Ten Windows XP Performance Tweaks
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So you finally put that “dream machine” together, eh? You got the dual core processor you wanted with the three gigs of RAM and the dual SLI video cards, so what’s next? Well, it's time to load your operating system.
Now Windows XP Professional has completely loaded and all your drivers are in and running smoothly. It's time to start using all that horse power. Wait a minute. Simple tasks aren't going any faster than on your three-year-old machine! Everything should be running faster, but it's not delivering enough speed to justify all the time and expense you've just put into building this monstrously fast super computer.
Well, just like a car your PC needs to have its performance fine-tuned in order to be a championship-winning contender instead of just a trailer queen. In order to keep your performance scores high you also need regular maintenance to keep everything humming smoothly.
Windows, in what I refer to as its "stock" position, is a great operating system with plenty of bells and whistles. But if what you want is performance and lots of it, the cup holder and seat warmers your stock car came with are nothing but extra ballast holding you back from taking the pole position. In order to get some record performance out of your new, or existing, PC try some of the following tweaks and adjustments and see how well you do.
There are a number of programs out there with which to tune Windows, and we're going to go through a small number of them to identify some of the best to use for both performance and regular maintenance. Some of the maintenance programs will include long time favorites such as Spybot: Search and Destroy, Lavasoft's Adaware, and CCleaner. We'll also be looking at several tuning programs for Windows such as Erunt, RegCleaner, Driver Heaven's TuneXP and Microsoft's own BootVis program as well as several manual tweaks.
Next: Manual Tweaks >>
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