Tag: optimization
November 30, 2008 by
Jason
The moment has come once again to pimp your Windows XP with the skills of a power user and the tool that will always be at your disposal, Notepad. This article, along with the previous ones (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5), will allow you to enhance and customize your operating system with advanced IT knowledge. Are there advantages to it? Of course there are. For one, the procedure is very fast, easy to perform and, in most cases, the result cannot be obtained through the “standard procedure” – Control Panel, Folder Options, Performance Options etc.
However, before getting started, if what we’re talking here is not something that you’re familiar with, or if you have not read yet the first article in the tweaking series, please do so now, because, otherwise, what is about to follow may not make any sense at all. Without a single trace of a doubt, that’s not something that we would want, is it now? This is all the more true since, as long as we are here, you will probably notice that, as promised above, the tweaks I’m about to present cannot be made using the old-school methods. It would be a pity to pass up this chance just because you’re not familiar with a few basic rules. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | No Comments »
November 27, 2008 by
Jason Once again, it’s time to enhance your Windows XP operating system exactly the way you want and without paying a cent on expensive programs that do something so simple that even a kid could handle it. This series allows you to make important changes to the look, feel and behavior of your Microsoft Windows XP with just the help of the good ol’ Notepad. These tweaks, performed on the Windows Registry, can be undone, but it’s very important that you follow a few steps and remember that the lines you are about to copy must be carefully selected and/or copied, because a single misplaced / missing / added character may seriously damage your OS.
So, before continuing our journey into the land of magical tweaks, it’s imperative that you read the first article in the series to understand not only the basic rules that must be followed in order to get the job done right, but also… what’s the deal with all the bold lines below. Before starting yet another series of desktop tweaks, please allow me to remind you not to leave the tweaks.reg file blank after opening it. Therefore, now that you’re viewing it in Notepad and have placed the “Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00” [without the quotes] at the beginning, let’s start optimizing. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | No Comments »
November 25, 2008 by
Jason Welcome to yet another episode of our Microsoft Windows XP tweaking saga. If you’re not familiar with the procedure, please start by reading the first article in the series, so as to fully understand how exactly you should use the lines below and how to run the tweaks.
However, don’t hesitate to have a look at some of the other tweaking articles as well, other than part one - part two and part three, which might uncover some of the secrets behind Windows XP that you weren’t aware of.
If the previous article was focused on Folder Options-related tweaks, in today’s piece, we’ll only take a look at a few ways to change the behavior of Display Properties. If you’ve already read the other articles in the series, then you should already know they contain tweaks that cannot be activated from Control Panel, Folder Options, or any other standard Windows customization utility.
Of course, this is the case with this piece too, but, since activating some tweaks will no longer grant users access to very important areas of Microsoft Windows, I will also post the reverse tweak to ensure the way back, just in case you’re not very fond of a particular change in your system. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 2 Comments »
October 27, 2008 by
Jason Welcome back to the registry optimization saga! If you’re just joining us, please start by reading at least our first episode, which describes a few rules that must be followed in order for the optimization process to take place successfully…
So, now that you’ve opened your tweak.reg file and you’ve written ‘Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00’ at its beginning, let’s head on to some serious business: in today’s episode we’ll cover several important optimizations that you would usually access using Folder Options.
Folder Options is one of the key-windows of any Windows optimization process. You can easily find it by clicking on the Tools menu in Windows Explorer. From the View tab you have access to a variety of essential XP settings regarding the looks and behavior of your Windows Explorer. Therefore if you want to make some of these changes permanent on a regular basis (each time you install your Windows) or apply them on another computer too, just copy the tweaks you’re interested in to your tweak.reg file. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 3 Comments »
October 24, 2008 by
Jason
Allow me to start this article by recommending you read (if you haven’t already) the first part of this “tweaking series,” as it sets the ground rules that must be followed in order to get the job done right.
The concept behind the “tweaking series” is quite simple, in that it shows you how to optimize your Windows XP the way you want, with just a few clicks and without the help of any expensive software.
