Related Articles

Freeing up memory

Remove MSN

X:\Windows\inf\sysoc.inf

msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7

To this:

msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,,7

Remove the Autoplay

Hit start, run and then type in gpedit.msc (NOT in home version). Browse Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System

Autoplay begins reading from a drive as soon as you insert media in the drive. As a result, the setup file of programs and the music on audio media start immediately. To stop this right click on properties for Turn off autoplay and select enable then click ok.

MSconfig is a great place to free up a considerable amount of RAM. You can remove alot of things from your startup including services. You'll want to first uncheck all un needed programs on your startup.

The best place to make changes to services can be found with just a few clicks.

Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> services

From there you will want to look over all the different services that are running. When you first install Windows XP you will have 89 available services and 36 of these are set to automatically start as the DEFAULT! There's really only 5 that are needed to run. You should never set these to disabled. It can cause quite a few problems if a program requires them to run. Setting these to manual will allow them to run if needed but won't automatically start with windows. This will free up quite a bit of resources by only running the services that are truly needed.

The only place that I've found that really explains these services well can be found HERE I'm sure you'll be as surprised as I was to see how much garbage is on/in Win XP by default. When properly tweaked you can really get alot more performance out of this OS.

Unloading DLLS

Explorer does not unloadDLL files from memory right away. They always remain in the memory for a period of time that is often quite lengthy. To unload DLLs when you are done with them navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

This time you'll have to create an entry called AlwaysUnloadDLL and set the value to 1.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"AlwaysUnloadDLL"="1"

Shutting down/ Startup

There's quite a few things related to shutting down your system faster located in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

AutoEndTasks (set to 1) will automatically kill hung up programs for you. The next one is HungAppTimeout (make sure it's 5000). Next up is WaitToKillAppTimeout. Which should be set to 4000 (default is 20000).

Since we have the programs being killed after a certain amount of time you will also want to do the same for services. Change the WaitToKillServiceTimeout to 4000 as well.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"
"HungAppTimeout"="5000"
"MenuShowDelay"="400"
"WaitToKillAppTimeout"="4000"
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="4000"

The XP Prefetcher

Windows XP has a service called the Prefetcher. It basically monitors the different programs that start during startup and helps them launch faster.

To find this tool browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

The important key is EnablePrefetcher. Default value for this is 3. You will want to try numbers between 1 and 6. 5 seems to work best for me but your mileage may vary.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"EnablePrefetcher"="5"