Over the last several years working in IT for various companies as a Systems Administrator, Network Administrator,

and Help Desk professional, I’ve written and learned about many ways to increase the performance of not only my PC,
but also of the many PCs on my networks ranging from Windows 98 to Windows Vista.

In this article, I hope to compile a complete list of all the different methods and tricks that I’ve used to get the last bit
of juice out of a slow PC. Whether you are using an old PC or the latest and greatest in hardware, you can still use
some of these to make your PC run faster.

Note that since I write two blogs, Help Desk Geek and Online Tech Tips, I have previously written about many
performance tips already which I will link back to throughout. If I have not written about it, I’ve throw in a link to a
relevant article from some of my other favorite sites. This list is in no particular order, just written in the order that I
could think of them.

There are probably a lot of great tweaks and performance hacks that I’ve missed here, so feel free to chime in with
comments! Enjoy!

1. Defragment your computer hard disk using free tools like SmartDefrag.

2. You should also defragment your Windows pagefile and registry.

3. Clean up hard drive disk space being taken up by temporary files, the recycle bin, hibernation and more. You can
also use a tool like TreeSize to determine what is taking up space on your hard drive.

4. Load up Windows faster by using Startup Delayer, a free program that will speed up the boot time of Windows by
delaying the startup of programs.

5. Speaking of startup programs, many of them are useless and can be turned off. Use the MSCONFIG utility to disable
startup programs.

6. By default, the size of the paging file is controlled by Windows, which can cause defragmentation. Also, the paging
file should be on a different hard drive or partition than the boot partition. Read here on the rules for best paging file
performance.
7. In Windows XP and Vista, the Windows Search indexing service is turned on for all local hard drives. Turning off
indexing is a simple way to increase performance.

8. If you don’t care about all the fancy visual effects in Windows, you can turn them off by going to Performance
Options.

9. You can optimize the Windows boot time using a free program called Bootvis from Microsoft.

10. Clean your registry by removing broken shortcuts, missing shared DLLs, invalid paths, invalid installer references
and more. Read about the 10 best and free registry cleaners.

11. One of the main reasons why PC’s are slow is because of spyware. There are many programs to remove spyware
including Ad-Aware, Giant Antispyware, SUPERAntiSpyware, and more.

12. If you have a deeper spyware infection that is very hard to remove, you can use HijackThis to remove spyware.

13. Remove unwanted pre-installed software (aka junk software) from your new PC using PC Decrapifier.

14. Disable unnecessary Windows services, settings, and programs that slow down your computer.

15. Tweak Windows XP and tweak Windows Vista settings using free programs

16. Disable UAC (User Account Control) in Windows Vista

17. Tweak your mouse settings so that you can copy and paste faster, scroll faster, navigate quickly while browsing and
more. Read here to learn how to tweak your mouse.

18. Delete temporary and unused files on your computer using a free program like CCleaner. It can also fix issues with
your registry.

19. Delete your Internet browsing history, temporary Internet files, cookies to free up disk space.
20. Clean out the Windows prefetch folder to improve performance.

21. Disable the XP boot logo to speed up Windows boot time.

22. Reduce the number of fonts that your computer has to load up on startup.

23. Force Windows to unload DLLs from memory to free up RAM.

24. Run DOS programs in separate memory spaces for better performance.

25. Turn off system restore only if you regularly backup your Windows machine using third party software.

26. Move or change the location of your My Documents folder so that it is on a separate partition or hard drive.

27. Turn off default disk performance monitors on Windows XP to increase performance.

28. Speed up boot time by disabling unused ports on your Windows machine.

29. Use Process Lasso to speed up your computer by allowing it to make sure that no one process can completely
overtake the CPU.

30. Make icons appear faster while browsing in My Computer by disabling search for network files and printers.

31. Speed up browsing of pictures and videos in Windows Vista by disabling the Vista thumbnails cache.

32. Edit the right-click context menu in Windows XP and Vista and remove unnecessary items to increase display
speed.

33. Use the Windows Performance Toolkit and the trace logs to speed up Windows boot time.
34. Speed up your Internet browsing by using an external DNS server such as OpenDNS.