So, now that you’ve read the first part, you’ve created your tweaks.reg file, and wrote “Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00” in it, let’s see what other tweaks you could add to your file in order to further enhance your XPerience.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer]
“Link”=hex:00,00,00,00
When creating a shortcut, Windows XP automatically names it “Shortcut to (name of the file).” If you find this annoying, the above tweak will remove the “Shortcut to” text and leave only the name of the file in the shortcut’s name. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 4 Comments »
September 17, 2008 by
Jason You may ask yourselves, why should this article be any different from all those tweaking tutorials around the Internet or, better yet, why should you read this when you can install a program that does it all for you? Here’s why: this article will help you make important changes to your system with just two windows opened: this one and a notepad. That’s all! No need to click your way through dozens of windows, no need to go through the risk of pushing the wrong button and crashing your operating system.
Furthermore, you don’t have to pay a single cent! Why pay for a program to do what you yourselves can do in just a few seconds? And last but not least, you will be able to choose from a list only the tweaks that you’re interested in and then apply them on any computer, at any time with just a double-click. Tweaking can hardly get any easier than that! Think how cool that would be, especially after reinstalling Windows.
Let’s start by creating the file that will do all the magic. Right-click on your desktop, create a new text document and name it tweaks.reg. Windows will ask if you’re sure that you want to change the file extension – click Yes. Right-click the file and choose Edit: a blank notepad window will appear. There are two things you must keep in mind: first of all, for the magic to work your text document must start with ‘Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00′. Secondly, later on, be very patient when copying something to paste it in your document. If you copy an incomplete text, the tweak will not work and you might alter other system settings. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 6 Comments »
Internet Explorer 8 is not the fastest browser in the universe. This, according to IE Program Manager, Christian Stockwell, working on the performance of the browser. However, this is not to say that the Redmond company has not poured a consistent amount of efforts into boosting the performance of IE7’s successor. In fact, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, planned for release by the end of this month, will offer palpable proof of the new horsepower under the browser’s hood.
“When we took a hard look at our goals and considered what we could do to build the best browser, we were presented with a quandary. On the one hand, we could focus very narrowly on scripting performance, trusting that our investment would noticeably improve our users’ browsing experience. Alternatively, we could invest more broadly in realistic scenarios, measuring heavily-used subsystems and investing our optimization effort accordingly. We opted for the latter approach,” Stockwell noted.
Even as early as March 2008, IE GM Dean Hachamovitch indicated that JavaScript performance was up 2.5 times, the Gmail inbox was loading 34% faster, the task of opening a new conversation took 45% less time, while that of opening a thread 25% less. With IE8 Beta 2, Microsoft has tweaked the execution time for the browser, but it has also managed to speed up navigation and user interaction. Read More»
Posted in Internet | 2 Comments »
I used to rely on Norton’s Speed Disk, then, eventually Perfect Disc and Diskeeper to optimize my HDD. Defragmenting is the idea- an antiquated process of reorganizing bytes on spinning platter so that each file is grouped into contiguous locations on the disk. Many still believe that defragmenting hard disk drives on a regular basis keeps PCs operating at peak performance. But that idea is behind the times.
Defragmenting served its purpose back when folks chugged along on 486DX4 PCs powered by 5400rpm drives. Now those where slooooow drives and extra spindle movements arising from defragmentation truly hobbled the system. But that’s no longer the case. Today, 7200-RPM hard-disk drives with monster seek and latency times are the bare minimum; most brag a 16-MB cache buffer. Couple that with Windows XP’s high speed NTFS and you’ll quickly discover that defragmenting no longer makes much improvement, if any, to system performance. I say this after thorough experimentation on my QuadCore running on a 10,000RPM Western Digital Raptor. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows XP | 2 Comments »
October 08, 2007 by
Jason Although it is virtually handicapped in terms of the options it actually provides to the user in comparison to Windows XP, the hard disk defragmentation utility in Windows Vista is an evolution of the equivalent from the predecessor operating system. But the enhancements come essentially under the hood of the tool. In this context, the actual defragmentation engine was tuned up, as well as the management of the fragmentation process.
“By default, the defrag tool only defragments files smaller than 64 megabytes (MB). Therefore, files larger than 64 MB are not moved unnecessarily. In earlier versions of Windows operating systems, if the defrag engine was in the middle of a large move request, it could take lots of time to cancel defragmentation. In Windows Vista, the defrag engine processes input and output requests in smaller portions. Therefore, you can avoid situations where the defrag engine is busy with processing large move requests when you cancel a defragmentation session”, Microsoft explained. Read More»
Posted in Computer, windows vista | 9 Comments »
