Let's make the operating system work as quickly as possible.

The most important goal for which usually all the fuss is set up with the setup is to make the operating system work as quickly as possible. The main thing here is the understanding that no second won is given for nothing, you have to pay for everything.

Deleting a password request for logging on

For example, I do not like to enter the password to log in every time it is downloaded. Especially since I do not have anything to hide from home. However, the initial attempts to get rid of entering the password in the Control Panel did not help me. The user account could not be deleted in the Accounts section, Windows simply did not allow it. Then I found another way. There, in the Control Panel, I chose Administration / Local Security Policy / Account Policies / Password Policy. That's where the parameter "Minimum password length" was found. By setting this parameter to 0, I solved this problem.

Cancel Screen Saver in Windows XP at boot time

This action will help, though it's quite a bit to reduce the boot time of your OS. Do not forget only that as a result you will also not see any system messages about the boot process (chkdsk, convert ...), although if you do not have problems, you can do it safely.

All we need is to edit the BOOT.INI file, adding the "/ noguiboot" parameter immediately after "/ fastdetect" to it.

After the system restart, the splash screen will not appear any more, and on slow computers this can save you a few seconds. Accordingly, in order to return everything to its proper place, it is necessary to delete the above parameter in the same BOOT.INI.

Disable indexing

Windows XP does solely for its own needs a list of all the files on the hard drive in order to speed up their search when you need it. But how often do you search for files? Surely not every day. But the process of such indexation slows down the computer. In particular, this strongly affects the execution of almost any file operations (opening, closing ...). So I came to the conclusion that it's better to disable this indexing.

This is done as follows. Open "My Computer", right-click on the hard disk icon and select "Properties". At the very bottom of the window that opens, you will see a checkmark next to "Enable disk indexing for quick search". This is the very tick and should be removed. After clicking the "Apply" or "OK" buttons a new window will appear asking you whether to apply the selected attributes only to the current disk or to the attached files and folders, too. The final execution of this procedure can take a couple of minutes (depending on how many files you have on the disk), but as a result you can enjoy a slightly faster OS. Naturally, this works only for disks with the NTFS file system.

Clear the predictor

WinXP uses a unique technology to predict the launch of programs. The fact that in Win9X / ME / 2000 should periodically "clean" the system registry and delete temporary files on the disk, probably everyone knows. But what to do with such a seemingly useful thing as a predictive mechanism in Windows XP? After a while, the directory (called it "Prefetch"), which stores entries about the startup of programs on the basis of which the OS builds its predictions, is overflowed with a bunch of data that has long been unnecessary to anybody, which again affects the performance of your system. My advice: open the C: / windows / prefetch directory, and delete all its contents. Windows will quickly accumulate new data, and you will live more easily. It is advisable to do this procedure once a month.

Delete the hibernation file

If you do not use sleep mode (I prefer a beautiful word - hibernation), then it's better to completely disable it. Thanks to this, you will free up a space equal to the amount of RAM on the hard disk. If you have a hidden file HIBERFIL.SYS in the root directory of the "C" drive, then you have the hibernation enabled. You can delete this file by selecting the "Power Options" icon in the Control Panel, and in the appeared window on the "Hibernate" tab, uncheck the box "Enable the use of hibernate mode".

Increase NTFS performance

The NTFS file system is recommended for WinXP based on the concepts of reliability, security and support for the largest amounts of disk space. But about its performance, you can hear a lot of unflattering statements. So now we will deal with that. That we will increase the performance of NTFS on a single computer.

First of all, disable the creation of short names. By default, NTFS generates names according to the old 8.3 rule for compatibility with MS-DOS and Windows 3.x clients. If you do not see such clients on your network, you can safely disable this function by changing the value of the NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation key to 1. You will find this key in the system registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSet
ControlFilesystem.

The second step is to turn off the record of the date the file was last updated. By default, NTFS writes the date and time of its last update whenever you change any file. On large NTFS partitions, this can greatly affect the performance of the file system. And to disable it is just as simple: you need to assign the value NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate to the value 1. This key is in the same section HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentContolSet
ControlFilesystem. It may be that such a key does not exist, then it must be created with the type REG_DWORD.

Now we have enough space for the main file table. Add the NtfsMftZoneReservation key of type REG_DWORD to the system registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSet
ControlFileSystem. When you do this, the system will allocate disk space for the main file allocation table. What is it for? Yes, in order to take control of the growth process of this table. If there are few files on your NTFS partitions, but they are large, the best value for the created parameter will be 1 (by default). Usually the optimal value is 2 or 3. A 4 (maximum value) should be used only if you have a huge number of files on the disk (tens of thousands). However, with values ​​greater than 2, you should experiment with caution, since in this case the system can grab a large piece of disk space for the file allocation table.

After all listed changes in the registry, the computer should be restarted.

Speed ​​up the CD-ROM

What most do not like us when we have to copy large files from CDs? Of course the data transfer rate. Here are the options that can help you squeeze the maximum of what it can from the CD-ROM drive.

In the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControl registry key
FileSystemCDFS look for the keys listed below and set the specified values. If the desired key does not exist, then create it.

CacheSize - this key has a binary value: ff ff 00 00
Prefetch - has a value of type DWORD, which should be set to 4000 hex
PrefetchTail - also has the type DWORD and should equal 4000 hex
Office XP - disable sending errors

Office XP has an incredibly useful function - if an error occurs, it tries to send a report about it to Microsoft. If you are tired of it, then this function can be turned off. Below I quote the text of the .REG-file that will help you in this (you can create it by copying this code, for example, into notepad, and save it with the .reg extension):

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftOffice10.0Common]
"DWNeverUpload" = dword: 00000001
"DWNoExternalURL" = dword: 00000001
"DWNoFileCollection" = dword: 00000001
"DWNoSecondLevelCollection" = dword: 00000001
[HKEY_USERS.DefaultSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftOffice10.0Common]
"DWNeverUpload" = dword: 00000001
"DWNoExternalURL" = dword: 00000001
"DWNoFileCollection" = dword: 00000001
"DWNoSecondLevelCollection" = dword: 00000001