Tweaking Performance

[Guest]

Hi, Does anyone know any good tweaking tools (freeware) or sites that has
information on increasing performance? If so, please post. Thanks.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

4 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer's Performance
http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/getstarted/speed.mspx

System Mechanic
http://www.iolo.com/sm/5/index.cfm

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

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:

| Hi, Does anyone know any good tweaking tools (freeware) or sites that has
| information on increasing performance? If so, please post. Thanks.

 

[Ted Zieglar]

If you have to ask...

Ted Zieglar

 

[Galen]

In Hobo_man <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Hi, Does anyone know any good tweaking tools (freeware) or sites that
has information on increasing performance? If so, please post. Thanks.

As has already been hinted at - you're going to break something. No
worries - most of us had to break something at first too. I'm a huge fan of
the System Mechanic application that's already been linked for you. I've
been using it since it's very early pre-release stages and haven't looked
back yet. They even have some handy dandy (and mostly risk-free) tweaks in
there. Some additional stuff to play with:

XSP:
www.x-setup.net

XP-Smoker
www.xp-smoker.com

WinBoost
www.megallass.com

And on and on and on... You WILL break something eventually. But, that's
half the fun. The other half is fixing it.

www.tweakxp.com
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

And there's not a whole lot here for a few more days while the webslave is
updating to add more content but you can peek if you want:
www.kgiii.info

Hmm... See www.aumha.org too now that I think about it...

Galen
--

"You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his
trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will
come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all."

Sherlock Holmes

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Galen makes a worthy point. Some of us here enjoy "tweaking" our computers
just for the fun of it, to see how far we can go before something breaks. I
guess we're the software users' answer to the overclockers. We are very
aware of what we are doing and, even more important, we know how to get out
of trouble when we get into it.

The same is not true of most people (in my experience) who post here looking
for registry cleaners and other assorted performance tools. They don't know
what they're doing and don't know how to interpret the results or respond to
problems as they occur. And much of their interest in improving the
perfomance of their computers is based on the wild hype they read on the
internet. These people should run, not walk, from so-called performance
boosting software.

Even the ardent tweakers among us know this truth: The way to run a computer
to best advantage is to keep things as simple as possible. It may not be
very sexy, but I haven't had to reinstall Windows since my Win95 days.

 

[Guest]

As the others have said - tweaking is the software answer to overclocking.
It's best done when armed with a boatload of knowledge (Been there, Done
that, got the T-Shirt!).

Seriously, the way that I learned about computers was by tweaking them until
they broke. Then, I was lucky enough to have good, understanding repair
technicians. They'd take the time to explain to me what I'd done wrong - and
how they were going to fix it.

Most tweaks that will net you a good performance increase are native to XP
(Start...Control Panel...System...Advanced Tab...Performance Settings
Button...then click on the "Adjust for best performance button". Then click
on OK and you're done (BTW - the settings below that button are the settings
that are changeable for performance increases).

There are other tweaks, but each situation is different. So, the next thing
to do is to invest in good backup and imaging software and use it regularly.
Because, if you're gonna keep on tweaking - you're gonna keep on crashing!
I crashed routinely as I was learning - now that I'm a bit more advanced I
don't crash as often - but I do have my system doing some strange things at
times, and will often reinstall a disk image because of these problems.

Also, search the web for tweaks and tweaking - most of the results will be
for Windows. Currently I have about 1,000 tweaking/repair sites bookmarked -
and I had to start from scratch 6 months ago when my backup hard drive
crashed while I was formatting my primary hard drive.

Finally, be aware that not all tweaks are created equal - there's some good
ones, there's some bad ones, and there's some in-between ones. Check each
one out before applying it - it may save you from having to format and
reinstall (or to reinstall a disk image - which is much quicker).

Good luck!

- John

 

[Galen]

In Ted Zieglar <[email protected]> had this to say:

One thing to add:

Invest FIRST in a bare-metal restore option such as Acronis True Image or
Image for Windows from the Terabyte Unlimited people. I like Acronis better
because I like quick and easy but both will suit your needs just fine.

Galen

Galen makes a worthy point. Some of us here enjoy "tweaking" our
computers just for the fun of it, to see how far we can go before
something breaks. I guess we're the software users' answer to the
overclockers. We are very aware of what we are doing and, even more
important, we know how to get out of trouble when we get into it.

The same is not true of most people (in my experience) who post here
looking for registry cleaners and other assorted performance tools.
They don't know what they're doing and don't know how to interpret
the results or respond to problems as they occur. And much of their
interest in improving the perfomance of their computers is based on
the wild hype they read on the internet. These people should run, not
walk, from so-called performance boosting software.

Even the ardent tweakers among us know this truth: The way to run a
computer to best advantage is to keep things as simple as possible.
It may not be very sexy, but I haven't had to reinstall Windows since
my Win95 days.

--

"You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his
trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will
come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all."

Sherlock Holmes