Windows XP: Windows XP. And yet it is accelerating

Optimizing Windows XP (Part 1)

The operating system has successfully passed the first tests on the computer, all its capabilities have been tried, the initial euphoria from the stunning beauty of the interface has gradually evaporated, and an inexplicable internal dissatisfaction with the operation of the system is increasingly beginning to manifest itself.

The colors of the interface no longer seem so bright, but its excessive friendliness starts to annoy even a little. Over time, these feelings are intensifying, and on one remarkable day, after examining the exorbitant amount of wasted resources, you come to the conclusion that it's time to put an end to all this. Here and there comes a new stage in the development of the operating system. And I was not mistaken when I called this day remarkable. From this day forward, you will gradually begin to reveal the huge inner world of Windows, full of unexpected interesting solutions, discoveries and finds. Yes, of course, Windows, like any other creation of human hands, needs to be tuned to specific equipment and specific tasks. It is simply impossible to create a product that perfectly matches all the requirements of each end user. In most cases, it requires careful tuning. After all, a user-friendly interface, ease of management, criteria for choosing software products - these are all relative terms. As they say, the taste and color of a friend is not. As a result of the work done, not only does the speed and reliability of the system increase, but the user himself receives a huge moral and aesthetic satisfaction. The operating system really turns into a true friend and assistant.

System Restore

Before I start to review the possibilities of fine-tuning Windows XP, I would like to dwell on some general questions. To begin with, it is necessary to accept the fact that the increase in system performance in most cases can be achieved only by abandoning some functions that provide additional convenience in work or automation of processes. It should be noted that the actions in each case are strictly individual and there are no standard optimization schemes. The only and most reliable guide should be, above all, common sense and logic. Moreover, I would not want the output of this article to be your starting point for long visits to various service centers and technical support services. Therefore, we will not start with the opening of the Registry Editor, but with a brief overview of the methods of restoring the system. The simplest of them is the use of the "System Restore" program, which can be started from the group of utilities of the "Start" menu. By creating a recovery point with it, you can always return to the initial state of the system. Of course, under condition of working capacity Windows. With a complete system crash, this program does not help. Another, no less simple way to save the registry and configuration files is by copying the contents of the C: \ WINDOWS \ SYSTEM32 \ CONFIG folder. This method will allow you to revive the system from DOS in a matter of seconds. The only obstacle is that NTFS partitions require a special driver, which can be downloaded from http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml. If you installed the operating system on a partition with FAT or FAT 32, no additional drivers are needed. The most radical method is to use the so-called emergency system recovery disk. This disk can easily be created with the help of the "Backup program" by running the "Emergency Repair System Wizard". Since a full archive of the entire system partition is created together with the diskette, you must first take care of the available free space on the hard disk or other medium. To restore the system, it's enough to boot from the CD with the distribution and press "F2" after the corresponding message appears on the screen. In addition to all of the above, there are many third-party tools, and "advanced" users and pros, of course, will use Recovery Console. Now let's use one (or better several) of the listed methods in case something goes wrong. We will create a backup copy of the most important files, hide the emergency recovery disk in a safe place away from the magnetic fields and, finally, we will optimize the system.

Optimization of occupied space

By default, there is no possibility to selectively install Windows components, but after installation, the situation can be fixed by removing all unnecessary items from the menu or the Add / Remove Programs / Install Windows Components menu. True, there are not many such components, but if you edit the SYSOC.INF file in the WINDOWS \ INF folder and delete all HIDE keywords in it, several additional items appear in the list, which is important enough to save disk space. If you have already installed all the hardware, and it works without problems, you can delete the WINDOWS \ DRIVER folder in the CACIN \ i38b. Its size is about 73 MB. Even if you need to install new equipment, nothing terrible will happen. Simply the system will require a distribution kit. You can free up another 360 MB of disk space by clearing the% SystemRoot% \ system32 \ dllcache \ folder, but there is one trick here. In order for the system not to fill it with the next scan of the system files, you must set the value of 0 for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon \ SFCQuota registry key, thereby determining the maximum system file cache size of 0 MB. In the same registry key, you can completely disable System Files Protection by changing the value of the SfcDisable key to dword: ffffff9d. Just want to warn that such measures may entail in addition to increasing productivity and a number of troubles due to the fact that some of the programs you install will easily replace your Windows system libraries with your libraries. Than this can end, I think, it is understandable without explanation. Here, as the saying goes, you decide. If you use a certain set of programs, and installing a new software for you is an emergency event, then disabling the SFC may make sense. But if you are in the soul of an experimenter and can not miss a single new program, SFC should be left on. The same can be said for the "System Restore" program, which can be disabled in the system settings on the same tab or, here, by clicking on the "Settings ..." button, change the size allocated for the archives on each of the disks.

