We've posted Martin's Win XP Tweak Guide. Have a look & let us know what you think.

Windows XP Tweaking Guide

Oh, the L2 cache tweak is also incorrect. Again check Microsoft's site for info. Basically this only "possibly" affects CPUs with external L2 cache. That pretty much means no CPUs made within the past 4 years.

As from http://techspot.com/tweaks/winxp_services;

QoS info - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q316666

L2 cache info - No link, but here's the quote from their guide on it;

SecondLevelDataCache. For those of you with older CPUs (Pre-Pentium 2 basically), this DWORD Value specifies the amount of L2 (Secondary) Cache on your CPU. Normally this amount will be determined via the HAL, although with older CPUs with off-die L2 Cache this may not be the case. Those with semi-modern CPUs (Pentium 2 or newer) should leave this set to 0 (As should those with Multiple CPUs). If you have greater than, or less than 256KB of L2 Cache on your (old) CPU then Right click on this entry & select Modify. Select the Decimal button & enter in the amount of L2 Cache available, e.g. If you have 512KB L2 Cache then enter in 512. Thanks Ojatex. Where Windows XP in unable to determine the L2 Cache available & this is set to 0 it will default to assuming 256KB L2 Cache is available.

I have come to find another error in your posting... Norton SystemWorks NAV and NIS all have problems with one setting you listed as only having to do with old computers... the Following Key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dword:00000001
"NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001

this needs to be disable by changing it to
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dword:00000000

thus enabling NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation


Thought you all might need to know this... This crappy post wasted most of my week end...

Microsoft link clarifying this key:

[link name=]http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q183/0/63.ASP&NoWebContent=1[/link]

I thought I would say that this is an excellent summary of possible performant changes ('tweaks') to the WinXP OS.

Some of these reply posts are quite funny, to me. I guess if you are about to embark on these types of changes, perhaps you should actually *know* what it is your are doing to your system?

"Editing the registry directly can have serious, unexpected consequences that can prevent the system from starting and require that you reinstall..."

also dont apply the large system cache tweak unless you want a system cache working set that can expand to physical memory, minus 4 MB

you may experience a severe and random decrease in performance. For example, this decrease in performance can include very slow system performance, stop errors, an inability to start the computer, devices or applications that do not load, and system instability.

see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895932