35. Improve Vista performance by using ReadyBoost, a new feature whereby Vista can use the free space on your USB
drive as a caching mechanism.

36. If you have a slow Internet connection, you can browse web pages faster using a service called Finch, which
converts it into simple text.

37. Use Vista Services Optimizer to disable unnecessary services in Vista safely.

38. Also, check out my list of web accelerators, which are programs that try to prefetch and cache the sites you are
going to visit.

39. Speed up Mozilla Firefox by tweaking the configuration settings and by installing an add-on called FasterFox.

40. Learn how to build your own computer with the fastest parts and best hardware.

41. Use a program called TeraCopy to speed up file copying in Windows XP and Vista.

42. Disable automatic Last Access Timestamp to speed up Windows XP.

43. Speed up the Start Menu in Vista by hacking the MenuShowDelay key in the registry.

44. Increase the FileSystem memory cache in Vista to utilize a system with a large amount of RAM.

45. Install more RAM if you are running XP with less than 512 MB or Vista with less than 1 GB of RAM.

46. Shut down XP faster by reducing the wait time to kill hung applications.
47. Make sure that you have selected “Adjust for best performance” on the Performance tab in System Properties.

48. If you are reinstalling Windows, make sure that you partition your hard drives correctly to maximize performance.

49. Use Altiris software virtualization to install all of your programs into a virtual layer that does not affect the registry
or system files.

50. Create and install virtual machines for free and install junk program, games, etc into the virtual machines instead
of the host operating system. Check out Sun openxVM.

51. Do not clear your paging file during shutdown unless it is needed for security purposes. Clearing the paging file
slows down shutdown.

52. If your XP or Vista computer is not using NFTS, make sure you convert your FAT disk to the NTFS file system.

53. Update all of your drivers in Windows, including chipset and motherboard drivers to their latest versions.

54. Every once in a while run the built-in Windows Disk Cleanup utility.

55. Enable DMA mode in Windows XP for IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers in Device Manager.

56. Remove unnecessary or old programs from the Add/Remove dialog of the Control Panel.

57. Use a program click memtest86 or Prime95 to check for bad memory on your PC.

58. Determine your BIOS version and check the manufactures website to see if you need to update your BIOS.

59. Every once in a while, clean your mouse, keyboard and computer fans of dust and other buildup.

60. Replace a slow hard drive with a faster 7200 RPM drive, SATA drive, or SAS drive.
61. Changing from Master/Slave to Cable Select on your hard drive configuration can significantly decrease your boot
time.

62. Perform a virus scan on your computer regularly. If you don’t want to install virus protection, use some of the free
online virus scanners.

63. Remove extra toolbars from your Windows taskbar and from your Internet browser.

64. Disable the Windows Vista Sidebar if you’re not really using it for anything important. All those gadgets take up
memory and processing power.

65. If you have a SATA drive and you’re running Windows Vista, you can speed up your PC by enabling the advanced
write caching features.

66. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts for Windows, Microsoft Word, Outlook, or create your own keyboard
shortcuts.

67. Turn off the Aero visual effects in Windows Vista to increase computer performance.

68. If you are technically savvy and don’t mind taking a few risks, you can try to overclock your processor.

69. Speed up the Send To menu in Explorer by typing “sendto” in the Run dialog box and deleting unnecessary items.

70. Make sure to download all the latest Windows Updates, Service Packs, and hot fixes as they “normally” help your
computer work better.

71. Make sure that there are no bad sectors or other errors on your hard drive by using the ScanDisk orchkdsk utility.

72. If you are not using some of the hardware on your computer, i.e. floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, USB ports, IR ports,
Firewire, etc, then go into your BIOS and disable them so that they do not use any power and do not have to be loaded
during boot up.
73. If you have never used the Recent Documents feature in Windows, then disable it completely as a long list can
affect PC performance.

