Command, picking up only 247 samples with definitions but they were able to power through 67 additional hits on "Possible Virus" indicators - very strong! Norton with BloodHound activated had 30 Heuristical pickups, and DrWeb rounded up the pack with 20 heuristical pickups. eXtendia AVK grabs the number one slot with double engine scanning, anything the KAV engine missed, the RAV engine picked up with great redundancy on the double engine/definition system. McAfee actually missed only 2 samples with its definitions, but picked those 2 up as "Suspicious File", and therefore, scores nearly perfect as well.

The biggest dissapointments for me were Norman and Nod32. Even with Advanced-Heuristics enabled, NOD32 failed to pick up a large portion of the samples. Norman, while finding some of the toughest samples, managed to completely miss a large portion of them! Showing that their sandbox-emulation system has great potetential, but its far from complete.

Actual test numbers were:

Total Samples/Found Samples (321 total possible) + Number Missed + Detection Percentage

Discovered and tested MKS-Vir2004, from Poland. Surprisingly, this one with caught every sample perfectly on Medium Heuristics. Specifically, nearly 50 samples were picked up Heuristically giving it a perfect score of 321/321. However, when I increased Heuristics to "Super Deep", it picked up an addition 10 more suspicious files. Upon further investigation, it was found that it was picking up signatures of hacktool utilities left over in some of the archives and flagging those files. Indeed, this is impressive. MKS-Vir2004 exhibits the most advanced detection algorithms i've ever seen, clearly it only had signatures for 271 of my samples, but through code emulation, it was able to pick up all 321 samples!! It clearly labeled the Heuristically found ones as things as "Likely Win32 Trojan" or "Highly Suspicious Acting File". In addition, its scanning speed was incredibly quick, and its memory footprint was quite small. Impressive! Furthermore, this is a full featured and fairly polished product that appears to update at least once per day, and tech support responded to me within 5-15 minutes on my emails. Unfortunately, it appears to not be available in the US for purchase at this time.

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

1a) MKS_Vir 2004 - 321/321 0 Missed - 100%
1b) eXtendia AVK - 321/321 0 Missed - 100%
2a) Kaspersky 5.0 - 320/321 1 Missed - 99.70% (with Extended Database ON)
2b) McAfee VirusScan 8.0 - 319/321 + 2 (2 found as joke programs - heuristically) - 99%
3) F-Secure - 319/321 2 Missed - 99.37%
4) GData AVK - 317/321 4 Missed - 98.75%
5) RAV + Norton (2 way tie) - 315/321 6 Missed - 98.13%
6) Dr.Web - 310/321 11 Missed - 96.57%
7) CommandAV + F-Prot + BitDefender (3 Way Tie) - 309/321 12 Missed - 96.26%
8) ETrust - 301/321 20 Missed - 93.76%
9) Trend - 300/321 21 Missed - 93.45%
10) Avast! Pro - 299/321 22 Missed - 93.14%
11) Panda - 298/321 23 Missed - 92.83%
12) Virus Buster - 290/321 31 Missed - 90.34%
13) KingSoft - 288/321 33 Missed - 89.71%
14) NOD32 - 285/321 36 Missed (results identical with or without advanced heuristics) - 88.78%
15) AVG Pro - 275/321 46 Missed - 85.66%
16) AntiVIR - 268/321 53 Missed - 83.48%
17) Antidote - 252/321 69 Missed - 78.50%
18) ClamWIN - 247/321 74 Missed - 76.94%
19) UNA - 222/321 99 Missed - 69.15%
20) Norman - 215/321 106 Missed - 66.97%
21) Solo - 182/321 139 Missed - 56.69%
22) Fire AV - 179/321 142 Missed - 55.76%
23) V3 Pro - 109/321 212 Missed - 33.95%
24) Per_AV - 75/321 - 246 Missed - 23.36%
25) Proland - 73/321 248 Missed - 22.74%
26) Sophos - 50/321 271 Missed - 15.57%
27) Hauri - 49/321 272 Missed - 15.26%
28) CAT Quickheal - 21/321 300 Missed - 6%
29) Vir_iT - 10/321 311 Missed - 3%
30) Ikarus - Crashed on first virus. - 0%

