For gamers, Xp is widely reffered to as "Bloat-ware". In having unwanted and undeeded services for the average pc user and gamer. Let us end the sluggish world of Xp and speed things up for gaming. In this short, simple but effective approach you can speed up Xp for gaming and any other tasks you may have it carry out !
Here are the tweaks i use every time i install Xp, they are very safe and already built in:
- First of all the most obvious: For gamers, loosing the Xp eye-candy really speeds things up and you will notice it right away. Sure, it doesn't look as good but where do you really want your resources going ? How good windows looks are how well it runs your application software? Right click on My Computer and select properties, select the Advanced tab, then click settings, choose the option "Adjust for best performance and press ok.
(If you simply MUST have some eye-candy, selct the last option (Apply visual styles on windows and buttons) - I disable error reporting as it is not needed unless you are a dedicated Ms fanatic and want to help them out like that. So click on error reporting and simply select "Disable error reporting. leave checked the "But notify me if critical errors occour".
- If you don't plan on having another person access your pc from somewhere else than i would disable Remote Access, simply click on the Remote Access tab and uncheck "Allow remote access invitations to be sent to this computer".
- I spend well enough time on the internet to know when a critical update comes out for Windows so to save on resources i disable Automatic Updates, simply click the Automatic Updates tab, uncheck "Keep my computer up to date....." and press ok. (But check Windows update on a weekly basis)
- If you use a third party back-up program then i would turn off System Restore. I don't have a third party app for this purpose so i leave it on (and if you don't have on either, LEAVE IT ALONE), but if you have one you can turn it off by clicking on the System Restore tab and checking the "Turn off System Restore" box.
- Next one is very good: We will disable the Indexing service for the harddrive. This service runs in the backround and indexes your files so that whenever you go to search for something you will find it quicker. Me, i don't care about faster searches in Xp and this is a System hog, so let us disable it by opening up My Computer and right clicking on your primary drive, select properties and uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for faster file searching". make sure the box is checked that says "Apply change to (drive letter):\, subfolders and files" and click ok.
(You may get an error saying something like "cannot access this file", simply click "ignore all") - Ok now onto Windows sounds. You know the little musical snippet you hear when Windows starts, the clicking sound when you go back and forth through pages on the web, the horrible error sound you get when something is not right ? Of course you do, so you realize it is about as helpful as.....(insert humorous line). So open up control panel, double click "Sounds And Devices", go to the sounds tab and under "Sound Scheme" drop down and select "No Sounds", it will then ask you if you wish to save your current sound profile (USELESS) choose no and press ok.
At this stage i would recommend rebooting your machine to reap the full effects of your labour. These are what i would consider "Safe Tweaks", there are of course many other things you could do to speed up Xp, but at least this way nothing can go wrong. I use this configuration every time i install Xp and can without a doubt, attest to its great results.
See for yourself and super-charge your Xp today !!!
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