Hi,

I discovered microsoft's "User Profile Hive Cleanup Service" the other day, and it does seem to make quite a big difference when logging off / shutting down my machine. Are there any other microsoft tools like this that improve system performance?

Thanks

HougTimo

Bootvis is another Microsoft tool which performs various optimisations to make your computer start up faster. Oddly, Microsoft themselves say here that it doesn't do anything, but it's a lie. Using the program almost halved the time it took for my computer to boot and hasn't had any adverse affects. Nobody knows why Microsoft no longer support it and even go so far as to say it's useless.

Hi,

While BootVis does improve performance in some circumstances, all it does is to invokes the built-in Windows XP boot time optimization process when you run it.

It does this immediately instead of waiting for it to be scheduled by Windows. You may notice immediate improvement in boot performance for this reason.

You can achieve the same results by setting the following registry setting, if not already set:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction]
 "Enable"="Y"

Quote from MS:

“Accepted values for this entry are Y or N. If the entry is set to Y, Windows automatically optimizes the file location for boot optimization. This optimization occurs automatically if the system is idle for 10 minutes. Boot optimization improves start up time by locating start up files in contiguous clusters on the volume, reducing the movement of the disk head when reading the volume.”

If you reboot and force Windows to process it's idle tasks via a run command:

Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

You should see the same effect. Note that some PC's may never be "idle" for 10 minutes if they are busy performing background tasks all of the time e.g. Downloading RSS feeds or E-mails ect.

Kind Regards

Simon

So how would this be different, more or less beneficial than running regular defrag. processes on the system?