Interesting also to note, is the detection level of the US AVK version with KAV+RAV engines was higher than the German version with KAV+BitDefender engines. Several vendors have free versions of their for purchase AV's, we didn't test the free versions, as it would serve no purpose for this test, but based on the results, none of the free versions would have been very impressive anyway. The term "Heuristics" seems like it should be taken very liberally, as some products that claim to be loaded with Heuristics scored miserably on items they clearly didn't have definitions for. Scanning speed was not measured, as it was totally irrelevant to my testing, and on-access scanners were not tested, as it would have been too time consuming, but considering most products have similar on-access engines as on-demand, and use the same database, results most likely, would be very similar.

Cut through the hype, cut through the marketing schemes, this was a real test, with real samples, and none of these samples were provided to the antivirus software vendors in advance. This is real world, and these are likely badguys you'll encounter, since I got them in my real encounters, and all were aquired on the internet in daily activities which anyone out there might be involved in. (Installing shareware, filesharing, surfing, etc). Keep in mind that with ITW tests the AV vendors have full disclosure of what they will be tested on in advance, not so here, so heuristics and real detection algorithms will play a big part, as well as the depth and scope of their definition database.

[Edit: After re-testing the Kaspersky products with Extended Database option turned ON, the moved up effectively scoring 100% considering the 1% margin of error]

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

The Best XP Tweaks for improved Performance

Two of the most resource hungry services on Windows XP can be disabled which will greatly improve performance.

1. System Restore - If you don’t use it then disable it. Personally I turn it off on all my drives except my Windows partition. This saves some HD space but keeps my C drive monitored, but for max performance increase turn it off altogether. By default, System Restore Service uses a LARGE amount of disk space to store rollback points. On large hard drives, this could be well over 10 to 20 GB.

Q. How do I turn off System Restore Process?:

With the default Category Control Panel:

1. Head to Start
2. Select Control Panel
3. Select Performance and Maintenance
4. Select System
5. Select System Restore Tab
6. Check "Turn off System Restore"
7. Select the Ok button to apply the settings

-------------------------------------------------------------------
After that, Disable and Stop the System Restore Service:
Start > Run > services.msc > System Restore Service > Stop and Disable


========================================

2. Indexing Service - It uses about 500 K to 2 MB in an idle state, not to mention the amount of memory and CPU resources it takes to INDEX the drives. I have it turned off altogether. Blackviper would always recommend getting rid of this!

You can disable the service from:
Start > Run > services.msc > Indexing service > Stop it, then choose ‘disabled’ fro the startup option.

You can remove the function via the "Add / Remove Programs" icon in the control panel (Windows Setup Programs) to get rid of it altogether

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Turn off Automatic Updates.

If you want to be in charge of your updating and also know exactly what you’re installing (always a good idea!) then u can free some resources and disable automatic updating.

[Note: It is very important that if you decide to disable the Automatic Updates Service, you check the Windows Update site often to ensure the latest critical updates and security patches are installed.]


With the default Category Control Panel:

1. Head to Start
2. Select Control Panel
3. Select Performance and Maintenance
4. Select System
5. Select Automatic Updates Tab
6. Select "Turn off automatic updating."
7. Select the Ok button to apply the settings

After that go into Start > Run > services.msc > Automatic upadates > turn it off and disable it from statup

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

Remove Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop Sharing.…..unless you use them obviously!

Take note: Remote Desktop Sharing is NOT available with Windows XP Home. You may request assistance from someone ONLY using Windows XP Pro.

With the default Category Control Panel:

1. Head to Start
2. Select Control Panel
3. Select Performance and Maintenance
4. Select System
5. Select Remote Tab
6. Uncheck both "Remote Assistance and Desktop Sharing" options
7. Select the Ok button to apply the settings
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Disable Windows XP Themes

Used to display all those new XP themes and colors on your desktop. If memory conscious and does not care about the "new" XP look, disable this service to save RAM. I have observed between 4 MB to 12 MB of RAM used for the new themes.

