According to Microsoft, Windows XP was designed to boot up within about 30 seconds.
Add several additional services and that can become a minute. You can slush
it but not much. It depends on how much additional functionally you want to be included.
If you need multiple services enabled you might need probably up to two minutes.
Slow start and shutdown can be a symptom of
Spyware infection or bloated configuration
or both.
Generally Windows XP is not running that good on 256M PC and Windows 2000 here
has an edge. Windows XP is definitely more resource hungry and on 256K
PC feels slower.
As Spyware problems are addresses on the other
set of pages here we will concentrate
on the problem of bloat. To access the level of bloat on a particular PC the list
of services running after booting (before you open any other program) as well as
list of start-up programs should be printed, saved into a file (see for suitable
command line tools
to do this) and carefully analyzed.
Then you can trim unnecessary start-up programs file using
msconfig from the Run menuand unnessary services fromControl
Panel/Administrative Tools/Services
Even if you do not find some rogue services installed, the results of analysis
usually get you better understanding of what is used by the computer and several
services Microsoft and third party services can usually be disabled.
Actually many third party services are just a nuisance and should be disabled.
Symantec, Adobe, and ATI
are especially bad in this area. They also put unnecessary program into system tray
(can be called recidivist system tray abusers ;-)
If you have just 256M of RAM Windows XP often looks sluggish (Windows 2000 is
much faster on the same configuration) and large add-ons like Windows Defender are
overkill: they slow down the system considerably. It might be beneficial to eliminated
them.
Generally with 256K you need cut your services and resident programs to bones
in order to cut swapping of pages from disk. Watch the activity of your swap
file.
Detail on load processes after boot-up are visible any
process viewer. But
just viewing it is not enough. You need to write this snapshot into file and analyze
and annotate it line by line (most non-standard free
Windows Process Viewers
has this capability). Many antispyware programs like Windows Defender also have
such tools.
Turn off automatic updates. You can do them manually once a week (you
really need to be diligent with this as current generally or worms and
spyware is not a joke). Even
notifications are pretty taxing and involve scanning for automatic updates on
startup with 3-5 minutes of almost 100% CPU usage when you PC or laptop became
sluggish and almost impossible to work with. If you do not mind drinking
a cup of coffee before starting work it might be a perfect opportunity.
Windows Protector is a resource hog and is slows down 256K PCs. Here you
need to wait you need to spyware protection and you need for quick and responsive
PC. Windows Protector is a good security tool from the point of view of
catching spyware, the problem is that it is designed for PCs with at least 512M
of RAM and CPUs faster then 1.2GHz.
Periodically, once a week or once a month defragment your C drive and
other drives that you are using frequently. See
Maintaining Windows 2000 Through Defragmentation for details.
The best strategy that I have found is to start defragmentor each day when you
are going for lunch.
Sometimes very slow startup means that you have remote drives for
which server is currently unavailable mapped permanently for your desktop. The
simplest solution is to delete all such mappings.
Initial versions of IE7 are not a blessing for PC with 256M configuration:
they are a curse. They are bloated slow pigs. With 256M of RAM IT7 slow
down PC considerably. Startup of IE7 is painfully slow and its shutdown looks
more like shutdown of the whole OS that an application and is extremely
painful too. You need more lightweight browser as 50M that IE7 consumes represent
20% to RAM you have. If you use IE7 use tabs instead of opening additional instances
of the browser, but still it adds approximately 5M for each additional tab (more
for the second tab -10M, lightly less for third, forth and so on) Each
additional tab do not add Generally IE7 is a memory and CPU hungry
pig so its usage on such limited configuration should be strongly discouraged.
Opera is not a bad browser that
might fit your needs (Firebox and Netscape both are resource pigs too: not
a big improvement over IE). It has the initial memory footprint of approximately
16M. But you might suffer from using non-mainstream browser.
Acrobat Reader 7.xx or later on 256M PC slow down things by consuming
too much memory and increases size of swap file. Replace it with something
less bloated. Acrobat Reader 4 is OK. See
Alternatives to Adobe
Products and How to Fight Adobe Acrobat Bloatware for details. Again
if you move from standard you might suffer as some complex form are rendered
correctly only in original IE.
