Windows XP is now the predominant
consumer OS of both gamers and power users. Sure, many of us still dual-boot
with Win9x, because it is faster for many games, but the joy of a true 32-bit
operating system with full consumer support is too much for many of us to
remain loyal to NT 4.0 or Windows 2000. Now that Windows XP has matured past
its infancy and many (but by far not all) of the bugs have been shaken out of
it, Ars Technica brings you the first in a series of tweak guides for this
illustrious and yet somewhat finicky OS.
This first guide aims to cover two
main areas of contention: the boot process (sans the system services, which are
an entire guide of their own) and a mishmash of general computing tweaks. The
boot tweaks will be comprised of not only system settings, but also several
under-utilized applications that can dramatically reduce load time. The general
performance tweaks are simply various tweaks that do not quite fit in with the
theme of this article, but still have a significant effect on system startup
performance (because most any tweaks that one performs should have some kind of
effect on the startup time of the system).
Before we begin, several pieces of
laundry need to be aired out. To begin with, if you have already tweaked the
services on the computer in question, please return them to the default
settings. One of the applications I am recommending requires that several
systems be enabled that most power users frequently disable (e.g., Task
Scheduler). Once you have completed the tweaks mentioned in this guide, feel
free to return said services back to your preferred settings, as they only need
to be enabled for a short time.
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