74. One basic tweak that can help in performance is to disable error reporting in Windows XP

75. If you don’t care about a pretty interface, you should use the Windows Classic theme under Display Properties.

76. Disable short filenames if you are using NTFS by running the following command: fsutil behavior set disable8dot3
1. It will speed up the file creation process.

77. If you have lots of files in a single folder, it can slow down Explorer. It’s best to create multiple folders and spread
out the files between the folders.

78. If you have files that are generally large, you might want to consider increasing the cluster size on NTFS to 16K or
even 32K instead of 4K. This will help speed up opening of files.

79. If you have more than one disk in your PC, you can increase performance by moving your paging file to the second
drive and formatting the volume using FAT32 instead of NTFS.

80. Turn off unnecessary features in Vista by going to Control Panel, choosing Uninstall a program, and then clicking on
Turn Windows features on and off. You can turn off Remote Differential Compression, Tablet PC components, DFS
replication service, Windows Fax & Scan, Windows Meeting Space, and lots more.

81. Install a free or commercial anti-virus program to help protect against viruses, etc. Make sure to use an anti-virus
program that does not hog up all of your computer resources.

82. Completely uninstall programs and applications using a program like Revo Uninstaller. It will get rid of remnants
left behind by normal uninstalls.

83. If you know what you are doing, you can install several hard drives into your machine and set them up in RAID 0,
RAID 5, or other RAID configurations.
84. If you are using USB 1.0 ports, upgrade to 2.0. If you have a Firewire port, try to use that instead of a USB port
since Firewire is faster than USB right now.

85. Remove the drivers for all old devices that may be hidden in Device Manager that you no longer use.

86. A more extreme option is to choose a faster operating system. If you find Vista to be slow, go with Windows XP.
Switching to Mac or Linux is also an option.

87. One of the easiest ways to speed up your PC is to simply reformat it. Of course, you want to backup your data, but
it is the best way to get your computer back to peak performance.

88. Speed up Internet browsing in IE by increasing the number of max connections per server in the registry.

89. If you use uTorrent to download torrents, you can increase the download speeds by tweaking the settings.

90. If you have a desktop background, make sure it’s a small and simple bitmap image rather than a fancy picture off
the Internet. The best is to find a really small texture and to tile it.

91. For the Virtual Memory setting in Windows (right-click on My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Performance
Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory), make sure the MIN and MAX are both the same number.

92. If you search on Google a lot or Wikipedia, you can do it much faster on Vista by adding them to the Vista Start
Menu Instant Search box.

93. If you have a custom built computer or a PC that was previously used, make sure to check the BIOS for optimal
settings such as enabled CPU caches, correctly set IDE/SATA data transfer modes, memory timings, etc. You can also
enable Fast/Quick boot if you have that option.

94. If you have a SCSI drive, make sure the write cache is enabled. You can do so by opening the properties of the SCSI
drive in Windows.

95. If you have a machine with an older network card, make sure to enable the onboard processor for the network
card, which will offload tasks from the CPU.

96. If you are using Windows Vista, you can disable the Welcome Center splash screen that always pops up.

97. If you already have anti-spyware software installed, turn off Windows Defender protection.
98. If you are running a 32-bit version of Windows and have 4GB of RAM or more, you can force Windows to see and
use all of the RAM by enabling PAE.

99. Buy a new computer!!! Pretty easy eh?

I’m sure I have missed out on lots of performance tweaks, tips, hacks, etc, so feel free to post comments to add to the
list! Enjoy!

Windows XP is a landmark in Microsoft’s history. After a couple of unstable releases, Windows XP ironed out all the
creases. Even today, Windows XP is more stable and considered a better OS than Vista by many.

No matter how stable, any (Windows) operating system requires proper care, optimization and tuning to keep it quick
and responsive over long periods. Temporary files, crumbs of partially (un)installed programs, cached files and similar
add to the bloat and make Windows XP slower over extended usage.