With the default Category Control Panel:

1. Head to Start
2. Select Control Panel
3. Select Performance and Maintenance
4. Select System
5. Select Advanced Tab
6. Under Performance, select the Settings button
7. Select Visual Effects Tab
8. Select "Adjust for best performance."
9. Select the Ok button

After that, Disable and Stop the Themes Service:
Start > Run > services.msc > Themes Service > stop and disable it from startup

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Add/Remove any unused programs

Go to the "Add Remove Programs" and click the "Windows components." Here, take out all the rubbish you do not need. Such as "MSN EXPLORER" and the likes

After Removing the unused Windows components, ensure that you check back up on the services that you disabled. Some like to go back to Automatic after playing with the Windows components (namely COM+ and Help and Support).
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Clean your System Tray

Remove any excess icons (all of them, basically) from the system tray (lower right). Contrary to popular belief, those little "quick access" icons take up a lot of room.

For example, MS messenger takes up about 3.6 MB just sitting there... not even logged in... Bring it up, select tools, options, then uncheck "load at startup" and "allow to run in background."

Also, Creatives "AudioHQ" running is REALLY not required. Uncheck "Load on Startup" and "Show icon on Taskbar" in AudioHQ's Options menu.

ICQ's little "Net Detect" sucks up WAY to much memory. Make it go away.

Various Quick Tweak icons and even EZCD creator's icon annoys the hell out of me. Make them all go away. If you just HAVE to have that quick access to those programs, place them in the "quick launch bar" (located in the lower left by default, where IE and "Show Desktop" buttons are). The icons will not clutter your desktop and you can easily hit them from any normal windows application. To top it all off, they do not take up memory or resources constantly running in the background. Another plus, this will reduce your boot up time.
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Use Regedit and check your startup activities

Start > Run > Regedit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run

Have a look in there and remove (delete) anything you don’t want loading up on startup. Be warned, messing around with the Reg without knowledge of it can cause you problems!! Quicktime task is one which always seems to appear in here, delete it (as it does nothing!) and then go into your program folder for Quicktime and delete qttask.exe from in there so it wont reappear in your registry later
===========================
Use Msconfig

I run msconfig and get rid of any annoying startup programs that may be hiding from me.
Start > Run > msconfig > Startup (don’t disable services from in here, use services.msc in ‘run’ instead)
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Disable Hibernate Function

To save on disk space is it a good idea to disable the hibernate feature from Windows. Do so in Control Panel > Power Options > Hibernate > Untick ‘Enable hibernate’

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

Slow Shutdown Problems on XP

Ok, weird one, try some of these they are other fixes for ppls problems with slow or hanging shutdown on XP……….taken from other threads:

---------------------------------
Specify the Response Time for Hung Applications (All Windows)

This setting controls the amount of time to wait for a response from a hung application before the system task manager automatically terminates the task.

Create a new String value, or modify the existing value, called "HungAppTimeout" and set it according to the value data below.

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
System Key: [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]
Value Name: HungAppTimeout
Data Type: REG_SZ (String Value)
Value Data: Time in milliseconds (1000 = 1 second)
----------------------------------------------
Stop Windows from Clearing Pagefile

start>run>gpedit.msc>computer configuration>windows settings>security settings>local policies>security options>"Shutdown: clear virtual memory pagefile" CHANGE this to disable. Reboot. (It won't stop it from clearing the page file first time you reboot, straight after you have changed this setting.)
-----------------------------------------

what graphics card you running? if it's nvidia, try this:

go to "run" in start menu, type "services.msc" look for "NVIDIA Display Driver Service" and stop and disable it. this service isn't needed and is commonly the cause of slow shut downs with nvidia drivers.

also go to "run" in stat menu, type "regedit" then go to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run

then just delete and key that relates to software you know you don't need starting up, but remember to back up your registry before doing this in case you balls up

