Follow these tips and you will definitely have a
much faster and more reliable PC!
1. Wallpapers:
They slow your whole system
down, so if you're
willing to compromise, have
a basic plain one instead!
2. Drivers:
Update your hardware drivers as
frequently as possible. New drivers tend to
increase system speed especially in the case of
graphics cards, their drivers are updated by the
manufacturer very frequently!
3. Minimizing:
If you want to use several
programs at the same time then minimize those
you are not using. This helps reduce the
overload on RAM.
4. Boot Faster:
The 'starting Windows 98/XP'
message on startup can delay your booting for
a couple of seconds. To get rid of this message
go to c:\ and find the file Msdos.sys . Remove
the Read-Only option. Next, open it in Notepad
or any other text editor. Finally, go to the text
'Options' within the file and make the following
changes: Add BootDelay=0 . To make your
booting even faster, set add Logo=0 to remove
the Windows logo at startup.
5. Restart only Windows:
When restarting your
PC, hold down Shift to only restart Windows
rather than the whole system which will only
take a fraction of the time.
Follow these tips and you will definitely have a
much faster and more reliable PC...!!!
6. Turn Off Animations:
Go to Display
Settings from the Control Panel and switch to
the Effects Tab. Now turn off Show Windows
Content While Dragging and Smooth Edges on
Screen Fonts . This tip is also helpful with
Windows XP because of the various fade/scroll
effects.
7. Faster Start-Menu Access:
Go to
the Start menu and select Run. Now
type Regedit and hit Enter. The Registry Editor
will appear on the screen. Now, open the
folder " HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop ". You should see
a MenuShowDelay value. If you don't then do
the following: right click on a blank space in the
right pane and select New\String . Change the
name in the new value to MenuShowDelay. Now
that we have the MenuShowDelay value, double
click on it and enter in the value data field.
This sets the start menu delay to 0
milliseconds.
8. Resolutions:
If you are willing to do anything
for faster performance from your PC, then try
lowering your display resolution. The lower it is,
the faster your PC.
9. Turn off Active Desktop:
Go to your Display
Properties and switch to the Web tab.
Uncheck View My Active Desktop As a Web
Page . Since the Active Desktop option under
Windows 98 uses a lot of system resources, this
option can have a dramatic effect on the speed
of the whole system.
10. Defragment Often:
Windows 98's Defrag
tool uses Application Acceleration from Intel
which means that when you defragment your
drive, data is physically arranged on the drive
so that applications will load faster.
Follow these tips and you will definitely have a
much faster and more reliable PC...!!!
11. Take your PC to Bed:
Using the Advanced
Power Management feature under Windows 98
gives you the option to use the sleep command.
That way, you can send your PC to sleep
instead of shutting it down and then restarting
it. It's as simple as pressing a button and then
pressing the same button to wake it up. You
can tell Windows after how many minutes/hours
of inactivity to automatically sleep the machine
in the Advanced Power Management section of
the Control Panel.
12. Faster Internet Access:
If you use the
internet for reference and the sites you visit are
rarely updated then try the following. In IE (the
same can be done in Netscape) go
to Tools , Internet Options. Next, click
on Settings... in the Temporary Internet
Files section. Finally, select Never for the first
option and double the amount of storage space
to use, click OK!
13. Benchmarking:
Benchmarking can be very
useful when run frequently. It can tell you how
your PC's components are performing and then
compare them to other machines like yours. For
example, when you overclock your PC, you want
to know how much more speed you have and
whether it is stable. All this and more can be
discovered using benchmarking. An excellent
piece of software for doing this job is SiSoft
Sandra which can be found in the Downloads
File Archive!
14. Refresh the Taskbar without restarting:
If
you in some way change the taskbar, either in
Regedit or elsewhere, you can refresh the task
bar without restarting. Hold down Ctrl Alt Del ,
and double click on Explorer. Say Yes to close
Explorer, but no to closing Windows. This will
refresh the Taskbar and system tray.
15. Quick CD Eject:
Instead of pushing the
button on your drive, right-click your CD drive
letter in My Computer and click on Eject. This
will also remove any icons that have become
associated with the CD drive.
Follow these tips and you will definitely have a
much faster and more reliable PC...!!!
16. Start Up Programs:
Windows can be
slowed down when programs run on start up.
To eliminate this, check your Start up folder.
You can access it from the start
menu: Start , Programs, Start Up. Another way
to eliminate programs from loading even before
Windows actually starts is by doing the
following: Click on Start, then Run.
Type msconfig . It will take quite a long time for
this program to load, but when you finally see it
on your screen, explore the different tabs. They
all have to do with how quickly your PC boots,
so select what you want, and uncheck what you
don't want!
17. Fonts:
When Windows starts, it loads every
single font in the Fonts folder. Therefore, the
more fonts you have, the slower the booting
process. To get rid of unwanted fonts, simply
go to the Fonts folder under c:\windows and
remove whatever you don't want. Fonts that
have a red letter 'A' as their icon are system
fonts, so don't delete them.
18. Stretching Wallpapers:
Don't "stretch" your
wallpaper in Windows 98 since it actually slows
Windows down when you drag icons around on
the desktop.
19. RAM Matters:
If you have less than 32MB
then you should seriously think of upgrading it
to at least 64MB. Windows runs much more
smoothly with 64MB or higher and tends to use
less hard disk space for virtual memory.
20. Partitioning:
A very nice little thing you can
do to boost system performance. By partitioning
your hard drive, splitting one physical drive into
several logical ones, you can gain several
advantages.
1. If you get a virus or you accidentally format a
drive, not all will be lost.
2. By placing the swap file (Win386.swp) on a
separate drive, The swap file will be less
fragmented and thus, faster.
3. Place Windows on a separate drive and
whenever you need to reinstall it, you rest
assured that your data is safe on a separate
drive.
Partitioning can be done using a few programs
such as FDisk which comes with DOS. However,
FDisk formats everything on the hard disk
before partitioning. Alternatively, you can use
Partition Magic from Power Quest to partition
your hard disk without losing your data.
TECHIE