Often restoring older image of C: drive using
Ghost eliminates recent slowdown caused by
some installed application(s) more effectively that painstaking troubleshooting.
Regular ghosting of your C drive and keeping set of dated images on DVD in a
special folder is important sanity preserving strategy for any Windows XP user.
They often come handy in case of troubles and can save you a lot of time.
You can access the services console by entering
the SERVICES.MSC command at the Run prompt. It
provides good description for most Microsoft services.
You can access Startup folder content from msconfig
utility and directly from the registry. For example if the user is
joeuser, then his startup menu will be at
Documents and Settings/joeuser/Start
Menu/Startup Please note that some entries can be at in
"All users" or even "Default
User" hierarchy
On older laptops like Dell C600 and C610
one of the most common causes of Windows shut down problems is a bug in Roxio's
Easy CD Creator version 5.
Executable compressor like
UPX can improve
start up times on PC with slow harddrive (5400 RMP drives on laptop) and
fast CPU (1.2 GHZ and faster).
The quickest way to speed up boot times is to use the free Microsoft
utility BootVis.exe. Although it's intended primarily for developers,
anyone can use it to analyze their boot times and see where there are slowdowns.
More important, the tool will also automatically make system changes to
speed up your boot time, so you don't need to go into a lengthy analysis
of where your slowdowns are and how to solve them
Depending on your system and how it's set up, you may see only a
moderately faster startup time, or you may speed up boot time dramatically.
I've seen reports of improvements ranging from a little over 3 seconds to
more than 35 seconds. The improvements I found on my systems were moderate-7
seconds faster on one, and 10 seconds faster on another. Think of all the
things you could accomplish with another 10 seconds in the day!
The BootVis utility traces boot time metrics and then displays
the results in a variety of graphs showing total boot time, CPU usage, disk
I/O, driver delays, and disk utilization.
To analyze how your system boots, choose Trace → Next Boot. (Choose
Trace → Next Boot + Driver Delays if you want to trace delays caused by
drivers as well as your normal boot sequences.)
Tell the program how many times to reboot and run the test (the more
times it runs, the more accurate the results, although the longer the test
takes to run). Click OK, and your system will reboot.
Notes:
Those pages are written by people for whom English is not a
native language. Some amount of grammar and spelling errors
should be expected.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site. It
cannot replace the best teachers and
the
best books.
The site contain some obsolete pages as it develops like a
living tree... Some links on older pages are broken. Please
try to use Google, Open directory, etc. to find a replacement link
(see
HOWTO search the WEB for details).
We would appreciate if you can
mail us a correct link.
by
Monoman (8745) on Saturday March 01,
@10:27AM (#22609882)
Homepage
The thread on this subject the other day had an good comment
from a former MS employee. Vista works well if you do the following
1. Turn of Aero 2. Switch to Classic mode/view whatever it is called (makes it look like Windows
2000) 3. Go into System properties and set to optimize for best performance.
A friend tried it on two systems (one is a new quad-core) and is much happier now.
So where does that get you? Basically, system that looks like Windows 2000, performs
like XP, and has the underneath the cover features of Vista like "enhanced" security,
searching, etc.
I haven't tried Vista yet because of the lackluster performance and no compelling
reasons to run it. Knowing it can be setup to run faster is nice but I still can't
see anyone spending money on Vista just to turn off all of the eye candy.
I'll stick with XP at work and Ubuntu & XP at home for now.
Windows AutoPlay is pretty annoying feature which allows for a program contained
on a CD to be run when it is placed into the drive and read by Windows.
To disable the CD autoplay feature, use the following
Windows XP registry hack:
It is safest to disable CD autoplay in XP using
either local group policy or, for an enterprise,
an Active Directory group policy. The local group
policy editor method:
Click Start
Click Run
Enter GPEDIT.MSC
Group Policy mmc will popup. On left panel:
Double-click Computer
Configuration to open submenu
Double-click Administrative
Templates to open submenu
Double-click System
to open submenu
Double-click Turn autoplay
off option which will be near the bottom
of the list in the right panel.