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

Services Tweaking in XP

Do NOT adjust your service configurations using msconfig. Use Start > Run > services.msc

See Blackviper for the full list of services and what they do. Here’s a list of some common ones that it is worth considering disabling:

Alerter
Error Reporting
Indexing
Messenger (this is NOT MSN messenger, it’s the annoying popups!)
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing]
Network DDE
Network DDE DSDM
Performance Logs and Alerts
Portable Media Serial Number
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Registry Service
Smart Card
Smart Card Helper
System Restore Service
Uninteruptible Power Supply
Upload Manager
WebClient
Windows Time
WMI Performance Adapter

Check out Blackviper.com for the full list and descriptions about what they all do
=============================

Registry Tweaks

Some useful sites are:

http://www.tweakxp.com
http://www.winguides.com/registry/
Windows 9x and ME Reg Tweaks: http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=119
Windows 2000 and XP Reg Tweaks: http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=157
Win XP Tweaking: http://www.xptuneup.com/


You can find all kinds of registry tweaks and changes there to improve your system performance.

Here’s a few of the best ones:

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

Clear the Page File at System Shutdown (Windows NT/2000/XP)
Windows does not normally clear or recreate the page file. On a heavily used system this can be both a security threat and performance drop. Enabling this setting will cause Windows to clear the page file whenever the system is shutdown.

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value, called "ClearPageFileAtShutdown" and set it according to the value data below.

System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\
Memory Management]
Value Name: ClearPageFileAtShutdown
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disabled, 1 = enabled)

---------------------------------------------
Specify the Response Time for Hung Applications (All Windows)
This setting controls the amount of time to wait for a response from a hung application before the system task manager automatically terminates the task.

Create a new String value, or modify the existing value, called "HungAppTimeout" and set it according to the value data below.

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
System Key: [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]
Value Name: HungAppTimeout
Data Type: REG_SZ (String Value)
Value Data: Time in milliseconds (1000 = 1 second)

---------------------------------------------
Disable CD Burning (Windows XP)
This restriction is used to disable the use of the inbuilt CD recording functions of Windows.

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value, called "NoCDBurning" and set it according to the value data below.

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
Value Name: NoCDBurning
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = Allow CDR, 1 = Disable CDR)

---------------------------------------------
Search in all files

Provided by Borris: Another quick tweak - useful for searching for strings in files:

code:REGEDIT

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xyz\PersistentHandler = {098f2470-bae0-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}

Add this key to your registry (copy and paste to notepad, as many times as required, save as .reg), where .xyz is the extension of the file in which you wish to search.

Windows only allows you to search in a few files by default (.txt, .doc etc...) but now you can search in all of them.

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

Prefetcher tweak

This is a unique technique for XP, which could improve the performance significantly by tweaking the prefetcher (which is a cache folder).

1. run "regedit";
2. goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher];
3. Set the value to either 0-Disable, 1-App launch prefetch, 2-Boot Prefetch, 3-Both ("3" is recommended).
4. reboot.

It should decrease the boot time and the time it takes to load programs.


========================================

Unload .dll's to Free Memory

Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory.

1. Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer].
2. Create a new sub-key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1' to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory.
3. Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

I tried this after running a intense program, then watched the task manager; memory recovered it self.


========================================
Enable or disable boot defrag

A great new feature in Microsoft Windows XP is the ability to do a boot defragment. This places all boot files next to each other on the disk to allow for faster booting. By default this option in enables but on some builds it is not so below is how to turn it on.

1. Start Regedit. If you are unfamiliar with regedit please refer to our FAQ on how to get started.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOpt imizeFunction
3. Select Enable from the list on the right.
4. Right on it and select Modify.
5. Change the value to Y to enable and N to disable.
6. Reboot your computer.


========================================
Speed up boot by disabling unused ports

This is done by disabling your unused devices in Device Manager.

for example, if you don't have input devices that are connected to one of your USBs or COM ports, disabling them will give you an extra performance boost in booting.

