How to Accelerate Windows XP Pro
Author: Greg Monkiewicz
e-mail: gmonkiewicz@gmail.com
Version: 0.10
Last updated on: April 14, 2005

---------
Contents:
---------
1. Methods to Accelerate WinXP
   1.Latest Drivers
   2.Disabling bells and whistles
   3.Tidy Systray apps
   4.Unecessary Services
   5.Customizing Windows' preset display folder
2. Credits
3. Legal
4. Contact Information

-----------------------------
How to Accelerate Windows XP:
-----------------------------

---------------------------
Getting the latest drivers:
---------------------------

First thing that you must do is to get the latest drivers for all of your
hardware. Getting the latest drivers for your hardware can give you a big
performance boost and make your PC more stable at the same time. It is not
needed to update all of the drivers in your rig, but you should just to the
crucial components. It is recommended to update your videocard, motherboard
chipset, and sound card drivers regularly. Drivers for your USB devices and
such do not need to be updated on a regular basis unless you are experiencing
problems.

--------------------------------------
Disabling Windows' bells and whistles:
--------------------------------------

Secondly you should disable all of Windows' bells and whistles which are not
needed. Windows XP is the best looking operating system from Microsoft so far
but those good looking things do not come for free. Fancy new UI, drop shadows
and other adornments can negatively impact your computer's performance. The
good thing is that these features are fairly easy to disable.
First you go to your System Properties by pressing the windows key and the
Pause/Break key. Go to the Advanced tab and press the Settings button in the
performance section. On the Visual Effects tab of the Performance dialog (see
below), you can change the settings to "Adjust for best performance" or you
can customize it yourself. When you are done, press OK. Now go over to Display
Properties by right clicking an open area of your Desktop and clicking
Properties. Then go to the Appearance tab and click Effects. For best
performance make sure that all of the options are unchecked. Making Windows
simply draw all of your Icons on your monitor can impact performance
especially if you have a lot of them. You can quickly and easily hide them
under the rug, metaphorically speaking, by just right-clicking an open area of
your Desktop, going to Arrange Icons and by unchecking "Show Desktop Icons"
and boom your problem is solved.


---------------------------------------
Keeping System Tray apps nice and tidy:
---------------------------------------

It seems that now a days every damn application that is installed on your
computer seems to dump some sort of horrible little applet into your System
Tray. People are sick of this problem and wish to condemn these little buggers
the death penalty. Do not worry since this procedure is easy and can be done
by all. To kill the apps, you simply need to get rid of them at their source.
You can visit the Registry, the Start up folder (Start>All Programs>Startup)
and the other secret places where software applications can hide their evil
doing. It is simpler though to use the msconfig tool. To do this you must go
to Start>Run and then type "msconfig.exe". When the app opens to the Startup
tab. Most, if not all, of your Start up applications can be disabled here but
the only difficult part is to be able to tell which you should disable and
which you should keep. To find out what every Startup Item does you should
stretch the command heading far enough to the right so that you can see the
entire path. Most of the time you will be able to tell the name or
manufacturer of the application by looking at the place where it is saved on
your hard drive. If the path to the app does not give you a hint, you can open
My Computer and hunt it down. It is suggested that you leave alone any
applications that use rundll32 to run since if you mess with those you can
disrupt necessary and vital Windows processes.  The easiest way to find out
what each app does it to search for the item's name in Google
Almost certainly someone else on the internet has already tracked it down. To
finish this you must simply uncheck the box next to each app's name that you
do not want and  reboot your PC. Now wasn't that simple?


------------------------------------------------------------
Turning off unnecessary services in Windows XP Professional:
------------------------------------------------------------

Windows XP Pro by default loads more than 20 services that do everything that
you could possibly imagine such as easy wireless networking to monitoring your
computer's health. Many of these services can be safely disabled by home users
which will probably never to be used. This step will be able to free up memory
and the occasional CPU cycles. To disable a service you must go to the Control
Panel, then Administrative Tools, then the Services hotkey. Once the app is
open right-click the service you want disabled and select Properties. Then you
must simply change the Startup Type to Disabled or Manual. Disabling the wrong
service could cause odd behavior and weird things will happen, so keep track
of what you are modifying since if you begin to experience unexplained PC
phenomena you should then re-enable the services that you have turned off.
Below are a few services are that are 100% safe to be disabled.

Application Management: Do you belong to a network? Ever plan on remotely
installing an application? If not then you are safe to disable this service.

ClipBook: This service lets you share stuff on your clipboard with other
people across the network.

Distributed Link Tracking Client: Another network based service which
automatically updates your shortcuts to files on remote volumes if the are
moved. If you do not use a file server then this service is not needed.

Error Reporting: This service automatically reports errors which can get
pretty annoying, especially if you are dealing wih a misbehaving application.
You kill this service permanently to disable the error reports.

Help and Support: If you do not plan on using the Help and Support Center then
you can safely disable it. I personally would recommend you to set it
to "Manual" since if you do decide to use it, it will enable itself right away
and when not in use it will remain off.

Messenger: This naughty little service allows messages to be transmitted
between clients and servers which normally take a form of spam. Kill it.

Remote registry Allows other comps to change your comps registry.

Telnet: If you plan on allowing remote users access your computer thru Telnet
clients then you need this service, otherwise feel free to kill it.

TPC/IP NetBIOS Helper: You only need this service running if you use NetBIOS
over TCP/IP. If you do not then you can feel free to disable it.

Wireless Zero Configuration: This service provides automatic configuration for
802.11 adapters. If you do not use a wireless device feel free to disable it.


-------------------------------------------
Customizing Windows' preset folder display:
-------------------------------------------

Whenever you open a file on your PC, Microsoft presents you with preset folder
options on the left side of the dialog box.. Thanks, but usually we don't open
items from our history or Favorites very often. This is the how to put what
you want in that list.
Go into the Registry and
find "HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comd
lg32".
Create a new key called "Placesbar".
Inside this key create a string named "Place0" and point it to another
location on your drive.
An easier way to do this tweak is to download TweakUI, which allows you to
customize your menus and much more. Just open Common Dialogs, Placesbar, and
then select or type the location of your preferred folder.
This hack however will not change the same dialogs in Office. If you haev
Office XP you can add new folders to the Placesbar by going to File>Open and
browsing to the folder you want to add. Once you have it selected, go to Tools
and click "Add to My Places".