Setting System Properties

Open the "Control Panel" \ "System" and go to the "System Restore" tab. Here all the options for setting up the "System Restore" program are concentrated. You can completely disable the program or customize its settings at your discretion. Constant monitoring, of course, slows down the work, and there are a lot of places on the disks for archives, which, in the final analysis, is quite uneconomical. But sometimes the "System Recovery" is very helpful. At least for the time of our experiments the program should be left on. As a compromise, you can recommend the following. Select one of the disks and click the "Options ..." button. In the window that opens, you can configure both the amount of space reserved by the system for the archive, and completely disable monitoring of this disk. In this way, you can configure monitoring parameters for each disc individually. For example, if you use section C for permanent work: the rest of the sections are intended for storing copies of installation packages and archives of documents, drivers, etc., it is advisable to disable monitoring of all disks except for drive C. This will not only save resources, but And prevent situations when, for example, a folder with a distribution of some rare program downloaded on the eve of the Internet, suddenly after the system's recovery will be empty, and it's impossible to go back to the previous state.

The next tab "Automatic update", is intended for setting up a Windows update through the Internet. Here you can select options for notifying the user about the available updates (before downloading or after the update is downloaded) or at all to refuse automatic updating. Of course, given the bandwidth of our communication channels, the best option is obviously the latter.

The "Remote Usage" tab combines settings for "Remote Assistance" and remote desktop management. If you do not use these functions and have not yet been provided with "help" by some remote well-wishers, it is better to disconnect everything from sin away.

The Computer Name tab is for attaching the computer to a domain or workgroup.

"Hardware" contains three groups of settings. One of them, "Hardware Profiles", allows creating several profiles with different configurations. If more than one profile is registered in the system, you can select them when downloading. Here you can also configure profile download settings, as well as perform copy, rename, delete operations with profiles already created.

In addition to this group of settings, there is a hardware installation wizard and the Device Manager, which in turn consists of two parts: "Signing drivers" with the system response settings to the unsigned driver and actually "Device Manager" itself, which should be told in more detail. Here we will make some adjustments and consider additional options. First, you need to check both IDE channels to enable UDMA. To do this, select the desired channel, from the context menu select "Properties" and go to the tab "Additional parameters". If for a hard disk the problems with UDMA in Windows XP seem to have disappeared, then the CD-ROM drive in some cases defaults to the PIO transfer mode even if your drive is actually able to use a more modern data transfer mode. To correct this misunderstanding, you need to select from the drop-down list the transmission modes "DMA, if available." In addition, if you use one device on each channel, it is desirable to disable the detection of the second device by selecting "None" from the list of device types. This will save the system from constant attempts to detect a non-existent device on boot.

Some changes have occurred in the settings of the mouse. Now you can set the polling frequency, the size of the input buffer and enable detection of the wheel.

Another important feature of the controller is that some devices are hidden by default. To display the entire list, select the appropriate command in the View menu. Do not forget about the existing opportunity to update the configuration of equipment directly from the window "Device Manager". To do this, click on the free space in the "Dispatcher" window. As a result, two more items will appear in the "Action" menu - "Update Hardware Configuration" and "Print", and the same buttons appear on the toolbar. All this can have practical value, for example, for detecting without rebooting peripheral PnP devices (modem, printer, etc.), which were turned off when the computer was turned on and was not recognized by the system.

Go to the next tab "Advanced". Just like the previous one, this tab contains three groups of settings, and each group has its own "Options" button. Clicking this button opens a window with settings. Options related to the "Speed" group of the user we will discuss on the page devoted to optimizing the system. I just want to remind you once again about the "Advanced" tab. In this place everything is concentrated that is connected with the use of memory (both physical and virtual) and processor time. You can choose what to give priority to using these resources - programs or background processes. For example, if you chose Optimize System Cache, the system will automatically allocate about 8MB of memory for caching the OS kernel, which increases the response of the system to the user's actions, but, of course, to the detriment of the programs. In the registry, this parameter is answered by the LargeSystemCache key (enabled-dword 1, off-0) in the HKLM / System / CurrentControlSet / Control / Session Manager / Memory Management section. In the same window, you can change the location and size of the paging file by clicking the "Edit" button.

The "User Profiles" group is intended for operations with user profiles and allows you to both delete and copy profiles, and change their type.

The "Download and Restore" group is designed to determine the order of loading of operating systems installed on the computer, as well as system actions in case of failure. Here you can disable "Perform automatic reboot", "Send administrative message" if there is no one to send it, but "Save the event to the system log" is better left on. This will provide an opportunity in the future to analyze the cause of the error and take measures to eliminate it.

In addition to the groups listed, there are two more buttons on the Performance tab: The "Error Report" is intended to send information about operating system and application errors to Microsoft. I do not think you'll like it, so turn this option off.

"Environment variables" allows you to specify the path to the system and user temporary folders. This feature can be very useful if you suddenly do not want to install any program. The fact is that some programs can not find their files unpacked in temporary local user folders and the installation process abruptly stops. If you come across such a phenomenon, simply enter in both fields something shorter. Best of all C: \ TEMP or C: \ WINDOWS \ TEMP, as it was in Windows 9x.