The default is the Not configured
. Set it to Enabled.
TweakUI, one of what Microsoft
calls "Power Toys for Windows XP". It's more than a toy. It allows you to
adjust (or 'tweak') several settings that aren't exposed directly by the
Windows tools.
Once you've installed TweakUI you'll find a lot of options in it. For
our current problem, in TweakUI expand
My Computer, and then
AutoPlay. Click on Drives
and uncheck the drive letter that you no longer want to AutoPlay. Click
on Apply and that's it. No more "what would you
like me to do" dialogs.
TweakUI has
a number of other settings, I encourage you to install it and browse around
in it. It's something I install on every computer I run. (The PowerToys
page has a number of nifty tools as well, have a look while you're there).
Opera 9 is packaged with a torrent plugin, so
BitTorrent
downloads can be handled just like regular
HTTP/FTP
downloads.
It is notable in the face of criticisms of rendering accuracy, that Opera
9.0 passes the Acid2
rendering test by the
Web Standards Project, which is designed to test compliance with the latest
HTML,
CSS and other web standards.[26]
Browsers such as
Internet Explorer 7 and
Firefox 2
do not pass this test.
Zappit
System Cleaner - FREEWARE to Clean Up and Speed Up your
Computer!
Safe easy way to clean Windows, Internet Tracks, free up hard-disk
space and optimize your system. A clean computer runs better
and faster and Zappit makes it easy to clean temporary and unused files in just
a few seconds with no need to worry about deleting the "wrong" files. Includes
a Start-Up Manager and a Favorites & Start Menu Manager.
Safe
Mode Option for new users and Advanced option for power users.
You have the Cloudeight Promise of NO Adware,
Spyware, Badware or Adware!
Zappit Cleans all the following:
Windows Tracks:
Recycle
Bins, Clipboard Data, Temporary and log
files, Recent Documents, Explorer Registry Streams, and
Search, Run, and Wallpaper History, and more!
Program Files: Cleans files left over and no longer
needed after using Media Player, Paint, Wordpad, Adobe Reader
and others.
Internet
Explorer: Temporary files, Address
Bar and URL History, AutoComplete Form Data, Cookies, File
and Folder Hisotry
Opera: History, Download History, Cookies and Temp
files
Fire Fox and
Mozilla/Netscape Navigator: History,
Temp files, Cookies and Saved Passes and Log in Names
The latest version of CleanUp!, version 4.5.2 is a
minor
update over version 4.0.
Note that if you are going to run
CleanUp! 4.5.2 without first making a backup of your system, then it
is strongly recommended that you first run it in the
new demo mode and verify the files that would be deleted before you first run
it for real.
It would be great to download drivers that sped up your hard-disk access by
10's of percent wouldn't it? Well perhaps you can,
Intel has made their
Application Accelerator (IAA) available since last September. It reduces
storage sub-system bottlenecks apparently. If you have a compatible
Intel chipset (810 to 860) and a Pentium Celeron, III , 4 or
Xeon chip then get on down to :
Read through everything before you start downloading and installing. You
may need to pre-install the Intel
Chipset Software Installation Utility if you have XP running on a 830 or
845 chipset. Intel also provide a chipset identification utility if your unsure
of what you have - it's linked from the same page.
Intel claim very significant increases in boot times and application speed.
On a personal note, on my P4 2GHz, applications do start a lot faster. I suggest
you do some benchmarking first (a stopwatch is an easy way to measure boot time).
I would be interested in results people have had. This also works for 98SE,ME,NT4
and 2000.
NOTE: IAA works well for most, but not all. Judge for yourself. It's easy
enough to uninstall if you don't like it.
Microsoft created the Shared
Computer Toolkit to help make shared
computers more reliable and less time-consuming to maintain. Unlike personal
computers, shared computers are:
Used by many different people who generally don't know or trust each
other
Subjected to greater wear and tear due to their frequent use and public
availability
The Shared Computer Toolkit is ideal for computers in schools, public libraries,
community technology centers, and Internet cafés. It allows those who manage
shared computers in these environments to easily:
Restrict untrusted users from accessing system settings and data.