Yes i've tried this. I've disabled every devices that currently has no use for my pc and it worked great. My booting time is much faster than before.

Go to Control Panel -> System -> Hardware tab -> device manager

Disable devices that you don't use for your PC and then restart. Good luck!

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

Speed Up Network Access on XP

I had a lot of problems with WinXP being very slow while trying to browse shared folders and sometimes it would take several minutes to open a shared resource. After a LOT of searching i found the following fixes, i did them all and now it works fine


1. Stop your Pc checking for scheduled tasks on the network
which can delay the time it takes to load network places considerably. Go to regedit and find:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace.

3. Find a key named {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}.
4. Right click on it and delete it.

-----------------------
2. Delete stored network passwords

1. Click Control Panel | User Accounts.
2. Click your user name.
3. Click Manage my network passwords.
4. Click each entry and click Remove.
------------------------

3. Disable the WebClient (WebNav) Service

This might speed up network browsing, but it will prevent access to web-resident network places, such as free disk storage from your ISP.

1. Right click My Computer and select Manage.
2. Double click Services and Applications.
3. Double click Services.
4. Scroll down the list of services and double click WebClient.
5. Click the Stop button.
6. Set the Startup type to Disabled.
7. Click Apply and OK.

-------------------------
4. Change the NetBIOS Over TCP/IP registry entries

Open this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\

NetBT\Parameters

and modify these values as shown:

* "BcastNameQueryCount"=dword:00000001
* "BcastQueryTimeout"=dword:00000020
* "NameSrvQueryCount"=dword:00000001
* "NameSrvQueryTimeout"=dword:00000020




=================================
Programs you just shouldn’t do with out

1. Ad-aware: Get the latest version, do an online update and do a good scan of your system for spy and ad ware. Very good for keeping your system clean and at optimal performance.
2. Spybot Search and Destroy: Picks up some stuff ad-aware doesn’t.
3. RegSeeker: Scans the registry for invalid entries. Good for a cleanup and optimisation of your registry.
4. Tweak XP: Full of all kinds of good and useful tweaks and changes to Windows. Very cool little app, handy to have.
5. Tune XP: Some good tune up tweaks including a good one for reorganising boot files to save some time. Link includes a review of the program

 

[Gladiator]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

keep incase got more to add 2 it

 

[urbanfox]

Re: **Baddass Guide to Windows Performance,Optimization and Tweaking**

This guide does not nessecarily represent or disagree with my views.

 

[Turin]

I used to completely strip my comp sometimes after I got fed up of programs... I had a nack of installing everything I had. Now I just install bare minimum but let all the necessary services run, making life a lot more stable.

Dunno that's my opinion. Bu these things do actually work pretty well if you want aa performance boos on a system with RAM lower than 512.

 

[MrBeefy]

i just completley stripped my PC of ****ty programs followed most of your guides my pc is really fast now thanks for guides and if anyone wants a fast pc use this guide because it is very useful

 

[RedDragonX]

Defraging is annoying...

 

[Ash]

Few good Tweaks i found from various websites, i take no credit for these. These tweaks worked fine for me, and have increased my system performance, and its noticable.

NOTE: I reccomend you backup your system before doing any of these tweaks.

=====================================================
Shutdown XP faster:
============================
1) Start - Run - Regedit
Navigate to the following Registry key:
HKEY CURRENT USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Double click on the AutoEndTasks entry and replace the 0 with a 1 in the Value data text box

For the next two, if the dword value indicated does not exist, create it:

Double click on the WaitToKillAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 2000

Double click on the HungAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 1000

Reboot

If still having a problem, make the next change:

2) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Right-click on WaitToKillServiceTimeout and change it to 2000

NOTE: The lowest value Windows will recognize is 1000 (1 second)

ADVISORY: While rare, the "WaitToKillService" tweak can cause problems. If an application is in the process of saving data and the associated service is stopped prematurely, the data will not be saved and may be lost. (Tweak, Note and Advisory from Forum Admin)

