How To Speed Up Your PC

Hey, this is Nicto10, and I want to show you how to speed up your computer by disabling some things, keeping your hard drive healthy, and cleaning up your registry. This guide works best with Windows XP.

1) Disable the "fancy" Windows effects that could be lagging up your PC:

While holding the Windows logo key, press the Pause|Break key, right above Page Up. Click on the Advanced tab, and under Performance, click Settings. Here, click "Adjust for best performance," and I recommend that after that you tick these boxes:
-Show window contents while dragging
-Smooth edges of screen fonts
-Use common tasks in folders
-Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
But really, it's a matter of personal preference on what you want to leave checked and unchecked, so go ahead and experiment with that. ;)

Also, getting rid of your background will improve performance significantly.

2) Disable useless Windows services.

Windows has many services that do more harm than good, so you should disable them. This is one of the most effective techniques for speeding up your PC. Remember to create a system restore point before doing this.

Go to Start > Run. Type in msconfig and hit enter.

Click on the services tab and disable the following services (you may not have all of these):

-Adobe LM Service
-Indexing Service
-Fast User Switching Compatibility*
-Help and Support
-Macromedia Licensing Service
-Messenger
-NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
-Ncselocpc
-NT LM Security Support Provider
-Protected Storage
-Remote Desktop Help Session Manager**
-Remote Registry
-Security Accounts Manager
-Smart Card***
-Performance Logs and Alerts
-Terminal Services*
-Themes****
-Telnet

*Only disable if you are the only user on your computer
**Only disable if you do not use Remote Desktop
***Only disable if you don't know what a Smart Card is.
****Only disable if you use the Windows Classic theme (you get a performance boost if you do).

Now click on the Startup tab for the next step.

3) Disable some startup programs.

Disable any programs you don't want running at startup. If you have Nero, disable NeroCheck. The rest is up to you.

4) Clean up your registry!

Everytime you uninstall a program, it leaves obsolete registry keys in your registry, slowing your PC down and making it more unstable. I use jv16 PowerTools 2005 to clean up my registry, but many people like Registry Mechanic 4 the best. They are both great programs. If you want to prevent your registry from getting out of hand, take a look at Your Uninstaller! 2004. It removes all traces of programs upon uninstallation and is very easy to use.

5) Clean up your hard drive!

This is very simple. Go download the free program Crap Cleaner from www.ccleaner.com. It's very straightforward. If you want to keep your cookies, make sure to uncheck cookies for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

6) Defrag your hard disk.

Whether you use the FAT32 or NTFS file system, you must defragment your hard drive every now and then. For this, you could simply use the built in Windows Defragmenter, located at Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools, but I like to use Diskeeper 9 Professional for defragmenting. The built-in Windows defragmenter is said to optimize Microsoft programs like Office, and has no automatic features. With Diskeeper, you can set it to automatically defrag your hard drive every few hours so you never have to defrag again. You won't even notice it running.


After following those steps, your computer should be much, much faster! Remember to always use Firefox, too!