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During Booting, we use to leave our desktop,
do something else until windows has completly loaded, if it
takes too much time to load. This tip will help you to increase
the booting time of your computer. Firstly, you should stop
some programs in the taskbar and the TSR(Terminate and stay
resistant) 
These programs take up much of Windows resources and may
even cause a system lock up. The user programs found notified
in the taskbar are very easy to spot and shut down(e.g go back,
time up, Real Player start...) Just move your cursor over the
iconopen their corresponding programs and disable autostart(
preventing the programs to run in background). On the next startup,
windows will load much faster. But the TSR (Special programs
such as drivers, maintenance, pchealth, scanreg...) still slow
down the startup. One method is to use the ctrl, alt and del
to open the program manager in windows 9x, xp, select the program(
Warning: Do not shut down windows programs such as systray,
explorer, loadqm, mdm and hidserv) and click on end task. The
best method is to prevent them from starting by starting the
microsoft configuration utility (Start>Run>msconfig),
click on the startup tab and uncheck the pre-user run programs
(do not uncheck the machine run). You also can prevent programs
to start by emptying the startup folder, found in the start
menu, right click that apply and select delete. On the next
startup, windows will start up to 50 times faster(depending
on how much programs you prevented to start)
- If windows continuously locks and cannot run programs or programs
won't create new files telling "insufficient memory to perform
the current operation" then you have to manage the virtual
memory, if you have special disk utilities such as Norton utilities
or if you have a spare partition. This is also called the swap
file, i.e. a file which windows keeps as a virtual memory on the
hard disk in case physical memory(RAM) is not sufficient. Managing
its size will prevent time windows wasting time in processing
the continuously resized file. Right click on My computer, select
properties, click on the performance tab and click on the virtual
memory button.
- Do you still want to save time during booting? Then, this tip
will help you. Why do you continue to shut down your computer
during a job, because you urgently need to leave your computer
for any reason? For shorter times before continuing your work,
put it into standby by selecting standby in the shut down dialog.
For longer times, you may want to switch off the computer instead.
Windows still has a utility to save time, the hibernating(Windows
ME, 2000, xp). This will save all operations to a section of the
drive, remembering which application was open. When you start
your computer next time, you'll see "Returning to windows"
and in a few seconds, windows will appear exactly as when you
went on hibernating. Note: Hibernating and standby will appear
only if your computer supports it!
- Configurating windows as a network server will also increase
its speed. Windows will allow files to be accessed at a faster
speed. How to do it: right click my computer, click on properties,
click on the performance tab and select file system. In the popup,
select Network Server in the drop down list of 'typical role of
this computer'
- To free windows resources, you must clean up some folders, such
as the windows temp folder, the temporary internet files, the
recycle bin... Each of these programs(exept temp) has its own
cleaner, but I recommend the windows disk cleaner: Start>programs>accesories>system
tools>disk cleanup. Select the drive(normally c if you have
only one hard disk) tick the folders you want to empty and click
on ok.
- You may have heard many times about defragmenting your hard
drive, but have never done it. This is very important as it improves
the drive writing and reading capacity of the drive and it rearanges
your files so that they load faster. When you save a file, Windows
will write to the first free clusters, wether they are in order,
fragmented or not. This slows down file access. I recommend that
you run the disk defragmenter at least monthly to keep your hard
disk running smoothly.
- Windows may also run slowly if there are folder errors or the
surface of the disk cannot be written to. This is true!. Run scandisk
as often as you can(normally once a week) to prevent the resources
from dropping down and to keep your system from errors.
- Do you have a spare ram module? What are you doing with it?
Install it on your system as windows always need memory and this
will enable you to run more programs at a time. If you cannot
install it yourself, contact the support section of your computer
reseller to do it for you.
- When you uninstall any program, it always leave traces of it
in the registry. When windows will want to load the program(as
it still exists in the registry, windows will search for the program
even if it doesn't exist, this happens mainly if the program loaded
automatically when you start windows). Make a registry scan(run>scanreg)
to fix the problem, or if you know how to manage the registry,
delete the key yourself(Caution!!!). Next time, use the proper
uninstaller or the windows add/remove programs(control panel>add/remove
programs) when you want to remove a program. DO NOT delete
the files yourself.
- Finally, prevent antivirus programs and windows from checking
for new floppy disks on shut down(DO NOT DISABLE IT ON START UP
AS YOU NEED FLOPPIES TO TROUBLESHOOT YOUR SYSTEM IN CASE OF FAILURE)
to save the shut down times.
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