============================
Disable XP Bootscreen to start windows up faster:
============================
The boot.ini file that disables the boot screen looks like the following:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noguiboot

The above boot.ini file is all pretty much standard except for the adition of the /noguiboot to the last line of the file. That is the parameter that tells Windows to start up without using the graphical user interface boot screen. To get started, open up a copy of Notepad found in the Accessories menu of the All Programs entry in the Start Menu and follow the steps below:

1. On the first line of the file, type in [boot loader].
2. On line 2 of the file, key in timeout=0 so Windows does not show the boot selection screen at all. You don't want this anyways since you only have one operating system installed on your computer.
3. On line 3 of the file, type in default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS so that Windows knows where to look on your hard drive to start the operating system.
4. On line 4, type in [operating systems].
5. On line 5, type in multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noguiboot to start up Windows with the /noguiboot parameter to disable the boot screen.

Tip:
If you upgraded your computer from Windows 2000 or any other NT based product and your root Windows directory is not Windows, then you will have to make one change to the boot.ini file to correct where the path of the Windows files are located. On Lines 3 and 5, replace all references to \WINDOWS to \WINNT or the name of the directory to which you installed Windows. This will set your system to boot from the right folder
6. Click on the File menu bar item and select Save As.
7. Type in Boot.ini in the File name box and change the Save as type to All Files.
8. Then, change the Save in directory to your drive root, which is usually Local Disk (C.
9. Hit the save button and you are now finished.

You can now close Notepad. The next time that you reboot your computer, you will not see the boot screen

============================
Unload .dll's to free memory:
============================
Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory.

1. Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer].
2. Create a new sub-key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1' to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory.
3. Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

I tried this after running a intense program, then watched the task manager; memory recovered it self.
=====================================================

I am not sure if any of these are already included in this thread, but i posted incase they are not.

 

[atarian]

Defraging is annoying...

yup, but wear on hard drives can be expensive, n not just in cash.

constantly back n forth on fragmented files can decrease your hard drive life by up to 75% and badly managed disk systems can bring it to a halt.

your system is as good as its slowest link.

best defrag i've come across is diskkeeper pro, also has the ability to defrag when screensavers working.

 

[Ragnar]

yup, but wear on hard drives can be expensive, n not just in cash.

constantly back n forth on fragmented files can decrease your hard drive life by up to 75% and badly managed disk systems can bring it to a halt.

your system is as good as its slowest link.

best defrag i've come across is diskkeeper pro, also has the ability to defrag when screensavers working.

Actually, the harddrive being under high load has been proven to hardly effect the hdd lifetime.

 

[Dumachi]

Tune up utlities 2007 a good program for tweaking windows.

 

[Insane]

I know this thread is old, but just had a quick read through and wanted to add the following:

In regards to pagefiles. I do NOT, (and this is just my opinion.... feel free to disagree, flame or debate) advise use of a seperate partition on the same physical hard disk as your OS for a swap file! This not only requires multiple I/Os, which hard drives cant do for obvious reasons... the heads are either reading from one sector or another, not 2 at the same second in time, even though it might feel like its all hapening quickly!

Having a swap file on a seperate partition not only means the hard disk has to do many I/Os, which it does with a static swap on a non partitioned disc, but it also has to read from 2 master file tables and multiple sectors on 2 different arears of the disk to complete the same operation. This will be a severe hamper of performance especially with games or intesive appz installed and ran from the primary partition on that drive, even worse than a dynamic swap which is fragmented on a single partition.

A static swap file on the disk preferably created after a fresh install, which has been defragged to compact the files, or a nominal swap file on the BOOT drive with a larger swap file on a second drive or spread over many hard drives of the same speed which usually have little or no I/O activity occuring on them.

Also, I find that doing a defrag after each app or game install does wonders for speed and performance... again its personal preference i guess! Im sad and spend hours tweaking, testing and taking down the OS in the name of removing all the unwanted fat. Will it be worth it in the end, who knows.