However, following a few simple tips, we can keep XP squeaky-clean and fast – just what you want. Follow these easy
tips:

1. Install only necessary apps.

Installing every application you come across, trying them out for a few days and then uninstalling them is a bad idea.
Install only the important applications, and then stay with it – do not uninstall. The reason is that more often than not,
applications leave various files (temporary, shared etc.) even after uninstalling them. Over time, multiple
install/uninstalls can lead to an unhealthy system with unnecessary bloat (and hence slowdown).
2. Install a good anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall.

Though the chances of being infected with malware is limited if you access only legitimate sites and downloads, it is
still better to be on the safe side. Installing an anti-spyware is important, because spyware can simultaneously slow
down your system and use internet bandwidth. Refer to my 8 Freeware for Windows post for good software.

3. Defragment your harddrive.

Defragmenting hard drive is commonplace, and is advisable. However, the default defragmentation app on Windows
defragmentation is very slow, so using a third-party tool is a good idea. PowerDefragmenter accomplishes this task
effectively. See a how-to by Shankar.

4. Use multiple partitions cleverly.

Using multiple partitions can improve data seek times significantly. Create partitions for operating system, program
files (and use this partition as the location for all app installs), documents and media. Try to keep the partitions small
in size, except for the media partition.

If you have more than one hard drive, use one of them for OS, and the other for other files (media, programs, My
Documents etc.). This improves performance, and also increases the longevity of the hard drive on which the OS is
located, since the data access is made for OS only. You can check the eHow page about hard disk partitions.

5. Optimize page-file usage.

Windows controls the page-file usage by default, but performance can be improved by setting the limits manually. Go
to Control Panel > System > Advanced, and click the settings button under Performance. In the Performance dialog
box, click the Advanced tab. Click on the Change button under Virtual Memory. In the dialog box that comes up, click
‘Custom’ and set the value at 1.5 times that of your system RAM. For example, if your computer has 1GB RAM, enter
1536 (remember, 1 GB=1024 MB).

6. Control startup applications:

Startup items can plague your computer with slower startup times. The best way to improve boot times is to disable
unnecessary startup programs. Unlike other tweaks mentioned in this post, this tweak will be different for everyone.
Common apps to disable include Skype, Yahoo Messenger, iTunes etc. However, ensure that you do not disable
antivirus, anti-spyware and firewall applications.

Not sure how to do this? Check this TweakXP article.

7. Ditch Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer renders pages poorly and gets a lot of flaming for it. However, an even more important aspect is
security. Windows and Internet Explorer are tightly integrated. This means that any vulnerability in the browser can
make the OS also vulnerable. Spyware attacks, phishing etc. are commonplace on IE. IE 7 is better in terms of security,
but still has creases to iron out. A better idea would be to get a third-party browser – Firefox or Opera.

If only it was so easy! But actually, it's not so hard to take action on those items I listed above. Here's the scoop on
how to implement each step.

Apply Windows Updates

If you run Windows and you use the Internet, you simply MUST stay up to date with the system patches that come out
in response to the privacy and security exploits that are discovered every week. Failure to do so is an open invitation
to hackers and crackers to invade your privacy and enslave your computer in a spam spewing network. To get the
latest fixes and configure your system for automatic updates, open Internet Explorer, click on Tools, then Windows
Update.

Clean out Viruses and Malware

Are you running a good anti-virus program, with automatic updates? Have you scanned your system for spyware,
adware and other unwanted pests? If not, see my article about the best free anti-virus and anti-spyware programs for
details on how to protect yourself from those risks. Viruses and malware can slow down your system a LOT, because
they use your resources to generate popup ads, send spam, and often interfere with the operation of good programs.
Remove Unnecessary Software

You may have a bunch of software packages on your hard drive that are no longer needed, or they were gratuitously
installed when you downloaded some other package. Toolbars, file-sharing programs, free email enhancers, online
shopping "companions" and download managers are notorious for this practice. These uninvited guests can put a big
drag on your startup time, cause web pages to load slowly, and generally bog down your computer. Go to Control
Panel, then Add/Remove Software to see what packages are installed. Remove the ones you know you don't need,
and do a web search to learn about the ones you're not sure about.

