Windows XP Maintenance and Optimization Guide

[Udedenkz]

I seriously recommend looking into the slow boot times. You might have an extremely slow HD or be virus infected.

Drivers are very influential, if you did not use the same drivers (the same release date or number - 182.xx or somethign) then it might be part of the problem, some components might have better drivers for one OS than the other.

I have Windows 7 and XP and Windows 7 functions at about 80% of the raw performance of my XP while the Interface is about ten times slower. There is a lot of Hardware dependency with tests. Also 3DMark should give different scores for different OSes and respond to tweaks - it makes a very good benchmarking tool, after all - I notice better performance on my current setup.

System Specs,

Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.4Ghz

2x2GB PC2 5300 667-Mhz DDR2 Mushkin Brand RAM

Intel 965PM Motherboard

Nvidia 8600M GT 256DDR2

Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition Post-SP2 (tweaked)

Windows 7 7068 64-bit (tweaked)

Running Services,

Cryptographic Services

DCOM Service Process Launcher

DHCP Client

DNS Client

Event Log

Network Connections

Network Location Awareness

Plug and Play

Remote Procedure Call

Security Accounts Manager

Shell Hardware Detection

Themes

Windows Audio

Windows Driver Foundation

Windows Management Instrumentation

Wireless Configuration

Startup,

Java

Steam

Nlite,

- Applied Many Performance Tweaks of Nlite

- Disabled WFP / TCP/IP Patch / Polling Frequency Patch

- Removed Indexing + Misc

- /NOEXECUTE=AlwaysOff

Firewire / Modem / WAN Drivers / CD/DVD ROM / SecuROM Drivers / NetBIOS / RemoteAcess Drivers Disabled

No Paging File / Classic Search / SSD Tweaks / MRU Disabled / Recent Documents Disabled / Start Menu Delay Disabled / Fast Shutdown Tweaks Used / ctfmon disabled / Offline Networking Agent Disabled / Disk Quota Disabled / Fonts Folder Disabled / MSN Disabled / IP6 Disabled / IP Security Disabled / Printing Everything Disabled / .Zip Folders Disabled via Reistry and Prevented from Startup / Find People Disabled / compability tab disabled / User Data Migration Tool Disabled / Outlook Disabled / sendmail disabled / GUI animations disabled and shadows / Highlight New Apps Disabled / Anything and Everything that I wanted to tweaked in the MMC (Will Add To Guide Later) / Help and Support Destoyed / %windir% slimmed down / registry kept in good shape / Explorer tweaked for performance (Searches files a minimum of twenty times faster than 7!!!) / Thumbnails still functional / CoreAVC Used + CUDA / Frostwire Used / uTorrent Used / foxit used + Firefox Plugin / Firefox 3.1b2 used + FasterFox Lite / Ping Reducing Tweaks Applied / NOGUIBOOT enabled / Lots of tweaks not mentioned in guide applied / Security Holes Patched / Shell Ext still not used (will add later to guide) / Sticky Keys thrown down the toilet / AutoLogon To Admin / Logging Disabled (I think) / Performance Counters Disabled / MinLogon Not Used /

Everything works (games, music, internet, wireless internet, installer, disk management, themes, ). RAM Usage is about ~292MB (With 70MB Firefox Process, 23MB JVPT, 30MB MMC, and some other things open, Steam NOT running), desktop crowded with icons, and a wallpaper.

I tried tweaking 7 and well... WXPx64 - Youtube HD takes 22 - 65% CPU, W7x64 - YouTube HD Takes 40 - 85% CPU. :)

If anything, you can't deny that disabling things that you do not need / use, frees up memory. (Vanilla XP uses a WHOPPING 300MB RAM D: )

Also, here is the coolest thing you can do with XP imo.

Edited April 6, 2009 by Udedenkz

[NEVER85]

What's Vanilla XP? Also, I noticed you're running Windows XP x64. How's the overall performance compared to XP 32-bit, and how's the compatibility with most apps/games/etc? I've heard XP x64 has issues in that field but haven't tried it myself.

[Udedenkz]

What's Vanilla XP? Also, I noticed you're running Windows XP x64. How's the overall performance compared to XP 32-bit, and how's the compatibility with most apps/games/etc? I've heard XP x64 has issues in that field but haven't tried it myself.

In the world of software, Vanilla means not customized/modified from its original form. You know that brand new Windows smell? That Vanilla.

Aside from the ability to access and use more than 4GB of RAM and the ability to utilize 64-bit applications, there is not much difference between XP x86_32 and XP x86_64. You will be able to run 64-bit applications which can provide higher level performance than their 32-bit counterparts. 32-bit applications will run on Windows on Windows which offers about the same performance as running them in 32-bit environment - sometimes they might run slightly slower or slightly faster. About 99% of all 32-bit applications work, those that do not have probably been abandoned for quite a long time. If you use applications that use drivers, you would need to get the 64-bit version of that application as 32-bit drivers do not work on a 64-bit environment. If your computer has been built in a Chinese sweatshop, you might lack drivers for some components - otherwise all major companies provide drivers for XP64 - Ricoh, Realtek, Nvidia, Intel, Motorolla, etc.

