Tarun

Ooh, harsh! I just cover the most common possibilities, including that of which I just recently had to resolve at the shop. Those just turned out to be virus/malware related. Glad yours isn't though.

No one was flaming you here dude, relax. You are right on one thing for sure. BlackViper is not the smartest apple in the bunch. Check out where they debunked his entire tweaking guide. Services tweaks - debunked (XP) - with special focus on BlackViper You just said yourself a security program required the Task Scheduler service to be running. So you had to go back in and set it to Automatic. Now, what do you think your customers do? They won't know to go in and configure their service back. More likely than not, they will either call you and complain since it was you/your shop who "fixed" their computer. Since it would be your shop causing the problem, do you think they'd return to your shop in the future if you broke their computer by tweaking it? No, they won't be back; and believe me, they'll tell their friends too. As much as you may think you're helping them, you're actually hindering them and their computer experience. While they may think it's a problem with the OS, it was actually the one who disabled the services which should be left alone. None of this is flaming dude, it's common sense and the truth.

I'd use Opera, but it lacks what I make use of frequently on Firefox. So I'm using Firefox.

Play it safe, leave your services alone. LLXX, I suggest you read about Windows Memory Management and learn many things from it. I also suggest you re-read what happens with Error Reporting and why it's good to leave the service on and running. You don't seem to grasp the concept of Windows XP and it's services very well. Research the prefetch feature as well. It runs ProcessIdleTasks every three days. Prefetch info for you: Ed Bott - Prefetch 1 Ed Bott - Prefetch 2 Ed Bott - Prefetch 3 Ed Bott - Prefetch 4 Ryan Myers - Prefetch XP Myths - Optimization TweakHound's Super XP Tweaking Guide Stop "optimizing" prefetch! The best XP Tweaks site ever made! Language Warning at the linked site No myths here, just stopping the majority of crap many uneducated users tend to spout. Educate yourself and don't be one of them, please.

LOL! NTFS is roughly ten times faster in read/write! Here's why. NTFS and FAT32 are very similar in speed, but as the size of the disk increases, the gap widens. NTFS actually stores small files in the Master File Table (MFT), to increase performance. Rather than moving the heads to the beginning of the disk to read the MFT entry, and then to the middle or end of the disk to read the actual file, the heads simply move to the beginning of the disk, and read both at the same time. This can account for a considerable increase in speed when reading lots of small files. This allows the NTFS file system to read and write data faster than the FAT(FAT16/FAT32) file system.

I've found v2.0 to be faster than 1.5.0.x series. Even the first start is faster!

Scan for viruses and malware. Then go to Start > Run > cmd Enter this: sfc /purgecache When complete, enter: sfc /scannow This may ask for your Windows install cd.

Be sure to read the Introduction To Anti-Malware & Cleaning topic on what to do. There is also a link to my PC Maintenance guide that will assist you in cleaning your pc properly.

Nice job telling people how to break their PCs Andromeda. No, really. That can really screw them up, and then they'll wonder "Why isn't this working!?" Pretty much a repeat of what I've said earlier. If you knew what you (not you as in YOU, but you as in anyone) were doing, you'd know not to disable services at all. Also, disabling idle services offers zero performance gain. Idle services take no RAM or CPU power at all. I'd love to quote the MSDN article, but I can't find it at the moment. The basic summary is that disabling a service that wasn't doing anything frees absolutely no resources. You should never disable the error reporting service. Error reporting allows the end-user to obtain information after "serious error" crash dumps (STOP errors/BSoDs). It also provides the user with feedback if an issue has already been resolved. Example: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=894391 I had submitted an error report about this crash one day, and got no response back. The problem kept happening, and on multiple computers, so a few days later, I submitted it again, but this time, error reporting took me to a page stating that the cause was unknown but it research was in progress. Four days later, I submitted it again, and it took me to a page with the patch and the error never happened again. There will be a program just to undo all the crap that users are doing to their systems these days, including disabling what they think are "unused" services. If there weren't used, why would they exist? If they were unused, then they would be idle, and not taking up any resources at all. When the time comes to use the service, it will work fine, and all will be well. 6 months later, a program attempts to use a service that you've disabled because you think you are better than your OS, and you get a generic error: "The RPC server is unavailable". Now you think that the program you're using is a piece of crap, or Windows is a piece of crap, and you format/reinstall, and it works for a while... until you do your "tweaking" routine again. Now Andromeda, please stop telling people to break their computers. You're telling them to turn off many critical processes that will efficiently and effectively SPEED UP their computers, not slow them down. One such process is the Task Scheduler which handles prefetch. As you should already know, prefetch helps to optimize the boot and application load times. I've already covered just how critical the Error Reporting service is. Just look at how critical those two are. I'll leave it at that, because I'm sorry but you're not showing any "expertise" for being a tech shop owner. If you "knew" what you were doing, you'd know to leave the services well enough alone. For all of us with actual, real technical expertise who have to fix the critical issues that YOU (and people like you) cause; please stop posting that garbage. Thank you.