Scrub That Hard Disk

Both Windows and application programs tend to leave temporary files lying around on your hard drive, taking up
space needlessly. A hard drive that is close to being full can cause Windows to act strangely, and will slow down or
interfere with efficient disk access and virtual memory operations. And if you surf the web a lot, your temporary
internet files folder can become quite large, causing Internet Explorer to slow down or malfunction. Cleaning up
unneeded files, scanning for disk errors and defragmenting the hard drive can help to restore some zip to your system.
First, open My Computer, right-click on the C: Drive icon, select Properties, then click on Disk Cleanup. (Optional:
Select the More Options tab to find and remove even more unwanted files.) To run a defrag, open My Computer,
right-click on the C: Drive icon, select Properties, then Tools. Click the Check Now button to scan your disk for errors.
When the scan is complete, click the Defragment Now button to run the defrag, which reorganizes your hard disk so
Windows can find and access files more efficiently. (It's highly recommended that you close all running programs and
disable your screen saver before running a defrag. Otherwise, updates to your files may trigger defrag to restart
endlessly.)

Okay, Now Take a Breath...

We're more than half-way done with the process of cleaning the junk out of your computer. The rest of the steps may
seem a little more geeky, and you can skip any or all of them if you don't feel comfortable digging a little deeper into
the workings of the Windows operating system. But there is definitely bang for the buck here. Some of peskiest
Windows performance problems can be solved by giving attention to these areas.

Slim Your Startup Selections

There are certain programs that Windows will start every time you boot up your system, and during the startup phase,
they're all jockeying for a slice of your CPU. Extra or unwanted items in the startup list will defintely increase your
startup time, perhaps by several minutes. To manage the list of startup programs, click on Start / Run, then type
MSCONFIG. Press Enter, then select the Startup tab. If you see items in the list you know you don't need to run at
startup time, UNcheck the box(es) next to them and press Apply. Some common examples are things related to AOL,
RealPlayer, Napster, instant messengers, and video managers. If you're not sure about an item, no big deal. You can
turn it off, restart your PC, and see if everything seems to work. If not, you can always go back and re-enable an item
in the Startup list. This helpful list or this page may help you decide what to keep or drop.

Clean Your Registry

The Windows Registry is a database that enables the operating system to track the relationships between hardware
and software. Unfortunately, problems with the registry can make Windows run slower. Sometimes an "orphaned"
registry entry can confuse Windows during startup and cause a delay. And in general, slimming down your registry will
make Windows run faster. There are several utility programs that will clean your system registry of unnecessary and
erroneous entries.

Read more about the Windows registry, and find some free programs you can use to correct registry problems in my
article Do I Need a Registry Cleaner?

RAM and Virtual Memory Settings

When you run out of physical (RAM) memory, Windows will use a check of your hard disk to create virtual memory.
This is a nice feature, because it allows application programs to access huge amounts of memory. The only problem
with virtual memory is that it's a lot slower than real RAM. So installing extra RAM on the system board is a good idea
because it's pretty cheap and easy to pop in. Find out how much your system will accommodate and install the
maximum amount. Extra RAM will probably do more to boost your overall system performance than anything else!
But getting back to Virtual Memory, it's wise to let Windows manage the amount, unless you are a Wizard, with a
capital W. Go to Control Panel / System / Advanced, then press the Settings button under Performance. Click
Advanced again, then press the Change button under Virtual Memory. If System managed size is selected, you're all
set. If you want to fiddle with the Custom Size options, be my guest!

Turn Off Extraneous System Services

We're heading into uber-geek territory here, so be forewarned. Windows doesn't know exactly how you're going to
use your computer, so it starts a whole bunch of system services that manage network connections, database access,
error reporting, remote access and other nerdy-sounding things. You may not need all these services, and disabling
some of them can reduce your startup time and system overhead. But choosing which ones to nuke is a bit daunting,
unless you are an expert on Windows operating system internals. Here's my advice... look at these explanations and
advice then disable only the ones that you're sure about. If you encounter a problem, you can always go back and turn
a service back on.