Deng Shaowu's Appendix

Windows XP has become the mainstream operating system at present, but it requires high hardware, and even users with high hardware configuration are often troubled by the lack of system resources. Therefore, optimizing the system is a skill that all Windows XP users must master.

First, accelerate for Windows XP.

To improve the running speed of Windows XP, we can start from three aspects: reducing the startup time, improving the running speed of the system and speeding up the shutdown speed.

1. Accelerate system startup

Windows XP is about 30% faster than Windows 2000, but it is still much slower than Windows 98. However, we can greatly improve the startup speed of Windows XP by optimizing the settings. There are several ways to speed up the system startup: try to reduce the programs and services loaded when the system starts; Optimize hardware settings such as disk and CPU; Modify the default settings, reduce startup waiting time, etc. Most of these methods can not only reduce the system startup time, but also save system resources and speed up the computer operation.

( 1)Msconfig

Windows XP starts faster in the initial stage of system installation, but with the increase of the number of installed software, the startup speed of the system will become slower and slower. This is because many softwares add themselves to the startup program, so that they need to run when starting, which greatly reduces the startup speed and occupies a lot of system resources. For such programs, we can exclude them from the startup group through the system configuration utility Msconfig.

Select the run command from the start menu and type Msconfig in the run dialog box. After entering, the system configuration utility dialog box will pop up. Select the Start tab (as shown in figure 1), which lists the projects and source codes loaded when the system starts. Carefully check whether each project needs to be automatically loaded, otherwise clear the check box in front of the project. After the setting is completed, it needs to be restarted to take effect.

(2) Butvez

Bootvis is a startup optimization tool provided by Microsoft, which can improve the startup speed of Windows XP.

Using BootVis to improve the startup speed of Windows XP must be done in the correct order, otherwise it will not have the effect of speeding up. The correct operation method is as follows:

Start Bootvis, select the options command under the Tools menu from its main window (as shown in Figure 2), type the installation path of Bootvis in the symbolic path, such as "C:\Program Files\Bootvis", and click "Save" to exit.

Select Next Boot from the Tracking menu, and the Repeat Tracking dialog box will pop up. Click "OK" button, and BootVis will boot Windows XP to restart. The default restart time is 10 second.

After the system restarts, BootVis automatically starts running and records the startup process, generates the related BIN file of the startup process, and automatically names this record file as TRACE_BOOT_ 1_ 1. After recording the startup process file, the program will restart the BootVis main interface and select the newly generated startup process file "TRACE_BOOT_ 1_ 1" from the file menu. There will be several specific legends in the window, such as CPU utilization rate, disk I/O, disk utilization rate and drive delay, for us to analyze, but it is better to let the BootVis program analyze automatically: select the system optimization command from the tracking menu, and the program will restart the computer and analyze the startup process file, thus making the computer start faster.

(3) disable redundant services

When Windows XP is started, many programs or services will be called into the system memory. These programs or services are often used to control the hardware equipment, memory, file management or other important system functions of the Windows system. However, many of these services are of little or no use to us. Their existence will occupy memory and system resources, so they should be disabled, which can save up to 70MB of memory space and naturally improve the system speed.

Select the Run command from the Start menu, type "services.msc" in the Run dialog box, and then press enter to open the service window. The name, status and startup type of all services provided by the system are listed in the service list in the window. To modify a service, double-click it from the list and its properties dialog box will pop up (as shown in Figure 3). You can modify the service from the General tab, modify the status of the service by clicking the four buttons of Start, Stop, Pause and Resume, and modify the startup type from the startup type drop-down list. Startup types include automatic and. If you want to prevent the service from loading automatically at startup, you can change its startup type to Disabled.

Services provided by Windows XP start automatically by default. In fact, you only need to keep 8 of them (see the table below), and the others can be set according to your own needs. The function of each service is indicated in the software.

Service function startup type

Application management provides software installation services, such as manual distribution, distribution and deletion.

Event log allows you to view event log messages issued by Windows-based programs and components in the Event Viewer. This service cannot be automatically terminated.