Defend shared computers from unauthorized changes to their hard disks.
Constantly running in the background of XP are services--processes that help
the operating system run or that provide support to applications. Many of these
services launch automatically at start-up. While you need many of them, some
are not required, and they can slow down your system when they run in the background.
You can disable services at start-up by using the system configuration utility,
similar to the way that you halt programs from running at start-up, except that
you use the Services tab instead of the Startup tab. But the system configuration
utility doesn't necessarily list every service that launches on start-up. A
bigger problem is that disabling services is more of shot in the dark than disabling
programs. When you disable a program, you can get a sense of what the program
does. But when you disable a service through the system configuration utility,
there's often no way to know what it does.
A better way of disabling services at start-up is via the Services computer-management
console. Run it by typing services.msc at the command prompt. The
Services computer-management console includes a description of all services
so that you can know ahead of time whether a particular service is one you
want to turn off. It also lets you pause the service so that you can test
your machine and see whether that service is needed.
After you run the console, click the Extended tab. This view will show
you a description of each service in the left pane when you highlight the
service. The Startup Type column shows you which services launch on start-up--any
with Automatic in that field. Click that column to sort together all the
services that automatically launch on start-up. Then highlight each of those
services and read the descriptions.
When you find a service you want to disable, right-click it and choose
Properties. In the Properties dialog box that appears, choose Manual from
the Startup Type drop-down list. The service won't start automatically from
now on, but you can start it manually via the console. If you want the service
disabled so that it can't be run, choose Disabled. To test the results,
turn off any services that you don't want to run by clicking Stop The Service
in the left pane, or by right-clicking the service and choosing Stop.
Here is a list of some common services you might want to stop from running at
start-up.
Service
What
it does
Portable Media Serial Number
Retrieves the serial number of a portable music player
attached to your PC.
Task Scheduler
Schedules unattended tasks to be run. If you don't
schedule any unattended tasks, turn it off.
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Manages an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) connected
to your PC.
The main reason for slow shutdown is huge number of services running.
You usually can disable at least half-dozen without a lot of analysis (Microsoft's
Telephony, themes, etc; Symantec Ghoststart services, etc). It looks like
recommendation to disable ClearPageFileAtShutdown option to improve shutdown times
is outdated. This is now default setting. Your mileage may vary):
Try a clean-boot
troubleshooting. Clean-boot troubleshooting is designed to isolate a performance
problem. To perform clean-boot troubleshooting, you must take a number of actions,
and then restart the computer after each action (to test whether the action
resolved the problem). These two articles will help you isolate the problem.
You may be having
profile unload problems if you experience slow logoff (with Saving Settings
for most of the time while logging off).
UPHClean is a service that once and for all gets rid of problems with user
profile not unloading. See User Profile Hive Cleanup tool's
Readme.txt before installing it.
For more troubleshooting
on shutdown issues, I recommend you visit MS-MVP James Eshelman's Shutdown troubleshooter
page here:
SHUTDOWN
WORKS, BUT IT'S REAL SLOW.
One of the most common causes of Windows
shut down problems is a bug in RoxioТs Easy CD Creator (particularly
version 5).
Roxio does have a patch available at
http://www.roxio.com/en/support/ecdc/software_updatesv5_2.jhtml Keep in
mind though that the patch has been known to disable RoxioТs Take Two backup
software that came with Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum. You should also keep in
mind that version 5 is an old version that Roxio no longer supports. The current
version is Easy Media Creator 7. If you suspect that Easy CD Creator may be
causing your problem, then I recommend upgrading to a newer version rather than
patching an old version.
The quickest way to speed up boot times is to use the free Microsoft utility
BootVis.exe. Although it's intended primarily for developers, anyone
can use it to analyze their boot times and see where there are slowdowns. More
important, the tool will also automatically make system changes to speed up
your boot time, so you don't need to go into a lengthy analysis of where your
slowdowns are and how to solve them
Depending on your system and how it's set up, you may see only a moderately
faster startup time, or you may speed up boot time dramatically. I've seen reports
of improvements ranging from a little over 3 seconds to more than 35 seconds.
