PC Tips for Speed Up Your Windows XP or Vista
Ever wonder how easy it is to speed your Windows Vista machine and make it run faster? Yes, its so simple that you dont need to be a computer technician to accomplish this. Microsoft has done a fabulous job to improve overall reliability as well as security in Windows Vista. I meant much better than Windows XP, and yet, there are some reports showing that Vista is outperformed by Windows XP to some extent. But dont worry, we are going to show you how to improve the perfermance of Windows Vista in 30 seconds. Yes, only 30 seconds!
Less is more. This applies to Windows XP as well. Visual effects (graphics and animation) is one of the main culprits that occupy most of the system resource and slowing your computer. By disabling visual effects, your machine gain dramatic improvement on performance. Here is how you do it in Windows Vista:
1. Right-click on My Computer (if you dont see it on your desktop, you can access it from Start->Computer)
2. Then choose Properties, and then click on Advanced system settings.
3. From Advanced, click on Settings.
4. Then check Adjust for best performance under Visual Effects.
5. Click Apply then OK.
That is it! Do you see how simple it is? You dont need to purchase the latest hardware to boost the performance on your computer!
PC Tips for Browsing Workgroup without windows Freezing
I’m making this how to for those people that want to see the computers from their network but are annoyed by Windows Xp.
Why are they annoyed? When you try to access a workgroup to see it’s computers, windows explorer freezes for a few seconds while searching for computers, that sucks.
Using Command Prompt you can overcome fast and easy this problem.
1.Click Start and then click Run, a box will open.
2. Type in the box: CMD and command prompt will open.
3. Type in the command prompt box: net view
4. A list of computers in the workgroup will be shown.
NOTE: Keep in mind that computers behind a firewall will not appear in the list.
PC Tips for Windows XP Password Backup
Have a fear you will forget your password, or the adminstrator password. Well, back it up. I’d personally not worry about it all, but it’s a feature.
Backup up login password:
open Control Panel
User Accounts and Family Safety
User Accounts
Create a password reset disk
Follow wizard
Insert USB stick
Type current password
To use Backup login password:
boot pc
At login screen, press ok, or type in an incorrect password
Select reset password
insert your flash drive/floppy disk
Follow wizard
PC Tips for Making Programs Load Faster
This little tweak tends to work for most programs. If your program doesn’t load properly just undo the change. For any program:
- Right-click on the icon/shortcut you use to launch the program
- Select properties
- In the ‘target’ box, add ‘ /prefetch:1′ at the end of the line.
- Click “Ok”
Voila – your programs will now load faster.
PC Tips for Improving Swapfile Performance
If you have more than 256MB of RAM this tweak will considerably improve your performance. It basically makes sure that your PC uses every last drop of memory (faster than swap file) before it starts using the swap file.
- Go to Start then Run
- Type “msconfig.exe” then ok
- Click on the System.ini tab
- Expand the 386enh tab by clicking on the plus sign
- Click on new then in the blank box type”ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1″
- Click OK
- Restart PC
PC Tips for Disabling Unnecessary Services
Because Windows XP has to be all things to all people it has many services running that take up system resources that you will never need. Below is a list of services that can be disabled on most machines:
To disable these services:
- Go to Start and then Run and type “services.msc”
- Doubleclick on the service you want to change
- Change the startup type to ‘Disable”