Plug and play automatically detects new hardware and realizes the key automation of plug and play function.

Remote procedure call (RPC) provides endpoint mapper and other RPC services, which belongs to the core service automation of the system.

Windows Audio manages audio devices based on Windows programs. If this service is stopped, audio devices and their sound effects will not work properly. If this service is disabled, any services that depend on it will not be able to start automation.

Windows management instrumentation provides * * * the same interface and object mode to access management information about operating systems, devices, applications and services. If this service is stopped, most Windows-based software will not work properly. If this service is disabled, any services that depend on it will not be able to start automation.

Workstation creates and maintains client network connections to remote services. If the service is stopped, these connections will be unavailable. If this service is disabled, any service that directly depends on it will not be able to start automation.

Windows Installer manually installs, repairs, or removes software according to the instructions contained in. MSI file

(4) Modify the registry to reduce the waiting time of pre-reading and progress bar.

A progress bar will appear when Windows XP starts. We can modify the registry so that the progress bar will enter the login screen only once.

Select the Run command in the Start menu, type the regedit command in the Run dialog box, and press Enter to start the Registry Editor. Find the HKEY _ local _ machine \ system \ current control set \ control \ session manager \ memory management \ prefetch parameter, select the EnablePrefetcher key under it, and change its key value to "/kloc-

(5) Reduce the waiting time for scanning the startup disk.

When the restart caused by abnormal shutdown or crash is recorded in the Windows log, the system will automatically run ScanDisk at startup. By default, each partition will wait 10 seconds before scanning. If each partition has to wait 10 seconds to start scanning, plus the time required to scan itself, it will take a long time to complete the startup process. In this case, we can set the waiting time for canceling disk scanning, or even prohibit scanning disk partitions.

Select "Start → Run" and type "chkntfs /t:0" in the run dialog box to set the waiting time of disk scanning to 0; If you want to ignore scanning a partition, such as drive C, when the computer starts, you can enter the command "chkntfs/x c:"; If you want to resume the scanning of drive C, you can use the command "chkntfs /d c:" to restore all the default settings of chkntfs except automatic file check countdown.

2. Improve the running speed of the system.

The idea of improving the running speed of the system is similar to speeding up the startup speed: optimize the hardware and software settings as much as possible to reduce the system burden. The following are some common optimization methods.

(1) Set the L2 cache capacity of the processor.

Windows XP cannot automatically detect the processor's L2 cache capacity, so we need to set it manually in the registry. First open the registry and find "HKEY _ Local _ Machine \ System \ Current Control Set \ Control \ Session Manager \ Memory Management". Select "SecondLevelDataCache" under it and set it according to the processor you use. For example, PIII· Copamin/P4 Willamette is "256", Athlon XP is "384" and P4 Northwood is "5 12".

(2) improve the system cache

Similarly, in the location of "HKEY _ local _ machine \ system \ current control set \ control \ session manager \ memory management", the key value of "LargeSystemCache" under it is changed from 0 to 1, and Windows XP will allocate all system memory except 4M to the file system cache, so that the XP kernel can run in the memory, which greatly improves the system speed.

Generally speaking, this optimization will greatly improve the system performance, but it may also reduce the performance of some applications. It should be noted that the activation of LargeSystemCache must have more than 256M of memory, otherwise it should not be changed easily.

(3) Improve input/output performance

This optimization can improve the performance of the system when transmitting large files, but it is only meaningful to server users. We can create a new DWORD (double-byte value) key value in and name it IOPageLockLimit. Generally speaking, setting the data between 8~ 16MB is the best performance. Remember that this value is calculated in bytes. For example, if you want to allocate 10MB, that is 10X? 1024× 1024, which means 10485760. The optimization here also requires that your machine has more than 256M of memory.

(4) Disable memory page scheduling.

Under normal circumstances, XP will write the fragments in memory to the hard disk. We can prevent it from doing this and save the data in memory, thus improving the system performance. Find the item "DisablePagingExecutive" under "HKEY _ local _ machine \ system \ current control set \ control \ session manager \ memory management" in the registry, and change its value from 0 to 1 to prohibit memory paging scheduling.

