Friday, February 23, 2007

Tweaking Windows XP

Well here are some tips to tweak Windows XP to make your system run faster. These should only be done by experienced computer users. If you want one on one help you can go to The Computerz101 Forums @ http://computerz101.20.forumer.com/ You'll need to register and post your questions and you can also get my contact information @ www.computerz101.com/faq.html near the bottom for faster service thank you. Tweaking Windows XP by Mike!

I will add more tweaks once a week or so.

Follow these steps below:

1. A faster Windows shutdown
Shutting down Windows can take a long time. You can speed this up (at your own risk) with the following tweaks in the registry key:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\DesktopChange the following String values:AutoEndTasks=1HungAppTimeout=4000WaitToKillAppTimeout=4000WaitToKillServiceTimeout=4000

2. Finding out the reason of a Windows crash
If you would like to know the reason why there was a sudden crash of Windows, change the DWORD-value ShutdownReasonUI temporarily to 1 in the following key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ReliabilityAfter a reboot you will find the reason why your Windows shuts down suddenly in the log files (Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Logfiles). If you are finished analyzing, change the value ShutdownReasonUI back to 0.

3. ------Increase BROADBAND speed in WinXP *Should work for 56k also* ----

1. make sure your logged on as actually "Administrator". do not log on with any account that just has administrator privileges.
2. start - run - type gpedit.msc (not available in home version)
3. expand the "local computer policy" branch
4. expand the "administrative templates" branch
5. expand the "network branch"
6. Highlight the "QoS Packet Scheduler" in left window
7. in right window double click the "limit reservable bandwidth" setting
8. on setting tab check the "enabled" item
9.where it says "Bandwidth limit %" change it to read 0
Effect is immediate on some systems, some need to re-boot. This is more of a "counter what XP does" thing. In other words, XP seems to want to reserve 20% of the bandwidth for its self, even with QoS disabled. So why not use it to your advantage. To demonstrate the problem with this on stand alone machines start up a big download from a server with an FTP client. Try to find a server that doesn't max out your bandwidth. In this case you want a slow to medium speed server to demonstrate this. Let it run for a couple of minutes to get stable. The start up another download from the same server with another instance of your FTP client. You will notice that the available bandwidth is now being fought over and one of the clients download will be very slow or both will slow down when they should both be using the available bandwidth. Using this "tweak" both clients will have a fair share of the bandwidth and will not fight over the bandwidth.


I will add some more tweaks next week. Enjoy. Don't forget to check out our website for more information @ www.computerz101.com Thanks Mike!