Defrag Regularly

DOS and non-NT versions of Windows do very little to keep their file systems optimized. Huge gaps of free space open up in various areas of the hard drive as programs and files are installed and removed; later, other files are written starting at the first block of free space, filling the gaps in order by sector and ending up scattered in pieces all over the drive. When an operating system has to access several different areas of a hard disk just to load a single file or program, performance is severely degraded.

NT kernel operating systems, like Windows XP, take measures when used with the NTFS file system to keep hard disks contiguous--but fragmentation still does occur. Therefore, you should defrag your XP hard disk(s) on a regular basis depending on how much file juggling you do on your PC.

If you install and remove programs frequently, or if you're constantly creating, moving and deleting data files, you should defrag the drive as often as once per week. If, however, you tend to use the same applications for long periods of time and you don't move files around too often, you can get away with defragging your drives less frequently, as seldom as once a month.

If you defrag your hard disks often enough, you won't notice a change in performance immediately after defragging. That's a good thing. If your computer is noticeably more responsive right after defragging, you've let it go too long.

Purge Unneeded Background Clutter
As with Windows 9x operating systems (and when we say 9x, we mean Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me, which is a Windows 9x kernel OS), programs that run needlessly in the background degrade the performance of foreground applications and games. TSRs hog system memory, increase page file swapping, and monopolize the CPU for tasks that aren't particularly necessary.

You can see what's going on in the background by launching the Task Manager, which is invoked by simultaneously pressing CTRL, ALT and DEL. Unlike Windows 9x, XP differentiates between active end-user applications and system processes. Click on the Processes task to see a list of system processes and TSRs floating around behind the curtain. You can also shut down programs and processes from here, which you'll occasionally want to do if something hangs up on you.

You'll recognize some of them straight out. If you're running an antivirus program, for example, you'll see its background process listed. You may see processes that do everything from configure your mouse (like the ubiquitous EM_EXEC.EXE) to the default Windows shell EXPLORER.EXE.

If you're a 9x user, some of the processes will be totally unfamiliar. SERVICES.EXE, WINLOGON.EXE, SYSTEM, and others. Services are discussed below.

Like versions of Windows 9x, from 98 on, XP contains the System Configuration Utility (or SCU). Invoke it by running MSCONFIG at the Run command line. It's great for experimenting with startup applications.

The SCU main interface contains several tabs that allow users to selectively and non-permanently alter several startup parameters. The first two, SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI, are included for the purpose of legacy compatibility; there's very little chance you'll ever need to tweak them.

The BOOT.INI tab lets you play with the file that defines how Windows XP boots. The entire file is displayed in a text box in which you can select individual lines, which in turn you may be able to alter through checkboxes, but there's little advantage in doing so unless you're troubleshooting something.

The Services tab lets you check and uncheck XP services, but there's a better way to go about enabling and disabling them that we'll get to later.

Under the Startup tab, you'll find a listing of each program that's called to start after Windows XP is booted up. It's here that you can disable things that you suspect are unnecessary, such as Microsoft Office's TSR, Quicken Agent, launchers employed by multimedia programs like RealPlayer and WinAmp, and other such nonsense. The beauty of the SCU is that disabled items aren't permanently deleted: you can uncheck particular components, reboot, and then test your applications and hardware. If you determine that something has ceased to function, you can fire the SCU back up, recheck the box next to the startup item in question, and reboot.

You can often improve system performance vastly by experimenting with the SCU and eliminating everything that isn't absolutely necessary. Once you've determined a particular startup item to be useless, you can purge it from wherever it's being called by checking its location in the SCU listing. Items shown to be in "Common Startup" are called through the Start Menu's Startup group--delete their icons and they won't be launched anymore.

Items launched via the registry can be purged through the REGEDIT program (after, of course, you've carefully backed up the registry in case you accidentally alter something critical). They're most often located HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run key. Simply delete their values to prevent them from being launched on subsequent Windows boots.