(5) Turn off the automatic restart function

Windows XP will suddenly restart when it encounters a serious problem. You can cancel this function from the registry. Open the registry editor and find "HKEY _ local _ machine \ system \ current control set \ control \ crash control". Change the Dword value of the AutoReboot key to 0, and the setting will take effect after restarting.

(6) change the visual effect

Windows XP enables almost all visual effects by default, such as fading in and out and showing shadows under menus. Although these visual effects are beautiful, they will have a certain impact on the system performance, and sometimes even lead to the suspension of application software. Generally speaking, it is recommended to use less or cancel these visual effects.

Select the "My Computer" icon on the desktop, click the right mouse button, and select the "Properties" command in the shortcut menu to open the "System Properties" dialog box. Select the Advanced tab and click the Settings button in the Performance column to open the Performance Options dialog box (as shown in Figure 4). You can turn off all visual effects by selecting the "Adjust to Best Performance" radio box, or select "Customize" and then select the visual effects you want.

(7) Reasonable setting of page virtual memory

Also in the Performance Options dialog box, select the Advanced tab, click the Change button in the Virtual Memory column, select the virtual memory as the custom size, and then set its value. In general, it is advisable to set the virtual value to not less than 256M and not more than 382M, and the maximum and minimum values are the same.

(8) Modify the appearance scheme

Although the default appearance scheme of Windows XP is beautiful, it also takes up a lot of system resources, so it can be changed into a classic appearance to get better performance.

Right-click an empty place on the desktop and select the "Properties" command from the pop-up shortcut menu to open the "Display Properties" dialog box. Select "Windows Classic" as the theme on the Theme tab, and change the appearance to a more economical Windows Classic appearance.

(9) Cancel XP's support for ZIP.

By default, Windows XP turns on support for ZIP files, which takes up some system resources. You can choose Start → Run, type "regsvr32/u zipfldr.dll" in the Run dialog box, and press Enter to cancel XP's support for zip decompression, thus saving system resources.

(10) Close Dr. Watson.

Dr.Watson is a crash analysis tool of Windows XP, which will automatically pop up when the application crashes. By default, the memory related to the error will be saved as a dump file for programmers to analyze. However, recording dump files will not help ordinary users, but will bring great inconvenience: because Dr. Watson will record the memory when the application crashes, it will take a long time to read and write from the hard disk, and it will take a long time to close the program, and dump files will take up a lot of disk space.

To close Dr.Watson, you can open the registry editor, find the branch of "HKEY _ local _ machine \ software \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ current version \ AEDebug", double-click the Auto key name under it, change its "numerical data" to 0, and finally press F5 to refresh the settings to take effect, thus canceling its operation. Similarly, we can cancel all options with debugging function when the screen is blue, such as memory.dmp. We can select the advanced tab in the system properties dialog box, click the settings button in the startup and recovery bar, and select "Write debugging information" as "None" in the pop-up startup and recovery dialog box (as shown in Figure 5).

(1 1) Start the DMA mode of the hard disk/optical drive.

Open the system properties dialog box, select the device manager button in the hardware tab, open the device manager window, select the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller in the device list, double-click the main IDE channel or the auxiliary IDE channel, and check whether DMA mode has been started in the advanced settings tab of its properties dialog box. Generally speaking, if the device supports it, it will.

(12) Turn off unused equipment.

Windows XP always tries to install and manage drivers for all devices of the computer, which will not only slow down the system startup, but also cause a lot of system resources. In view of this situation, you can disable devices that are not commonly used, such as PCMCIA cards, modems, infrared devices, printer ports (LPT 1) or serial ports (COM 1), by double-clicking the device to be disabled and selecting Do not use this device (disable) in the General tab of its Properties dialog box. Settings will take effect when you restart, and then enable these devices from Device Manager when you need to use them.

(13) Turn off error reporting.

When the application fails, a window will pop up to send an error report. In fact, such an error report is almost meaningless to ordinary users, and it is a wise choice to close it.

