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Saxonia Issue 03 Part 027
OPtimising Windows XP
By Rumrunner/VOID
l
Now, why do I who hate Microsoft, PC's and Intelprocessors want to write
such an article? It's quite simple, really, many people have to work with
Intel and Microsoftbased computers even though they don't want to. In such
a case, it's necessary to optimise the computer if you don't want to go mad
waiting long periods of time, even to boot up the computer.
Right, the first thing you should do is to take a look at the taskmanager
after you have started the computer. Control-alt-delete is useful for more
than resetting, among others, it's the quickest way of getting the
taskmanager up and running. Don't mind whatever programs it tells you that's
running, go to tasks and take a look there. Also jot down the memoryusage
displayed in the bottomline of the window. It's possible to come down to
40-50 megabyte used and most of what doesn't work then are things that you
don't need anyway.
Right, so take a look at the tasks running and try to find out what they
are. Shut down whatever you don't need. It usually doesn't matter if you
quit something that you shouldn't have, the tasks which are really
neccessary are not possible to close anyway. You can even quit the explorer
and the computer works well. This is the easiest way of gaining more memory
when that's needed. If you need to start new programs, simply start a
doswindow before closing the explorer or start new programs from the
appropriate menuchoice in the taskmanager. Of if you want to be really
tough, you can use the program manager from Windows 3.11 and so on instead.
That's right, it still comes in the XP-package, just type in progman to
start it.
Right, this isn't the way to do optimisations that are meant to last. You
ofcourse don't want to shut down lots of shite everytime you switch on the
computer. So, start up msconfig, either by the runfield in the startmenu or
from a doswindow or whatever. If you didn't think so, I can tell you that
you need dos more than you would think even in Windows XP. Right, when the
msconfig-program comes up, don't care about anything except the stuff found
under startup. Here, you can close much of what starts automatically when
the computer boots. Switch off everything you don't need, which, in my case
would be about everything. Then, restart the computer.
When the windowsscreen once more appears, you will get a messagebox telling
that you used the msconfig-tool the last time Windows ran and it will as
whether you want to enter it again. Say no thanks and get up the taskmanager
again. Take a look at how much memory is used now. It should be less than
last time. Also, even though Windows still suck, it will hopefully suck
a little bit faster during startup.
The next part is to shut down other unnecessary and unwanted functions.
You will most certainly have seen all the svchost.exe-instances in the
taskmanager. These are gathered processes which means that there are lots
of different tasks running under each of these. To check out what each one
of these run, enter the doswindow and use the command
2 tasklist /svc0
You will now get a listing of what each of the svchost.exes run.
Right, to shut down these, start services.msc. If you noticed that msconfig
has a page for services, I can tell that using this is like a lottery, when
you switch of some, they might run again next time you start the computer.
So, what you need to to in the program now started (services.msc) is to
look through every one of these services, and decide which ones you need
and which ones Microsoft should get up their backside. You will get a
description of what the different services do when you single-click them.
What can you then do with the services? You have three choices, 1 automatic0
means that the service will start everytime Windows starts. 1 Manual 0
means that it's only started when something needs it. 1 Disabled0 means
that the service will never start. You can find these options when
rightclicking the service in question and then choose properties. You can
also start and stop the service you want to check from the mainwindow. This
can be useful if you want to check out systemfuctionality with and without
this-and-that service.
Right, just think a little about the different services and if you need them
or not. If you don't use internet on the computer, you don't need services
such as 1 dhcp-support0 . However, if you switch this off and intend to
use the computer for internet purposes, you will not be able to use adresses,
you must use ip-numbers, and that might be a little inconvenient.
There are some services everybody should stop though. MSN messenger is one
of them, remove it from startup in msconfig and also stop everything related
to this program in the services list. There are enough other communication
programs out there which are better to use. If you want to see some of the
downsides of messenger (in addition to it being extremely slow in the
startup, just take a look at 1 www.grc.com0 in the shields-up section,
and check out the messenger spam check. Another service which you should
disable as soon as possible is the remote control function. This is one of
Microsoft's clever ideas, if you have a problem with the computer, a support
service are able to log onto your computer remotely and fix the problem.
Hackers soon found out other possibilities of this function.
Having performed the above operations, you should restart the computer and
again check startuptime and memoryusage. If you don't see much improvement,
either you have an already optimised computer, you haven't been brave enough
shutting down things, or something really strange is going on.
Now, ofcourse since memoryusage is lower than before and fever unneccessary
tasks run, the computer is faster to work with. However, diskaccess might
still be slow, if so, you should run defrag. Old users will remember this
as the dosprogram defrag by Microsoft, which was more or less a licensed
copy of Norton's SpeedDisk. The version for XP is to be found when
righclicking properties on the drive in question (in "My Computer") if I
remember correctly, and while doing this, you should also do a checkdisk,
it's best to do this before running defrag. Have a cup of coffee or tea
as well as some cookies nearby (or simply go for a walk) because this
takes ages to complete with today's harddrives of hundreds of gigabytes.
Right, now the computer should be faster to work with, like I said before,
it will still suck, but atleast it will suck a little faster, and you will
be able to get some work done instead of waiting for the mousepointer to
move before you can continue typing. (And yes, I know that this is perhaps
a little excaggerated, but I have seen computers taking as long as a minute
to display the startmenu when you click on it and that's not a usable
computer if you ask me).
