[Question] - XP Tweaks - Myths and Realities

[amenx]

Are there any real or useful tweaks that can help XP performance for todays hardware? I ask this in that XP was released just over 4 years ago and that it may have been optimized for hardware back then, like 1ghz CPUs and 128 or 256mb RAM.

Things like "Disable Paging Executive", a reg tweak that allocates more system or program memory to the physcial RAM than to virtual memory. It sounds plausible especially with typical rigs today with 1gb RAM or more. But is it really useful or just unsubstantiated theory?

Heres a link to several tweak myths debunked by references from Miscrosoft themselves. Sad that many tweak apps use these to sell their products (although some may use them in freeware): http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html

Comments appreciated.

[Aegis]

Many of the tweaking applications claim that they provide "undocumented" registry tweaks that no other tweaking apps offer, but most of these claims are just shady marketing tactics.

However, there are many (undocumented) tweaks that exist for Windows. These tweaks are only useful for a relatively powerful computer with plentiful amounts of RAM. Unfortunately, the amount of work necessary to find out these tweaks and what they do deters any programmer making a tweaking app. There may be other ways, but I found out many hidden tweaks for my Windows XP Gamer's Edition project by emailing a friend at Microsoft who had access to the Windows source code.

[suryad]

I think some of the registry tweaks are a good idea and they work. Some might be more mythical of course but it is hard to say which is which unless someone has access to the Windows source code.

[OuTmAn]

@ amenx :

I found a precious info in the article you mentionned...

moving the pagefile to another partition, but on the same drive, won't improve performances. It even may decrease them

[rjsmithwalmart]

Are there any real or useful tweaks that can help XP performance for todays hardware? I ask this in that XP was released just over 4 years ago and that it may have been optimized for hardware back then, like 1ghz CPUs and 128 or 256mb RAM.

Things like "Disable Paging Executive", a reg tweak that allocates more system or program memory to the physcial RAM than to virtual memory. It sounds plausible especially with typical rigs today with 1gb RAM or more. But is it really useful or just unsubstantiated theory?

Heres a link to several tweak myths debunked by references from Miscrosoft themselves. Sad that many tweak apps use these to sell their products (although some may use them in freeware): http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html

Comments appreciated.

Do not use other programs for keeping windows stable, they will unstable windows.

[nmX.Memnoch]

Nearly everything on that page is accurate. There are a few good tweaks, but the ones listed on that page are the most common "unfounded" tweaks floating around. To be honest I've found that a default XP SP2 install without any tweaks applied is quite fast and quite stable. The only tweaks I apply anymore are my UI tweaks.

The only one that I really disagree with is the Limited User Accounts "myth". It is true that without knowledge of how to properly configure a Windows XP machine using anything but admin privs can make it a pain. It doesn't make it impossible though. The thing that drives me nuts are the people who have the knowledge but are too...lazy, for lack of a better word, to take the time to do so.

At work I have spent quite a bit of time configuring our workstations so the users don't need admin or even power user to do their jobs without issue. We use quite a few legacy applications so I've had to figure out what directories, files and/or registry keys the application requires the user to have write access to. The result is a much more secure workstation that the user can do their jobs and prevents unauthorized software, to include spyware/adware, from being installed on the workstations. We have not had one single problem with spyware, adware or any other sort of malware since I took the time to properly configure the workstation for use as a "User".

In my experience I've learned to not always listen to the application developer. I've proved more than one of our application developers wrong when they tell me their application requires admin or power user privs to work properly. Software developers don't always tend to understand NTFS and/or registry permissions. There are a few apps that do require admin privs to run properly (Diskeeper and most network admin tools come to mind), but regular applications can generally be fixed but just setting the correct permissions.

I now have it down to a simple script that runs a few XCACLS and SubInACL commands during Unattended Setup to configure these permissions.

Edited February 13, 2006 by nmX.Memnoch

[Takeshi]

Some of the tweaks supposedly for XP are actually legacies from the old Win9x but people just assume they work the same way.

A lot of people blindly follow them without actually thinking critically about what they do and unfortunately these get circulated and perpetuated on the internet.

[druiddk]

Interesting article!

[eyeball]

excellent article.

i notice prefetch is set to 128 in xp does anyone know the registry key to make this higher?

thanks

[suryad]

I dont mess with moving the page file around becasue honestly it doesnt make sense to me. The only thing I like to do with tweaking XP is to shrink the install as much as I can using nLite. That and a few reg tweaks, defrag once a month and thats all really one has to do to get a proper really fast running XP.

[OuTmAn]

nearly the same...

I defragment more often (once a week, when not using the computer... it can't be bad)

concerning the pagefile, I found the ultimate solution : add a lot of ram so very few usage of the swap, so no need to take care of it

[amenx]

I dont mess with moving the page file around becasue honestly it doesnt make sense to me.

Actually this is one of the more sensible to do where you move or have your page file on a different drive. It delegates I/O requests to 2 drives rather than have one drive reading/writing the OS/programs demands while doing the same with the paging file. Its described as the "optimal solution" by Microsoft themselves: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482/

[OuTmAn]

sure, of course, but it is good only if that pagefile is on another drive

personaly, I have only one hdd, so...

[Jeremy]

I have my pagefile on my second SATA drive and have the initial and max values set as the same. Absolutely no problems here.

[nmX.Memnoch]

I don't even move it anymore. Think about this...

If you're doing disk intensive tasks (i.e. video editing, etc) which drive do you normally do them on? The second drive, right? So now you have your disk intensive tasks and the pagefile on the same disk. Does that really make sense to have all of your I/O operations on the same disk? I keep OS and application related tasks running on the primary drive (to include the pagefile...it's OS related) and do everything else on my secondary drive.