Is your PC starting to drag? And it's only a year old, you say? Well, guess what....we have some great tips here that can put you on the road to a faster, more powerful pc....and it won't cost you a dime!

1. Regularly delete files that are old and not used anymore.

If you have 50 reports in your my documents folder from last year's Biology Class...this applies to you! Or if you download television shows because you are bored, listen up. Those unused files on your hard drive not only take up valuable space, but slow your pc down due to the fact that your processor has to sort through all the stuff it doesn't need, just to find the stuff it does. Go in and delete any unneeded and unused files regularly. Alternatively, you can go to Start-->Control Panel-->Scheduled Tasks-->Add Task and add "Disk Cleanup" as a regularly scheduled task. While this isn't quite as effective as manually searching out and removing unnecessary files, it does help.

2. Defrag, defrag, defrag.

If you are asking yourself "what does this mean" then this applies to you. You should be defraging your hard drive anywhere between once a week and once a month, depending upon your usage. Windows defrag program takes nearly an hour or more to defrag an 80 GB hard drive. That is ridiculous! If you have an NTFS file system, there is good news...there is a free program on the internet, made by the same software producers that wrote the defrag for Windows, that will do the job in about 12 minutes! That is right. It is called Diskeeper Lite. Search google for it, as at the time I wrote this tutorial, the main site was down (www.executive.com). This is probably the single most important thing you can do to speed up your pc.

3. If you have FAT32, reformat with NTFS.

Not only is it more secure, but it is significantly more stable, and a hell of a lot faster. Hell, even if you already have NTFS, the best way to improve speed is to reformat and reinstall Windows. This is painstacking, aggravating, and time-consuming, but you will have a "brand new" PC for sure afterwards. Just make sure to back everything up to CDs or another hard drive before you do reinstall.

4. Turn indexing off.

While this tool is useful if you often use Windows built in search functions, most of us don't. Let's be honest. We only use it when we are really desperate to find a file. And this function of Windows can really slow down your pc due to the fact that as you access each file, edit a file, move a file, whatever...Windows is attempting to run this indexing service in the background so that it remembers where and what the file is. You can gain significant speed by turning it off (and just remembering where you put your stuff ). To turn it on or off, you go to Start-->Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->Computer Management-->Services and Applications-->Indexing Service.

5. How long does it take to boot up your PC.

For XP, Microsoft claims that it can boot up in 30 seconds. We can make it even less!

A.There are three parts to this. First of all, let's clear out your prefetch file. The prefetch file is a file that Windows accesses during boot up which tells Windows which files to load and what-not. It's great in that it really speeds up boot up time compared to a FAT32 drive where prefetch isn't used; however, after you have installed and uninstalled 100 programs (don't tell me you haven't), your prefetch file is loaded with shortcuts to startup programs that A) you don't need and B) slow down your startup. If you clear your prefetch file, the next time you boot up will take a little while because Windows will have to repopulate the necessary information without the benefit of an indexed file telling it what to load...but after that you'll notice a significant improvement in boot up time. Go to C:\Windows\Prefetch and just delete the whole thing. Windows will automautically repopulate the file with the stuff it does need the next time you boot up.

B. Typically, a PC is set to look for a boot record in the A:\ drive, then the D:\ drive, and then finally the C:\ drive, where it should be. This is necessary if you need to boot from a floppy due to a failure, but during normal operation this causes your computer to check 2 drives before it even gets to the drive that actually has the information. How stupid, right? Well, you can change this by entering your BIOS setup (normally by holding the Escape key or another hotkey during initial startup) and re-ordering the drives it looks to for a boot record to put C:\ first. While you are in there, check to see if your BIOS provides a "Quick Boot" option. Many newer computers do have this option, but it is disabled by default. Another stupid factory decision.

C. Download BootVis.exe from Microsoft.com and use it according to the directions provided. It can help you determine where you may be able to cut some precious seconds during bootup.

Alternatively, if you have Win 2K or XP, you can just leave your PC on all the time and not have to worry about boot up at all, like I do :)

6. Set your disks to use DMA (direct memory access).

This is a technology that will allow your hardware to bypass the processor when accessing memory, which GREATLY improves speed. For some dumb reason, however, almost every PC manufacturer distributes PC's with this disabled. Right click on My Computer and choose Properties. Then choose hardware, followed by Device Manager. Double click on your IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller and tehn double click on the Primary IDE Channel. Check the advanced tab and make sure DMA is set to "DMA if available". Do this for all your IDE drives, as well as your CD-ROM drive.

If you do not have an advanced tab, 9 out of 10 times it is because you have the Intel Application Accelerator installed. Download another copy, go to add/remove programs and uninstall it...then check your DMA settings. Afterwards, just reinstall and you are good to go.

7. While most of us themers and video-game fanatics refuse to do this, lowering your color depth and resolution on your monitor is probably one of the easiest and best ways to improve speed.

Today, many video cards support a color depth all the way up to 32 Bit. And some people use resolutions up to 1600x1400. This makes your processor and video card work twice as hard just to display the same stuff. If you set your resolution to 1024x768 (or even 800x640) and your color depth to 16 Bit (or 24 Bit if you must), then you should notice a slight speed improvement. Just right click on your desktop and choose properties, then go to the advanced tab to make these adjustments.



8. Upgrade your video card drivers and DirectX files.

The newest and latest updates on these files will ensure that your PC will be smoking while processing all those complicated video and rendering tasks you throw at it. To download the newest directX files go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx and choose the best version for you.

Nice man

Thanks man !! !!!

also, check out http://www.blkviper.com
it has a list of many xp services that can be disabled

Yes, it's one of my fav sites...

what about the msconfig tool?

Thanks for these tips, I found those out a while ago when updating from Windows 98 SE to Windows XP Home.

I would also like to say that if you do not have SP1 or SP2, I recommend slipstreaming the disk and reinstalling, just make sure you backup first.

I did that to all 6 of my computers... I had problems with the existing security software that would not work with SP2 upgrade.

The bad thing is that if you have a pirated copy, or have a MSDN edition that is on the black-list, you might not be able to install SP2.

I use a tool called ZoneAlarm Security Suite, and it helps dramatically with security.

It's recommended on XP not to use msconfig to disable certain things. I don't recall exactly why off the top of my head, but I've read it several times. Only reason I didn't write up anything about it.

It was more used in 98.