Today I am going to give you some tips to speed up your Windows XP computer. This should have a big impact on your boot up time but please be careful. I can not be responsible for user error or any other errors that may occur from following these tips. I consider these tips to be useful for someone with moderate computer abilities. This tutorial is not intended for newbies. Let’s get started.

Eliminate unwanted programs from boot up

You will find that many of the programs you install on your system set portions of
themselves to run automatically when you start up your computer. Each program
that runs on startup not only consumes system resources but also extends the length of time it takes your PC to fully boot.

Since it is generally unnecessary to have any programs running in the background
(other than security software like virus-scanners or firewalls) disable your unwanted
startup programs to increase your startup speed and conserve system resources.

The easiest way to go about this task is to use the MSCONFIG utility, which may be
familiar to users of Windows 9x. This handy program contains a list of software
which is set to start when you boot your PC. You can then easily disable and re-enable (if necessary) these items.

Go to ’start\run’ and type ‘msconfig’ to access the utility.

The ’startup’ tab in MSCONFIG provides access to several other applications that are
started at boot up and are running in the background. By examining their Filenames
and directories, you should be able to get a feeling for what is necessary and what is
not.

Be aware than several viruses and worms have a habit of disguising themselves with
authoritative sounding Windows system file names, such as the Win32.spybot.worm
as MSCONFIG32.EXE. Leave these for now if you are not sure.

The next place you should go is ’start\programs\startup’ which is a directory
Windows XP uses to launch application shortcuts on boot-up. If you remove the
shortcuts from this directory, the applications will not load on startup. This directory
can also be a repository for various badness such as spyware and virus software, so
if there are files here which are not shortcuts and you don’t recognize them, you may
wish to consider removing them anyways, as Windows will not place critical files in
this directory.

Scan your PC for spyware and Adware

Along the lines of the above tip, various programs may also be operating on your
computer without your knowledge, transmitting information about your surfing
habits to interested commercial enterprises.

These spyware and adware programs (including the infamous Gator) are bundled in
with many popular freeware programs like Kazaa Media Desktop, and can also be
‘caught’ from websites which host the software as part of their entrance
requirements. Beware of text boxes asking you if you would like to install so-and-so
program while you are surfing.

If you are interested, we wrote a whole article on the topic at www.plaintechtalk.com. To summarize, these
programs can compromise both your privacy and security, as well as your Internet
performance, so removing them is a good idea. To do this, you should use either
Lavasoft’s Adaware or Spybot Search and Destroy.

Both programs are fairly straightforward and easy to use, and will effectively rid your
PC of pesky parasite programs. See the article for more details.

Disable boot virus detection

The boot virus detection setting is a holdover from the early days of computer
viruses, when the greatest threat was from virus programs that wrote themselves
into the boot sector of hard disks or the partition table. Some motherboards are
equipped to monitor any attempt to write to these areas during boot up, and halt the
process with a warning for the user.

Since every version of Windows after 3.1 needs to write to these areas during install,
and the modern virus style of choice is the email worm, this feature is now obsolete.
Disable it for convenience and increased boot speed. It will commonly be found in
the ‘advanced BIOS features’ section of the BIOS.

Change boot sequence.

An easy and effective way of speeding up your loading time is to change the boot
sequence in the BIOS. By altering this sequence so that your system hard drive is
the first device the computer attempts to boot from, you save the precious seconds
needed for the computer to check other devices for bootable media. If you wish to
boot the system from a CD or floppy, you will need to change the order in the BIOS
again, however.

Some BIOS versions include a menu that can be accessed from the POST which
allows the user to choose the device he or she wishes to boot from. To do this, go to
the ‘advanced BIOS features’ section of the BIOS and change the ‘first boot device’
setting to ‘hard disk 0.’

Disable the XP loading screen

To speed up your boot process slightly, disable the Windows XP loading screen. This
can be accomplished easily by opening the MSCONFIG utility (’start\run and type
msconfig’), selecting the ‘boot.ini’ tab and checking the /NOGUIBOOT option.

When you boot your system, you will see a black screen in between POST and the
welcome screen from now on.

Eliminate unwanted fonts to increase boot speed

The Windows XP control panel contains a ‘fonts’ directory which holds all the fonts
currently installed on your system. These can come from Windows itself or from an
application such as Word.

Windows checks and loads these fonts during the startup process, therefore having a
large amount of font files can cause performance to drag during startup. The simple
solution for this (if you do not expect to use the majority of these fonts constantly) is
to move the unnecessary fonts to a new directory elsewhere on the hard disk,
preserving them in case they are needed, but preventing them from loading upon
startup.

To do this:

Create a new directory called ‘font backup’ or something similar on your c: drive.

Go to ’start\control panel\fonts’ and select all fonts (for now, we will be more
selective later). Drag and drop all the fonts into the backup folder you just created.

Things will get garbled for a moment, never fear. Windows XP will automatically reinstall the base fonts that it needs to display text into the fonts folder in a second or two.

Now you have the bare minimum of fonts installed. Go through the backup folder
and cherry pick the fonts that you are sure to use (like Times New Roman or Arial).
If you removed a large volume of fonts, your system should now boot faster.

Turn off BIOS disk detection

Most modern motherboards will attempt to detect any IDE devices, such as hard
drives and CD drives, during the POST sequence each time the computer boots. By
configuring the BIOS with the correct drive information, you can shave a few seconds
off your boot time by avoiding this detection process.

To do this, enter your system’s BIOS setup screen.

Depending on your motherboard, you may have an IDE drive auto-detection menu.
If you do, simply select it to automatically set your drives. If not, configure the
drives through the ’standard CMOS settings’ menu.

Note that some motherboard chipsets (like Nvidia’s Nforce 2) do not allow this auto-detection to be disabled.

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