Services You Can Disable 

There are quite a few services you can disable from starting automatically. 
This would be to speed up your boot time and free resources. 
They are only suggestions so I suggestion you read the description of each one when you run Services 
and that you turn them off one at a time. 

Some possibilities are: 
Alerter 
Application Management 
Clipbook 
Fast UserSwitching 
Human Interface Devices 
Indexing Service 
Messenger 
Net Logon 
NetMeeting 
QOS RSVP 
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager 
Remote Registry 
Routing & Remote Access 
SSDP Discovery Service 
Universal Plug and Play Device Host 
Web Client 


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Cleaning the Prefetch Directory 

WindowsXP has a new feature called Prefetch. This keeps a shortcut to recently used programs. 
However it can fill up with old and obsolete programs. 

To clean this periodically go to: 

Star / Run / Prefetch 
Press Ctrl-A to highlight all the shorcuts 
Delete them 

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Not Displaying Logon, Logoff, Startup and Shutdown Status Messages 

To turn these off: 

Start Regedit 
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system 
If it is not already there, create a DWORD value named DisableStatusMessages 
Give it a value of 1 

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Clearing the Page File on Shutdown 

Click on the Start button 
Go to the Control Panel 
Administrative Tools 
Local Security Policy 
Local Policies 
Click on Security Options 
Right hand menu - right click on "Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile" 
Select "Enable" 
Reboot 

For regedit users..... 
If you want to clear the page file on each shutdown: 

Start Regedit 
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\ClearPageFileAtShutdown 
Set the value to 1 

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No GUI Boot 

If you don't need to see the XP boot logo, 

Run MSCONFIG 
Click on the BOOT.INI tab 
Check the box for /NOGUIBOOT 

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Speeding the Startup of Some CD Burner Programs 

If you use program other than the native WindowsXP CD Burner software, 
you might be able to increase the speed that it loads. 

Go to Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Services 
Double-click on IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service 
For the Startup Type, select Disabled 
Click on the OK button and then close the Services window 
If you dont You should notice 

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Getting Rid of Unread Email Messages 

To remove the Unread Email message by user's login names: 

Start Regedit 
For a single user: Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail 
For all users: Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail 
Create a DWORD key called MessageExpiryDays 
Give it a value of 0 

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Decreasing Boot Time 

Microsoft has made available a program to analyze and decrease the time it takes to boot to WindowsXP 
The program is called BootVis 

Uncompress the file. 
Run BOOTVIS.EXE 
For a starting point, run Trace / Next Boot + Driver Delays 
This will reboot your computer and provide a benchmark 
After the reboot, BootVis will take a minute or two to show graphs of your system startup. 
Note how much time it takes for your system to load (click on the red vertical line) 
Then run Trace / Optimize System 
Re-Run the Next Boot + Drive Delays 
Note how much the time has decreased 
Mine went from approximately 33 to 25 seconds. 

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Increasing Graphics Performance 

By default, WindowsXP turns on a lot of shadows, fades, slides etc to menu items. 
Most simply slow down their display. 

To turn these off selectively: 

Right click on the My Computer icon 
Select Properties 
Click on the Advanced tab 
Under Performance, click on the Settings button 
To turn them all of, select Adjust for best performance 
My preference is to leave them all off except for Show shadows under mouse pointer and Show window contents while dragging 

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Increasing System Performance 

If you have 512 megs or more of memory, you can increase system performance 
by having the core system kept in memory. 

Start Regedit 
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive 
Set the value to be 1 
Reboot the computer 

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Increasing File System Caching 

To increase the amount of memory Windows will locked for I/O operations: 

Start Regedit 
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management 
Edit the key IoPageLockLimit 

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Resolving Inability to Add or Remove Programs 

If a particular user cannot add or remove programs, there might be a simple registry edit neeed. 

Go to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Uninstall 
Change the DWORD NoAddRemovePrograms to 0 disable it 

4096 - 32megs of memory or less 
8192 - 32+ megs of memory 
16384 - 64+ megs of memory 
32768 - 128+ megs of memory 
65536 - 256+ megs of memory