The improvements I found on my systems were moderate-7 seconds faster on one,
and 10 seconds faster on another. Think of all the things you could accomplish
with another 10 seconds in the day!
The BootVis utility traces boot time metrics and then displays
the results in a variety of graphs showing total boot time, CPU usage, disk
I/O, driver delays, and disk utilization. Download it from
www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.mspx
and extract it into its own folder. Go to the folder and double-click on
BootVis.exe. To analyze how your system boots, choose Trace → Next Boot.
(Choose Trace → Next Boot + Driver Delays if you want to trace delays caused
by drivers as well as your normal boot sequences.) Tell the program how many
times to reboot and run the test (the more times it runs, the more accurate
the results, although the longer the test takes to run). Click OK, and your
system will reboot.
*Download size
depends on selected download components.
Administering Windows platforms using scripts can be a big productivity booster
or a headache. Mitch Tulloch, author of
Windows Server
Hacks, sits down with Don Jones, a Microsoft MVP and the creator of ScriptingAnswers.com,
for a no-holds barred interview about the future of scripting.
Removed from client, but will survive on the server: "On
the operating system side of things, Monad is then expected to be included in Windows
Server Longhorn, expected in 2007"
Just one day after the first public reports of viruses
being written for an upcoming feature of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating
system (see
"First Windows Vista viruses unleashed"), the company said it will not include
the feature in the first generally available release of Microsoft Vista, due
out in the second half of 2006.
The feature, called the Monad Shell, provides
a way for users to access the operating system using text-based commands rather
than the traditional Windows graphical user interface. In the past, Microsoft
has said that Monad will be part of Longhorn, the code name for both the next
client and server versions of Windows.
In an interview Friday, Microsoft director of
product management Eric Berg said Monad will not be included in the first commercial
version of Windows Vista when it is released.
But the product is expected to be included in
Windows over the next "three to five years," he said. "Our intention is to synchronize
it with both client and server operating systems."
Security experts had worried that if Monad were
included in a widely used client, it might become an attractive target for hackers
-- especially if the shell were enabled by default.
Whether it will be enabled by default is unclear.
"There are multiple ways that we could introduce this technology to the client
stream," Berg said.
The first Microsoft product to use Monad will
be the next release of Microsoft's Exchange messaging server, code-named Exchange
12, which is also due in 2006, Berg said.
On the operating system side of things,
Monad is then expected to be included in Windows Server Longhorn, expected in
2007, and could be available in a future Windows Vista release, said
Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft Inc. "Presumably,
as time goes on, all of Microsoft's products will have Monad scripting interfaces,"
he said.
In most cases deviating from the Windows defaults is simply not
necessary or worthwhile.
Black Viper (amongst others) runs
a Windows tweaks page offers many changes and customizations that users can
make to MS Windows in the name of greater performance. BV recommends that many
active-by-default Windows services be set to manual activation or disabled altogether,
to save on memory useage and CPU cycles.
I have taken three systems with clean installs of Windows XP and reviewed these
tweaks. Well, the third isn't really a clean install, it has a bunch of software
running which any typical user would run e.g. firewall, antivirus, speedfan,
etc. The first two are lower-end systems that should theoretically benefit most
from this treatment, neither has the prefix “giga” in either its CPU speed or
RAM capacity. The last one is a modern system (at the time of writing, anyway).
Display a description of the computer in Network
Neighborhood (Windows 2000)
This tweak allows you to add a description of the computer for display in Network
Neighborhood.
UPX (the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables) is a free, portable,
extendable, high-performance executable packer for several different executable
formats. It achieves an excellent compression ratio and offers very fast decompression.
Your executables suffer no memory overhead or other drawbacks because of in-place
decompression.
Petite is a Win32 (Windows 95/98/2000/NT/XP) executable
(EXE/DLL/etc...) compressor. The compressed executables decompress themselves
at run time, and can be used just like the original uncompressed versions. Petite
also adds virus detection to the compressed executables - they will check themselves
for infection every time they are executed.
