How many times haven’t I heard this line. Almost daily I receive emails with this question. Let’s take a look at the things that will definately help for a markedly increase in speed on your PC.

1. Clean out your registry

Ok, you’ve heard this one before, and think that this would be one of those articles, don’t worry, things will get much better. The only one thing that I want you to do differently, is keep this step for last, I just mentioned it to get it out of the way.

There’s only one program that I will let near my PC’s registry, and that is Crap Cleaner.  Remember that this should be the last step!

Disable unused fonts

Sounds funny? Not really. Windows loads all the fonts on your system into it’s memory at runtime, resulting in your ever growing font collection laying idle in it’s memory, forcing everything else onto the swapfile. This means that the “fast” ram memory is used to hold the unused fonts,  while the slow “swapfile” holds your current programs.

So what we need is a way to disable and enable fonts on the fly. My weapon of choice here is Fontfrenzy. This program is a supercol font management tool that will disable and reinstall fonts on your system with the utmost of ease.

3. Clean up your startup manager.

Here again, we are trying to force extra space available in your ram. As you instal programs, a lot of them force themselves to load at start time, or to load update managers at startup. Microsoft office and Adobe is also two programs that loads a pre-loader into the startup menu, enabling it to launch quickly when needed. This all takes up ram, which in turn will slow down your memory.

Start-up manager will assist you in cleaning out your start-up function. A small word of warning here, is to make sure that you do not disable nessecary items. Luckily, there is an  forum and wiki on the startup manager’s site, where you’ll get assistance with your questions.

4. Disable Indexing services

Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:

  • Go to Start
  • Click Settings
  • Click Control Panel
  • Double-click Add/Remove Programs
  • Click the Add/Remove Window Components
  • Uncheck the Indexing services
  • Click Next

5. Speedup Folder Browsing

You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

  • Open My Computer
  • Click on Tools menu
  • Click on Folder Options
  • Click on the View tab.
  • Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
  • Click Apply
  • Click Ok
  • Reboot your computer


6. Optimise Display Settings

Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:

  • Go to Start
  • Click Settings
  • Click Control Panel
  • Click System
  • Click Advanced tab
  • In the Performance tab click Settings
  • Leave only the following ticked:
  • Show shadows under menus
  • Show shadows under mouse pointer
  • Show translucent selection rectangle
  • Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
  • Use visual styles on windows and buttons