Read this

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Any P2P program. windizupdate.com

Thanks for that, N1K. Planning a site overhaul when the frontpage gets a new CMS eventually.

Start > Run > cmd convert.exe C: /fs:ntfs You'll convert your drive to NTFS, it's better, safer, faster, and really is what you should be running with Windows XP.

VISualIZE? Visize for short?

System Restore makes automatic backups of the registry. RegCompact.NET is also very nice for cleaning the registry and backups as well.

xper(45) Happy 45th birthday xper! Enjoy lots of cake!

PageDefrag: Just tell it to defrag all the files on reboot. PowerDefrag with Contig. Simply select PowerMode File Defragmentation.

PageDefrag by SysInternals will help greatly. Also use Power Defragmenter GUI paired with Contig.exe and make use of the PowerMode Defrag.

No, you don't use RegClean. Microsoft pulled it because it breaks numerous programs. The RegClean utility is no longer supported by Microsoft and has been removed from all Microsoft download sites. This was done for legitimate compatibility reasons with certain applications and Operating Systems. The RegClean utility was originally supplied with Microsoft Visual Basic version 4.0 for Windows. The last version of RegClean was 4.1a (build 7364.1) released on March 13, 1998 (RegClean.exe is dated December 30, 1997). During this time the latest Operating Systems were Windows 95 OSR2.1 and Windows NT 4.0. Windows 98 was not released until June 25, 1998. Compatibility with any Operating System besides Windows 95 and NT 4.0 was never substantiated, especially Windows XP. It is very dangerous to run a Registry Cleaner that was never certified to run on your Operating System since removing the wrong Registry Keys can break Applications and the Operating System. RegClean breaks functionality in the following Applications: Microsoft Office XP (Setup) Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003 Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003 Microsoft Office Access 2003 Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 Microsoft Office Word 2003 Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003 Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 Microsoft Office 2000 Premium Edition Microsoft Office 2000 Professional Edition Microsoft Office 2000 Standard Edition Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition Microsoft Office 2000 Developer Edition Microsoft Access 2002 Standard Edition Microsoft Excel 2000 Standard Edition Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Standard Edition Microsoft Outlook 2000 Standard Edition Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 Standard Edition Microsoft Word 2000 Standard Edition Learn more... But wait, there's more! "A few hundred kilobytes of unused keys and values causes no noticeable performance impact on system operation. Even if the registry was massively bloated there would be little impact on the performance of anything other than exhaustive searches." "Registry Cleaners can fix problems associated with traces of applications left behind due to incomplete uninstalls. So it seems that Registry junk is a Windows fact of life and that Registry cleaners will continue to have a place in the anal-sysadmin's tool chest, at least until we're all running .NET applications that store their per-user settings in XML files - and then of course we'll need XML cleaners." Source: Sysinternals / Mark Russinovich / Registry Junk: A Windows Fact of Life

Read about Windows Memory Management and find out why.

Alright. Checked and optimized the pngs again. Better?

In the days where we have 100GB+ hard drives, what does wasting disk space matter? It doesn't. :\

Photoshop and many graphic editing applications. Windows even performs better with the page file. You should also read about Windows Memory Management.

And you're using IE right? Which version?