Select the Advanced tab in the system properties dialog box, click the Error Reporting button, select the Disable Error Reporting option in the Error Reporting dialog box that pops up, and finally click OK.

In addition, we can turn off error reporting from the group policy: type gpedit.msc from Run, run the group policy editor, expand the computer configuration → management template → system → error reporting function, double-click the report error in the setting bar on the right, and select the disable radio box in the pop-up properties dialog box to disable error reporting.

(14) Turn off automatic update.

Automatic update function is not necessary for many Windows XP users, so it can be turned off to save system resources.

Right-click my computer, select properties from the shortcut menu, select the automatic update tab in the system properties dialog box, check the "Turn off automatic update, I will manually update my computer" radio box, and click OK to turn off the automatic update function. If the Automatic Update service is turned off in Services, the Automatic Update tab in the System Properties dialog box cannot be set.

(15) Cancel menu delay

Removing the delay when the menu pops up can speed up XP to some extent. The location of the key to be modified is "HKEY _ Current _ User \ Control Panel \ Desktop". Modify the "MenuShowDelay" key under it, change the default 400 to 0, and press F5 to refresh the registry to take effect.

(16) Clear the pre-read file

Although the pre-reading setting of Windows XP can improve the system speed, after a period of use, the number of files in the pre-reading folder will become quite large, resulting in a longer system search time. Moreover, some applications will produce dead-chain files, which will increase the search burden of the system. So these pre-read files should be deleted regularly. The expected files are stored in the Prefetch folder of the Windows XP system folder, and all files under this folder can be deleted.

(17) Turn off the autoplay function.

In Windows XP, when a CD is inserted into a CD-ROM drive or USB hard drive and connected to a computer, the system will automatically scan the CD-ROM drive or USB hard drive and prompt you whether to play pictures, videos, music and other files inside. If it is a large-capacity USB hard disk with multiple partitions, the scanning time will be longer, and it is very troublesome to manually close the prompt window several times. In this case, we can turn off the automatic playback function of Windows XP.

Run the group policy program. In the left column of the Group Policy window, open the computer configuration, select the system under the management template, then find "Turn off autoplay" in the configuration column on the right, and double-click it to open the "Turn off autoplay properties" dialog box. Select "Enable" in the Settings tab and "All Drives" in the "Turn off AutoPlay" drop-down list (as shown in Figure 6). In this way, you don't have to worry about the trouble caused by the "automatic play" function of Windows XP in the future.

If you just want to prevent the system from scanning files on a drive (such as USB hard disk), you can adopt the following methods.

First connect your USB hard disk and let the system recognize it. Then open "My Computer", select a partition on the USB hard disk, press the right mouse button, the disk properties window will pop up, select the "Auto Play" tab, and select the type of all contents as No Operation. If the USB hard disk has multiple partitions, do this for all partitions, so that when you unplug and reconnect the USB drive, the system will recognize the USB hard disk without asking you repeatedly whether to play the files in the USB hard disk.

3. Accelerate the closure

The shutdown speed of Windows XP is slower than the startup speed, especially some tasks need to be completed manually, which further delays the shutdown speed. Therefore, to speed up the shutdown, we must first turn on the automatic task ending function of Windows XP. The specific steps are: find "HKEY _ Current _ User \ Control Panel \ Desktop" from the registry, and set the key value of "AutoEndTasks" to 1.

Then change "HungAppTimeout" to "4000 (or below)" (default is 5000), and the key value is also under "HKEY _ Current _ User \ Control Panel \ Desktop"; The last step is to find "HKEY _ Local _ Machine \ System \ Current Control Set \ Control" and set WaitToKillServiceTimeout to "4000"; After this setting, the shutdown speed is obviously accelerated.

Second, lose weight for Windows XP.

Windows XP is about 1.5GB after installation, and some files are of little use and can be deleted. In addition, the system will produce a large number of useless files after a period of use, which will not only occupy disk space, but also affect the disk reading speed, so it should be cleared in time.