[dead.cell]

Wow, I'm usually the type that likes eye candy, and even though XP offers little of that with the animations, I must say that just tweaking the UI animations made things feel quite a lot better. Thanks a lot!

[Breakthrough]

Nice guide, I'm liking it so far. I use XP on my powerhouse machine, and only use Vista/7 on my laptop for the extra battery life.

A few tweaks I enjoy are:

- Outertech's Cacheman XP (memory optimization tool - uses next to no resources, does a few tweaks of it's own, and it's nice to easily glance at my system tray to see how much ram I have free... And, is supposedly coming for Vista/7 too!)

- Force of habit, but on each format, I always right-click my hard drives and un-click "Allow Indexing Service to index this drive..." (even though it probably does nothing because I removed the indexing service with nLite)

- Put the pagefile on ANOTHER HARD DRIVE. Placing it on another partition won't do anything, and in some cases, will degrade performance (because it will probably end up in an unideal location on your disk)

- After my un-needed registry entries have been cleaned, I use RegCompact.NET 2.0 (I like the tools you posted as well)

- I know it costs money, but I really really found Diskeeper to be REALLY REALLY effective in defragmenting my hard drives (even just working using my idle resources). And it knows not to turn on when I'm gaming. The only thing I found was that it does a poor job with really large files (>4gb).

- For video codecs, I know a LOT of people are against it, but I'm a big fan of https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?act=...;f=12&id=11 Codec Pack (it's never done anything wrong, and I encode videos fine - it doesn't corrupt other codecs like some claim). I love VLC too, although I find MPlayerClassic faster to decode in some circumstances.

- When you mentioned deleting files which you can't access, you should post a link to Unlocker... This problem happens to a lot of people, and I found the program godsend sometimes.

- Bootvis. Bootvis rocks, but only use it after you've installed ALL STARTUP PROGRAMS as well as DRIVERS. The process occurs every few days when the computer idles, but Bootvis just forces Windows prefetcher to get everything useful on startup.

Edit: I also love nLite for a few reasons. You can take out all unneeded languages, which I always find makes the install time go a lot faster. And you can remove those services which you disable (I found nothing bad to happen as of yet). Not to mention that when I have to install 3rd party drivers, when you load the list of "All Devices" (after I removed some drivers with nLite), it doesn't take so long to load up anymore.

[Udedenkz]

Alright, I have recently survived the a second semester of university with a 3.47 GPA.

So, now I think is a good time to work some more on this guide.

First thing first, I am making a batch file which would disable a bunch of services that are not necessary for a MP Gaming. The final product will consist of a batch file which disables a bunch of services and then enables them when the user want them back. For now I made a batch file which should -quickly- disable all the services that I deem unnecessary without going overboard (only 58 services are targeted ~ most of which should be disabled already - or not present). I want you guys to test it out !

Services_Tweaked.zip

[sw1tch..]

Alright, I have recently survived the a second semester of university with a 3.47 GPA.

So, now I think is a good time to work some more on this guide.

First thing first, I am making a batch file which would disable a bunch of services that are not necessary for a MP Gaming. The final product will consist of a batch file which disables a bunch of services and then enables them when the user want them back. For now I made a batch file which should -quickly- disable all the services that I deem unnecessary without going overboard (only 58 services are targeted ~ most of which should be disabled already - or not present). I want you guys to test it out !

I have looked at your creation and think you could have made just one batch instead of over 9000.

But that being said are you running this on a commodore 64 or something? These days with decent hardware you do need to worry about stopping services.

[Udedenkz]

I have looked at your creation and think you could have made just one batch instead of over 9000.

But that being said are you running this on a commodore 64 or something? These days with decent hardware you do need to worry about stopping services.

That was done for speed purposes. If I made one batch file, then it would go one by one stopping services which would take forever instead of telling a bunch of services to stop at (pretty much) once. Also, it looks cooler...

This guide is for anyone running XP, whether it is a 166Mhz Pentium or a Core 2.

I take it that there were no things like - service cannot be stopped or it getting stuck on something? Or Wireless not working (Wireless and Themes should be untouched by this batch file)? All the services set to stop within that batch file are stopped on my system, but I am just one person and because they are all stopped by default, I cannot test it properly. Also does ATi have add a service after you install ATi gpu drivers (I should add that also)?

After I will be done with this batch file, I will also remove the registry tweaks to disable thumbnails as using ShellEx View instead is safer and easier.