Services are generally considered important components of operating system code that provide functionality for various hardware, applications, tasks, and so on. Of course, you shouldn't attempt to disable core operating system kernel processes and related services that manage process scheduling, interrupt handing, file management, virtual memory management, etc. But in our context, there are many less critical services, invoked by default, layered atop or working alongside the core operating system services that may be disabled or modified to improve system responsiveness or performance, without serious side effects.

You can launch the Services control applet either through Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services (if using the "classic view" of the Control Panel, or look within the Performance and Maintenance section when using the new "category view" of the Control Panel), or by running SERVICES.MSC from the Run command line.

You'll see a list box that contains every service available to user modification in your Windows XP configuration. Each entry contains a description of the service (which you can view in better detail by clicking on the service in question), its status (whether it's been started or not), its startup type (automatic, manual or disabled), and the user account with which the service logs on to the computer (unless you're far too advanced a user to benefit from this article, don't change this).

Services whose startup setting is Automatic will start when Windows starts. Manual services can be started by the user or if a dependant service (a service that cannot function without another service) is invoked. Disabled services won't start at all.

For pure performance, you can stop a number of services and/or set them on manual. Don't disable a service unless you're absolutely sure that no other services or hardware needs it.

For example, if you've disabled System Restore, you can stop its service and set it on manual. If you don't record CD-Rs, you can do the same to the IMAPI CD-Burning COM service. The Portable Media Serial Number service is pretty much useless, so feel free to set it on manual (or disable it if you don't have a portable music player). If you don't do any printing, shut down the Print Spooler service. Most users can set the Help and Support service on manual (advanced users may want to disable it). If you don't use themes, turn off the service.

Experiment with stopping other services cautiously. You may never need services like Telnet, Error Reporting, Task Scheduler (which is different than the core operating system process scheduler, and operates at the user application level), Indexing Service, Fast User Switching, ClipBook, Distributed Transaction Coordinator, Internet Connection Firewall/Sharing (ICF/ICS), and others. If you're unsure about a particular service, leave it alone. Point of clarification - forum member MURDOCDV reminded us that the Task Scheduler is used in auto-tuning operations - it assists in the creation of prefetch information for prefetching disk-resident code and data (as we alluded earlier), so it's NOT a good idea to disable the Task Scheduler. Thanks MURDOCDV!

You can find out more about each service, including any dependent services or services upon which it depends, through its property sheet.

Task Manager
The task manager (that CTRL-ALT-DEL dialog) lets you do more than observe what's clogging up your memory and shut down frozen apps. Invoke it and select the Processes tab, and right-click on any process.

One of the options in the context menu is Set Priority. With it, you can set the processor priority of any and all of the applications and processes currently running. It's wonderfully handy if you're working with a system hog like Photoshop and, despite your desire to occasionally check your email and surf the web, you want it to command a majority of your PC's computing power. Or, if you're engaging in a heavy, temporary task like burning a CD, compiling code in Visual C++, or rendering objects with 3D Studio Max, give that process high priority to prevent Windows from letting other applets' petty needs prolong the task.

Uninstall "Hidden" Windows Components
Apparently, Microsoft didn't want you to be able to remove useless garbage like Windows Messenger. It's installed by default, and it doesn't appear in the Add/Remove Program applet in Control Panel.

Thankfully, you can force the issue by editing the SYSOC.INF file, which is located in the C:\WINDOWS [or your Windows XP directory]\INF folder. Open it with Notepad.

Under the [Components] heading, you'll see a whole bunch of parameters for various Windows applets. Some of them contain the word "hide." Those particular programs, which include Windows Messenger (msmsgs), Terminal Server, Pinball, and others, are installed on your XP system, but their entries are hidden from and Add/Remove dialog.

Save the file, close it, and open the Add/Remove Program applet. Click on Windows Components button and you'll see Windows Messenger listed. Uncheck it and click Next to purge that silly program from your system.

Feel free to edit hide everywhere it appears in the SYSOC.INF file to reveal other removable Windows XP components.

Offer DMA To All Your ATAPI Drives
By default, slave drives on ATAPI channels are often set to PIO mode--even when the device attached is capable of much more efficient UltraATA (or DMA) mode data transfers. This can hurt the performance of ROM burners, DVD movie playback, and other drive functions. Plus, DMA mode data transfers require much less CPU overhead than PIO-mode transfers.