1. Delete unnecessary files in the system.

(1) Delete system file backup

There are nearly 250MB files in the "system32\dllcache" directory of system files. Are they windows? Backup of XP system files. When the system files of Windows XP are replaced, deleted or modified, Windows XP can automatically extract the corresponding system files for recovery, thus ensuring the stability of the system. You can't delete the folder directly, but you should enter the Sfc.exe/Purge cache command at the command prompt to clear it.

(2) Delete the driver backup

Delete the Driver.cab file in the "driver cache\i386" directory in the Windows XP system directory, which saves the backup of hardware drivers and is generally unnecessary. Even if you need to install new hardware, you can insert the installation CD of Windows XP into the CD-ROM drive.

(3) Delete useless input methods

There are files related to input methods in the "Windows\ime" folder, among which traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean input methods are useless to most of us. We can delete "chtime", "imjp8_ 1" and "imkr6_ 1", which are traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean input methods respectively.

(4) Delete the help file

At the beginning of using Windows XP, the system help is very useful, but as you become more familiar with the system, the help file becomes more and more redundant, so you can consider deleting it. XP Help files are stored in the Help folder under the system installation directory, and all files and directories can be deleted.

2. Reduce the hard disk space occupied by the system.

(1) Turn off system restore.

System restore can make the computer go back to an earlier time (called restore point) without losing our recent work, but it will take up a lot of hard disk space for a long time. Therefore, manual setting is needed to reduce the hard disk occupation.

Open the System Properties dialog box, select the System Restore tab in the dialog box, and then select the Turn off System Restore on All Drives check box to turn off System Restore. If you don't turn off the system recovery function, you can set recovery only for the disk or partition where the system is located. First, select the partition where the system is located, click the "Configure" button, and cancel the "Turn off the system restore of this drive" option in the pop-up dialog box, then you can set the disk space for system restore.

(2) Turn off hibernation support

Hibernation takes up a lot of hard disk space. If you use it less, you might as well open the control panel, double-click the power option, select the Hibernation tab in the pop-up power option properties dialog box, uncheck the Enable Hibernation checkbox, and turn off the * * * function.

(3) reduce or prohibit virtual memory

When the physical memory of the system is relatively large, you can consider reducing the value of virtual memory or even canceling it. When you have 5 12MB of physical memory, you can set the virtual memory to half of the physical memory, that is, 256MB. If you have 1GB of physical memory, you can cancel the virtual memory.

For the method of setting virtual memory, see "Setting page virtual memory reasonably".

Clear temporary files

(1) Clear temporary system files.

The temporary files of the system are generally stored in two locations: a temp folder under the Windows installation directory; The other is the X:\Documents and Settings\ "user name \ local settings \Temp folder (x: the partition where the system is located). Files in both locations can be deleted directly.

(2) Remove temporary Internet files

Long-term surfing the Internet will produce a large number of temporary surfing files, and regular deletion will save a lot of hard disk space.

Open IE browser, select Internet options from the Tools menu, select the General tab in the pop-up dialog box, click the Delete File button in the Internet Temporary Files column, select the Delete All Offline Content checkbox in the pop-up Delete File dialog box, and click OK.

You can also set the disk occupied by temporary Internet files within an acceptable range, click the "Settings" button in the "Temporary Internet Files" column, and then set the disk space occupied by temporary Internet files in the "Settings" dialog box (as shown in Figure 7), or move the folder where temporary Internet files are located to another partition to reduce the disk occupation of the system partition.

4. The file is compressed in 4. new technology file system

Windows XP provides file compression properties for NTFS partition files, which can effectively save disk space.

In the NTFS partition, select the file or folder to be compressed, right-click, select Properties from the shortcut menu, click Advanced on the General tab of the Properties dialog box, and select the "Compress content to save disk space" check box in the "Compression or encryption properties" column of the new dialog box. After confirmation, you will find that the disk space occupied by the file is greatly reduced.