Changing Windows XP settings should be done very carefully. Tweaking
windows is probably more about getting right set of application and scripts and
avoiding overloading the system with too many "greedy" applications then about Registry
changes. Run disk defragmenter, disk cleanup and registry cleanup. Do not install
unnecessary of "bloated" software. Delete applications that you do not need.
Windows Vista will include a new
technology known as Freeze Dry designed to maintain
application states and unsaved documents even when
patches are automatically applied and PCs are rebooted.
Speaking at the Australian Tech Ed conference on the Gold Coast in Queensland
this week, senior product manager Amy Stephan offered a preview of the Freeze
Dry technology.
Many
IT managers plan to automatically install patches and updates on machines
during periods when they are inactive, such as overnight or on weekends. However,
as some patches require machines to reboot, users who leave documents open and
unsaved run the risk of losing that data if the machine is automatically updated.
Freeze Dry eliminates that problem by automatically saving application state
and documents and then restoring them once the system restarts, Stephan said.
Shared computer users can't always be trusted—they are often anonymous, and sometimes
mischievous. The
Windows Restrictions tool makes it easy to create restricted local user profiles
so users have limited access to Windows system utilities, files, and data. You can
prevent user access to Control Panel, the command prompt, any drive on the computer,
the Registry Editor, and many other system utilities. You can also prevent users
from running unauthorized software on a shared computer.
The Windows Restrictions
tool is best suited for workgroup environments in which users share accounts and
passwords, and where Active Directory is not present.
The Windows Restrictions tool lets you:
•
Restrict access to Windows system utilities
•
Prohibit access to important data
•
Prevent users from running unauthorized software
•
Simplify the Start menu
Defend shared computers from unauthorized changes to the hard disk
Unauthorized changes to a hard disk can make shared computers less reliable. Windows
Disk Protection helps to prevent users, viruses, spyware, or other programs from
making permanent changes to the hard disk by clearing changes each time the computer
restarts.
Because certain changes, such as critical updates and antivirus signatures,
need to be permanently saved, Windows Disk Protection allows you to schedule such
changes to occur automatically at whatever time you choose.
The Windows Disk Protection tool:
•
Helps protect operating system files
•
Clears changes when the computer restarts
•
Automates critical and antivirus updates
•
Lets you choose to save changes to disk
Enhance the user experience
Users generally prefer a consistent, familiar, and private shared computer experience.
The toolkit helps shared computer operators create an interface that will not confuse
or distract users with unnecessary programs or options.
The toolkit also helps
to protect user privacy by refreshing the desktop, user settings, and user data
each time a new user logs on. Plus, it consolidates several accessibility features
into one user interface, so users can more easily access the features they regularly
use. For users who are new to computers, the toolkit also provides a variety of
suitable online learning resources.
The Windows Accessibility tool lets users:
•
View and control all accessibility features from one
place
•
Easily enable or disable wanted accessibility features
Now there is an easier way. SyncToy is a free PowerToy for
Microsoft Windows XP that provides an easy to use, highly customizable program
to help copy, move, and synchronize different directories. Most common operations
can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization
is available without adding complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of directories
at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames
and deletes in another. Unlike other applications, SyncToy keeps track of renames
to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.
This ASP searches through an LDAP tree for accounts which match the account
name of the client and return accounts named
~*. The client can then set the password of the '~' account. The
account name is also added to a database which is parsed nightly by a process which
disables the passwords on all the accounts whose passwords were set that day.
This is designed to be used in order to allow logon access one a day-by-day basis.
Parses the logs from Netscape Proxy Server and creates a comma-delimited
report file. It handles nslookups, non-HTTP protocol handling and translates
requests from unknown users into true users. Finally, it sends the report
with BLAT (this runs natively on NT).
Standard disclaimer:The statements, views and opinions presented on
this web page are those of the author and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily
reflect, the opinions of the author present and former employers, SDNP or any other
organization the author may be associated with. We do not warrant the correctness
of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose.
