Steps to Speed-Up Boot Process in Win XP
- Click on Start, then Run, and type “msconfig”. Wait for a new window to pop up.
- Look under the “BOOT.INI” tab. You will see a box labeled “Timeout:”, and a numerical value. By default, it’s 30, which means 30 seconds of wait time before boot. This can be changed, make it 3 seconds. (Note: if you have more than one operating system, this means the wait time to startup to the highlighted Operating System. Sometimes you might want a bit more than 3 seconds than you can opt 5 or 10 seconds)
- Delete The Temporary Files Periodically From Your Computer To Make The Applications Run Faster. Type %Temp% in the run dialog box by clicking on Start -> Run, and click on “OK”. You will see an open folder with many files. Click on the Edit menu and click on Select all and then click on the File menu and select Delete. Note: Always confirm that the folder which is opened has a “temp” on the top of menu bar and the folder indicates that it is a temporary folder.
- Perform a Scandisk To See That Your Computer Hard Drive is in Healthy Condition and it helps Your Computer Run Faster
- Always Perform a Disk Defragmentation at least once in a month. Start the disk defragmentation from the system tools available in the accessories from the start menu. It takes a longer time and it is advised not to run any applications in the computer including the screen savers, while running disk defragmentation.
Speed up shutdown times
It’s not only start-up that you’d like to speed up; you can also make sure that your system shuts down faster. If shutting down XP takes what seems to be an inordinate amount of time, here are a couple of steps you can take to speed up the shutdown process:
- Don’t have XP clear your paging file at shutdown. For security reasons, you can have XP clear your paging file (pagefile.sys) of its contents whenever you shut down. Your paging file is used to store temporary files and data, but when your system shuts down, information stays in the file. Some people prefer to have the paging file cleared at shutdown because sensitive information such as unencrypted passwords sometimes ends up in the file. However, clearing the paging file can slow shutdown times significantly, so if extreme security isn’t a high priority, you might not want to clear it.
- To shut down XP without clearing your paging file, run the Registry Editor (click Start > Run, then type regedit in the Run box) and go to:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
- Change the value of ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 0. Close the Registry, and restart your computer. Whenever you turn off XP from now on, the paging file won’t be cleared, and you should be able to shut down more quickly.
Note: Please be careful when editing the Registry; you can do a lot of damage here. Don’t change or delete anything unless you know exactly what it is. Its better to export the Registry settings before any changes are maid in Registry Editor.