5. Clear the Windows XP *** shared folder.

"* * * Enjoy the folder", which is very useful when we use the workgroup. You can directly put the files you want to enjoy in this * * * enjoy folder without any settings, but in practical application, many people don't need this function. We can disable this function by modifying the registry to save disk space.

Open the registry editor, find the subkey under "HKEY _ local _ machine \ software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Current version \ Explorer \ My computer \ namespace \ DelegateFolders" and delete the key value. It is best to make a backup before deleting it, or write down the value so that it can be restored immediately when needed.

Third, optimize the Windows XP network settings.

1. Release 20% of the network bandwidth occupied by QoS packets.

Windows XP's built-in QoS package needs to occupy 20% of the network bandwidth, but we can release this part of the bandwidth. Open the group policy window, expand computer configuration → management template → network →QoS packet scheduler in the left column, then double-click the limit reserved bandwidth in the right window, set the limit reserved bandwidth to enabled in the settings tab of its properties dialog box, and then set the bandwidth limit to 0 in the bandwidth limit column below.

2. Enjoy the quick browsing of LAN.

Usually, when connecting to other computers, Windows XP checks all scheduled tasks on other computers. This check will make you wait for 30 seconds or more. The deletion method finds "HKEY _ local _ machine \ software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ current version \ resource manager \ remote computer \ namespace" from the registry. Under this key value, there will be a key. After deletion, restart the computer, and Windows XP will no longer check the scheduled tasks, which will obviously improve the speed.

3. Improve the transmission rate of 10/ 100M network card.

Select Start → Connect to → Show all connections, double-click the connection used by the network card, click the Properties button, open the Properties dialog box, and select the Advanced tab. Select Link Speed/Duplex Mode in the property column, and then change Auto Mode to 10 Half-duplex Mode in the setting value column. In this way, the attribute of 10/ 100M adaptive network card is manually forced to 100M half-duplex mode, there is no automatic negotiation between network cards, and data transmission between network cards is always carried out at the speed of 10Mbps, which greatly improves the transmission efficiency between networks. This setting is only valid for some network cards.

Fourth, use third-party software optimization.

Manual optimization system is complicated. There are many specialized system optimization softwares. If we can combine artificial optimization, the effect will be better. Commonly used such software are Windows Optimizer, Super Magic Rabbit Setup and Advanced Uninstaller PRO. The first two focus on optimizing the system by optimizing the registry, while the latter focuses on optimizing the system by removing system garbage.

(a) window optimization main program

The optimization provided by Windows Optimizer includes two parts: system performance optimization and system cleaning and maintenance.

1. Automatic optimization

The automatic optimization function of Windows Optimizer provides a simple optimization method, aiming at the most commonly used projects of most users, without human intervention at all.

Start the Windows Optimizer (as shown in Figure 8), and click the "Automatic Optimization" button in the upper right corner, and the automatic optimization wizard will pop up. Click Next and select the Internet access method and user type in the next wizard dialog box. I believe you should be very clear about who you belong to and how to surf the Internet. Click "Next" all the time after selection to complete the optimization.

In addition, you can also use the optimization scheme to optimize, and registered users can apply for their own optimization scheme through the network.

2. System performance optimization

Click the "System Performance Optimization" button in the lower left corner. You can see that this part of optimization includes seven parts: disk cache, desktop menu, file system, network system, startup speed, system security and background service. Let's talk about the commonly used disk cache, startup speed and background service, which have a great influence on the speed of the machine.

(1) disk cache optimization

Click the "Disk Cache Optimization" button, first set the size of the input/output cache, and drag the slider to adjust its size. The software will provide recommended values according to different memory sizes, such as 256MB and 32MB.

Second, select the "Computer is set to run more CPU time" check box, and then select "Application" from the drop-down list. If you choose "background service", unless you plan to use a computer as a network server. Other settings depend on the specific situation and your own preferences. Click the "Optimize" button after setting, and you can experience the optimization effect after restarting the machine.

In addition, you can also set "Virtual Memory" and "Memory Sorting" here. The former is set according to the value recommended by the software, and the latter is also a very useful function, which can sort out the fragmentation of memory and release more.