Windows XP speed tweaks

Saruman

OK i did this on my laptop and it seems twice as fast as before.. and before it was no slouch!! Best way to see is Games.. dungeon Siege went from playable with the odd jerk at 1024x768 to absolutly sweet and smooth.

Basically you know there is a load of services that use resources and are probbaly not needed but your not sure if you need it? This link is excellent as it explains them all and tells you if you can dissable, set to manual or leave well enough alone... You might be surprised by how many are useless some even Microsft say dissable as they are security risks...

here is the link:
http://www.overclockersclub.com/windowsxpservices.shtml

Quorthon

Guys

There should be a sticky for this kind of stuff. eg the HW Tweaking forum has stickys for various tweak sites - how about one for windows xp tweaks/optimizations etc

I am awaiting delivery of a new pc with win xp installed. Having come from a tweaked-to-the-hilt and stable win98/me pc, one thing I am dreading is optimizing xp - I am sure when it is delivered with factory presets etc there will be all kinds of useless and speed robbing gizmos, services, sounds, active wotsits and so on.

How about it??

Anyway if anyone knows of any good (non miscrosoft) sites you could list them here.

Q

Saruman

There will be, and the guide posted tells you how to get rid of most if not all of them. One of the worst is the eye candy... turn off the XP theme and stick it on windows classic.. much better interface too

Mr E

Great guide, but you have to be EXTREMELY careful.

After running through the guide, disabling services along the way (ignoring any network-ish ones because I'm on a LAN), I couldn't get IIS started.

It took me a half hour of backtracking, but I figured out that if you are using IIS, you need to have "Security Accounts Manager" on Automatic. The "IIS Admin" service won't start without it. The guide recommends disabling it. DON'T if you are doing web development that requires IIS !!! :rolleyes:

(Backups? I don't need no steeeeenking backups!)

*sigh*

Just be careful...

- Dave.

Saruman

lol good point... im on a lan.. well not at the moment as my net card is out (possibly dead, will test it some time) so i left those ones on or at least on manual... but i dont have IIS or anything like that so did not have that particular problem.

Dizz

Ya might wanna have a look at TweakXP

Dizz

sceptre

Originally posted by TmB

It took me a half hour of backtracking, but I figured out that if you are using IIS, you need to have "Security Accounts Manager" on Automatic. The "IIS Admin" service won't start without it. The guide recommends disabling it. DON'T if you are doing web development that requires IIS !!! :rolleyes:

Indeed. Worth checking on dependencies before disabling anything (they're listed in the properties box for the particular service) or else you'll be caught out some day.

Vigilance Pottter, always be vigilant.

daveirl

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