WINDOWS XP SERVICES - Note, ive had a fully working gaming rig on the internet, working with no errors, the same as a clean install with the following services disabled!
----------------------------------------
Alerter
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
Extensible Authentication Protocol Service
Fast User Switching Compatibility
Fax
FTP Publishing
Help and Support
HTTP SSL
Indexing Service
Media Center Receiver Service
Media Center Scheduler Service
Messenger
MHN
MS Software Sha
Net Logon
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network DDE DSDM
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Network Provisioning Service
Nvidia Driver Helper
Performance Logs and Alerts
Protected Storage
QoS RSVP
Remote Registry
Remote Access Auto Connection Manager
Remote Access Connection Manager
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Routing and Remote Access
Secondary Logon
Server
Smart Card
SSDP Discovery Service
System Event Notification
System Restore Service
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service
TCP/IP Printer Server
Telnet
Telephony
Terminal Services
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Volume Shadow Copy
WebClient
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)
Wired AutoConfig
Wireless Zero Configuration
WMI Performance Adapter


WINDOWS VISTA SERVICES - Note, my current vista x64 install has the following services disabled without hampering of usability or performance. Obviously, this is not good for everyone, you will need to find out what each service does and whether you implicitly need it. But my machine is a gaming rig, which i use on the internet and downloading music and currently runs on 38 processes, and thats even with Steam, punkbuster, daemon tools, nvidia cp and setpoint services running.
----------------------------------------
Application Management
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
Certificate Propagation
DFS Replication
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Distributed Transaction Coordinator
Function Discovery Provider Host
Function Discovery Resource Publication
Health Key and Certificate Management
IP Helper
KtmRm for Distributed Transaction Coordinator
Link-Layer Topology Discovery Mapper
Message Queuing
Message Queuing Triggers
Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service
Network List Service
Network Location Awareness
Nvidia Driver Helper
Offline Files
Parental Controls
Peer Name Resolution Protocol
PnP-X IP Bus Enumerator
PNRP Machine Name Publication Service
Portable Device Enumerator Service
Program Compatibility Assistant Service
Quality Windows Audio Video Experience
Remote Access Auto Connection Manager
Remote Access Connection Manager
Remote Registry
Server
Smart Card
Smart Card Removal Policy
SNMP Trap
SSDP Discovery
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Telephony
Telnet
Terminal Services
Terminal Services Configuration
Terminal Services UserMode Port Redirector
UPnP Device Host
WebClient
Windows CardSpace
Windows Error Reporting Service
Windows Media Center Extender Service
Windows Media Center Receiver Service
Windows Media Center Scheduler Service
Windows Media Center Service Launcher
Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
Windows Presentation Foundation Font Cache 3.0.0.0
Windows Remote Management (WS-Management)
Windows Search
Windows Update
WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service
Wired AutoConfig
WLAN AutoConfig

-----------------------------------

If you dont use hibernation in vista, even with it turned off in the power scheme it still leaves hiberfil.sys in the root folder, claiming the same amount of ram as you have in the PC in HD space! Get rid of this by opening a command prompt and typing powercfg -h off - please note you need UAC off or it just gives you a 'no access rights' error.

-----------------------------------

If you play the game Area 51 in vista you will need to do the following:

Create the Program Files\Midway Games\Area 51 folders.
Create the Program Files (x86)\Midway Games\Area 51 folders for vista x64 installs
Give yourself full control permissions on the Program Files\Midway Games folder
With Area 51 Disc 1 in the cd\dvd drive, open a command prompt window. Type in the letter of the drive, followed by a colon and press Enter. You should now have a prompt starting with the drive letter.
Type in the following command line and press Enter:msiexec /i "area 51(R).msi" /qb

-----------------------------------

RANDOM REGISTRY TWEAKS
-----------------------------------
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
NtfsMftZoneReservation REG_DWORD=2
-----------------------------------
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem
NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate REG_DWORD=1
-----------------------------------
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
DisablePagingExecutive REG_DWORD=1
ClearPageFileAtShutdown REG_DWORD=1