You can set this atrocity straight through the Device Manager. Open the System Properties dialog and select the Hardware tab. Click the Device Manager button. Expand the entry for IDE/ATAPI controllers. Select the primary channel and click on Properties, and then choose the Advanced Settings tab. For each device listed, change the transfer mode to "DMA if possible." Don't worry; devices that aren't capable of DMA mode will still work just fine. Repeat the process for the secondary channel.

Even though XP offers a wealth of ways to tinker with its settings, Microsoft kept some of the nitty-gritty hardcore tweaks undocumented, with the only way to change them being to dig deep in the registry, experiment, and hope for the best. Don't bother, though, there's a better way: Tweak-XP is a full-featured shareware utility that gives users access to a vast range of configurable options, from minor GUI adjustments to performance-affecting cache and memory tweaks. The program is fully functional for 50 executions, after which you must register for $29.95 to continue using it.

Upon installation, Tweak-XP creates a system restore point so that should you hose your system with it, you can recover quickly. Its little interface is divided into four tabs, offering several pages of shortcuts and tweaks for system performance options, desktop tweaks, Internet connection streamlining, security tweaks, and so on. Most of the tweaks offered are easily adjusted through checkboxes and sliders, and some are explained in Tweak-XP's help file--although the program would benefit with more thorough descriptions of its functions.

While a discussion of Tweak-XP's entire feature set would fill a book, we can recommend a few quick enhancements in its System Performance section to speed up general Windows performance:

• If you have 512MB of RAM or more, experiment with the Core System Performance checkbox on the Cache Optimization page. This option forces XP's core code into memory and prevents it from being paged to a swap file. Most general operations will be more responsive with this option checked, but if you run several big programs simultaneously you may find the amount of paging actually increases, because the OS kernel takes up RAM that would otherwise be used for your applications.
  
   
• On the same page, select the cache optimization setting according to the guidelines. This changes the IOPageLockLimit registry value, allowing more physical RAM to be used for I/O caching and therefore increasing disk performance.
  
   
• Under Hardware Tweaks, select your system's CPU from the list. Then, click on the CD/DVD Tweaks button and use it to optimize the CD-ROM read-ahead cache size (set it at "large" unless your PC has less than 64MB of RAM--which isn't officially supported by XP per MS documentation anyway--and we haven't tried to run XP in less than 128MB). Tweak-XP claims to implement unspecified tweaks for various graphics card chipsets, but our testing didn't reveal any in-game frame rate changes after using this feature.
  
   
• Before you launch a large program such as a game, a spreadsheet or a graphics suite, use Tweak-XP's RAM optimizer to reorganize your computer's memory and clear up unneeded data. Be sure to fill in the "Clear the clipboard on every optimization" checkbox.

Stay Tuned
Windows XP is brand new. More optimizations are sure to be discovered and revealed as the OS reaches a wider install base. Watch ExtremeTech, GEN-X-PC.com, the sites listed below, and your favorite hardcore tech sites for more XP tips.

• TweakXP (www.tweakxp.com): Affiliated with the Tweak-XP utility discussed above, this site is dedicated to helping users get the most out of Windows XP. Most of the data is raw and lacks sufficient explanation, but the site is updated frequently with tips and tweaks of all natures.
  
   
• Windows Guide Network (www.winguides.com): Great stuff about security, registry editing, tweaking third party apps, and more can be found here.
  
   
• TweakTown (www.tweaktown.com): One of the first sites to post a complete XP tweaking guide, TweakTown is full of genuinely useful information for all manner of hardware and technical stuff.
  
   
• Bink Windows XP (www.windowsxp.nu): Its scattershot approach to good information and fluff produces some great nuggets of info. This site also has a huge list of XP-related links.
  
   
• Microsoft TechNet Online: (www.microsoft.com/technet/): More WinXP stuff is appearing every day, in very raw technical form.
  
   
• XP PowerToys (www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp): The latest token PowerToys collection.