- 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) to save the shut
down times.
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