Windows XP tweaks that work

[Ryudo Lee]

Recently, I noticed that my home computer was, for lack of a better term, lagging.  I've been good to it, don't get me wrong.  I've been keeping unnecessary programs from starting, I've trimmed down the services that start automatically, and kept up with anti-spy/mal/adware and anti-virus updates along with regular defrags.  But it still seemed like it was sluggish.  So I started poking around and looked up some useful tweaks, most notably some registry entries that made a noticeable improvement in network speed.

So I figure that I'm not the only one who's poked around under Windows XP's hood, and maybe we could share the tweaks that we've found over the years that actually make XP work properly.

(Also, any sane person would backup the registry before implementing any of these...)

TCP/IP tweaks

I did these on my home computer and I saw a noticeable increase in performance in networking and internet surfing.  I did these on my computer at work, which has been suffering with terrible network lag as of late, and the difference is like night and day.  Everything is coming up faster now, from my network drives to my e-mail to this site even.  These can also be done on Windows 2000 computers.

All of these options are found in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

GlobalMaxTcpWindowSize="256960" (DWORD, in decimal)

TcpWindowSize="256960" (DWORD, in decimal)

Tcp1323Opts="1" (DWORD) - Some people will just tell you to set this to 3, but of the three settings (0 = disabled, 1 = window scaling but no timestamp, 3 = window scaling with timestamp), 1 provides smaller packets, but 3 will help if you're in a situation where there's increased packet loss.

DefaultTTL="128" (DWORD, in decimal). - Other settings that are widely used are 64 and 32.  Setting to 128 might slow down packet TTL, but it will reduce the risk of packet loss due to a system being far away.

EnablePMTUDiscovery="1" (DWORD)

EnablePMTUBHDetect="0" (DWORD) - Some will tell you to set this to 1, but all this does is detect "black hole" routers by increasing the maximum number of retransmissions for a given segment, so it's not necessary to set this to 1 unless you're suspicious of a black hole being out there.

SackOpts="1" (DWORD)

TcpMaxDupAcks="2" (DWORD - range 1-3, recommended setting is 2).


XP Speed Up Tweaks

Reduce the time it takes for Windows to show a menu.  For some reason MS thought it was a good idea to make menus have a delay before actually displaying.

In the registry, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\

MenuShowDelay="50" (DWORD, in decimal) - Can be anything from 0 on up.  50 to 100 is usually good.

Reduce the time for XP to shut down programs and services.  What these do is set XP to automatically stop any program or service that is hung up during shutdown after 1 second.

In the registry, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Desktop\

WaitToKillAppTimeout="1000" (DWORD, in decimal)

HungAppTimeout="1000" (DWORD, in decimal)

Then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\Control\

WaitToKillServiceTimeout="1000" (DWORD, in decimal)

Improve swapfile performance.  What this does is make the machine use your physical RAM before touching the swapfile.  This is best used on systems that have more than 256mb of RAM.

Go into MSCONFIG and click on the SYSTEM.INI tab.
Click on the entry [386enh] so that it's highlighted, and then expand it.
Click New
In the new entry type in ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1


Security Tweaks

Clear paging file at shutdown.  This empties out your swap file when you shut down, but it may slow down your shutdown process.  But, it's better to slow down your shutdown process than to possibly leave unencrypted data in your swap file that could be accessed without your knowledge.  Better safe than sorry.

In the registry, go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/SessionManager/Memory Management

ClearPageFileAtShutdown="1" (DWORD)

Unload DLLs when the programs that use them close.  They say that XP does this automatically, but better safe than sorry, right?

In the registry, go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

AlwaysUnloadDLL="1" (DWORD)

[rt]

Honestly, best 'tweak' to get an old laggy install of xp back up to speed I find is to back up all your stuff (2nd HD, external HD, CD's DVD's whatever), do a reinstall of XP allowing it to format the disk.

XP just has some kind of performance leak in it.

But please make sure to find all those valuable files before you use this method  Windows loves to hide them 

Other than that I set up the swap file so it has a constant block of space. I find this keeps disk fragmentation to be much lower. As does putting the swap file in its own little partition. I let IE store its web junk in said partition too.

I might try the 'use memory first' fix though, so thanks

[RobbieThe1st]

Of course, if you don't mind the old-style window graphics, downgrading to windows 2k improves computer performance immensely, and quite a few programs still work on 2k also.


-RobbieThe1st

[Tapewolf]

Of course, if you don't mind the old-style window graphics, downgrading to windows 2k improves computer performance immensely, and quite a few programs still work on 2k also.

A lot of people I know turn off the Fisher-Price mode as soon as they get the machine anyway.

One of the other things W2K does is install and keep working.  You don't have to activate it.  It doesn't randomly throw a fit and demand to be reactivated, and you don't have to plead with Microsoft to allow you to use the software you paid $180 for if you swap two PCI cards over or have to replace one of the hard disks.

One thing it doesn't do is firewire audio, though.  For that you need XP SP2 

[RobbieThe1st]

Of course, if you don't mind the old-style window graphics, downgrading to windows 2k improves computer performance immensely, and quite a few programs still work on 2k also.

A lot of people I know turn off the Fisher-Price mode as soon as they get the machine anyway.

One of the other things W2K does is install and keep working.  You don't have to activate it.  It doesn't randomly throw a fit and demand to be reactivated, and you don't have to plead with Microsoft to allow you to use the software you paid $180 for if you swap two PCI cards over or have to replace one of the hard disks.

One thing it doesn't do is firewire audio, though.  For that you need XP SP2 

I completely agree with you.

On the second issue, I have had way too much experience with that when I replaced my motherboard at around midnight one day, and windows xp(sp1) decided to make me reactivate. Now, once I finally got it to actually connect, it decided my key was not valid any more, so I did the only thing any sane person could: I found a way to disable the activation mechanism. I am much happier now, as I can take my hard-disk and run it on whatever machine I want(still only one copy however).

Third issue wise, it might be easier just to get a USB/pci audio card for $20 or so instead of going through the XP hassles.


-RobbieThe1st

[Tapewolf]

Third issue wise, it might be easier just to get a USB/pci audio card for $20 or so instead of going through the XP hassles.

If only.  Actually it's one of these:
http://www.sonicstate.com/news/shownews.cfm?newsid=1769

...you simply won't find an 8-channel 24/96 audio interface for $20 in any format unless it's broken, stolen or obsolete.  There is a PCI version of the Terratec, and maybe I should have got that (or the Delta 1010).
But the PCI bus now is where ISA was 10 years ago - being phased out for PCI express.  USB and USB2 has been a bit of a disaster for audio, and that basically leaves Firewire.

Anyway, I resurrected my old XP machine for the sole purpose of archiving tapes, but that's another story.  Ultimately I still hope to get it to work in Linux.

**EDIT**
Before you ask, no I can't make it work on the Mac 

[Zorro]

Safer to use these tools to tune and test you broadband:  http://www.dslreports.com/tools