System Tweaks - Windows 2000/XP (Part 1)

Who doesn’t want a system that’s better, stronger and faster without having to shell out six million dollars? These Windows 2000 and XP Operating System tweaks will make your system feel like the Six Million Dollar Man without spending a dime. Optimizations take advantage of the dozens of options and features available in the Operating System. Although for a good many users, the default settings are fine, there is sometimes that extra “oomph” you’d like to squeeze out of your system. Before you start making alterations, make sure you are logged on as a Power User or Administrator to try out some of these tweaks. Included are primarily performance optimizations and general annoyance fixes for the two Operating Systems to help fine-tune your Windows experience. Some tweaks work on both Operating Systems; some only on one of them. Make sure that when there are conditions that need to be met for the tweak to work, that your system does in fact fulfill those conditions. Otherwise, who knows what may happen. That being the case, it’s prudent to backup your system settings before embarking on your tweaking adventure.

Prep the Engines

Before you begin, there are a few things that need to be addressed if you want to make the most of your system. First, get rid of spyware. It can be a major cause of bog downs. See the spyware section for more in-depth look at it and how to take care of it. The second thing is to get rid of any “maintenance suites”, such as Norton System Works and System Mechanic. These packages are chock full of utilities, that although may look pretty and go to act like a “swiss army knife” utility, but they really put a drain on system resources by including way more than what you really need. Uninstalling any “maintenance suites” you may have would drastically boost performance. In place of it, what could be your new suite could be composed of these programs:

• Grisoft’s AVG (AntiVirus)
• Google Toolbar (pop-up stopper)
• Sygate Personal Firewall
• Kerio Personal Firewall.

Before progressing any further, the first thing that needs to be done is a registry backup. In the event that something goes wrong, you will have something to fall back on. Scrambling to find a fix to repair something that may have gone awry can be extremely difficult. To perform the backup, go to Start > Run and type regedit. Go to File > Export, and make sure under “Export Range” the “All” option is selected and that the file format is *.reg. Name the file and save it in a safe place.

Registry Editing

All it takes to restore the registry is going back into regedit and going to File > Import. Make sure this is done in safe mode, for there are some entries that will not be able to be restored in while in normal mode because some of the keys that may need to be restored will be open.

For both Operating Systems, the system Registry Editor, a.k.a. regedit, will be accessed frequently, and you may be asked to create new keys or DWORD values. This is done by right clicking in the whitespace in the right hand panel. Select “New” and then the appropriate item as directed. To modify any existing values, simply double click on the appropriate icon.

Now, there are a few things with XP that should be done before proceeding. Go to Start > Control Panel. On the side pane, select “Switch to Classic View”. This will make things easier later on than having to fumble through XP’s Control Panel. The second thing you may want to do is stick the “My Computer” icon on the desktop. Go to Start and right click on “My Computer”. Select “Show on Desktop. This also works for “My Documents” and “My Network Places”, should you want them.

The other safety net to fall back on in XP is System Restore. Before you start any changes, it would be best if you set a restore point. Kick off by going to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore and select “Create Restore Point” and hit “Next”. Name the restore point and hit “Create”.

To go back to the restore point you created, open up System Restore again, select “Restore my system to an earlier time” and hit “Next”. Go to the date on the calendar that you created the restore point. Make sure you close any programs you have open. Proceed to follow through with all the “Next” buttons that appear. Note that with some Windows updates, there have been changes made to core Operating System components that make restoring impossible. The best way to work around this is to create a restore point just after you install a set Windows updates.

The final safety net that you may want to consider using is a feature that has been available since Windows 9x systems: hardware profiles. What this feature does is allow Operating Systems to have multiple separate hardware configurations, which is normally useful on laptops that dock at different locations.

If you have not used this feature before, the only profile that should be on the list is “profile 1 (current)”. That is the profile and contains the current settings of the Windows session you are working in. Select the profile and click “Copy” to duplicate it. Name the new profile. Next, highlight the new profile, click “Properties” and check the “Always include the profile as an option” box. Once you’re done, reboot. Upon startup, you will be prompted to select a hardware profile. Select the one you have just created. The changes made in this profile will only take place in this profile. If you run into trouble, you can always start back up with the default profile, recopy it and delete the one that was botched.

At this point, you should be all set to begin tweaking your system to your heart’s content.

Spyware

Spyware is something that has been becoming increasingly common on systems. It has become a more common problem than virus infections. Spyware infests your system, compromises privacy and security, and goes on to bog down system performance and Internet bandwidth. These malicious programs get lodged in your system and run in the background taking up valuable system resources and can render the speediest 3.2GHz system helpless, making it act like an old 266MHz machine on a good day.

The first thing to do on a system before any actual performance tweaks is to run spyware scans. Scanning with both Lavasoft’s Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy. What one doesn’t catch, the other does. Using both programs can make the system squeaky clean once again. If you run across any problems in trying to remove certain pieces of spyware, try running both programs from within safe mode.

So, what exactly is it? “Spyware” is a fairly loose term to describe any software installed on your system that sends information from your computer to another destination on the Internet without your knowledge or explicit consent. Information sent could be data collected on browsing habits, such as URLs, IP addresses and cookies. Any data on the hard drive also could be sent. Key loggers and system recorders can also go as far as to record anything you type or do on your computer, thus collecting keystrokes, passwords, and other possibly sensitive information. Spyware seriously compromises system security and your privacy. Most of the time, spyware is installed using tricky methods to gain your consent. It is sometimes bundled with other software packages, such as KaZaa Media Desktop or the first version of RealOne Player (following versions have been cleaned up somewhat). Other sly methods include clicking on ads, or agreeing to install some obscure plug-in when visiting web sites. Basically, spyware is software that is not helpful to you, the user, in any way. Adware, browser hijackers, malware, and scumware/thiefware all loosely fit under the spyware category, however there is a difference between all of these and ad-supported software.

Ad-supported software merely displays ads to help pay for the freeware/shareware product. Opera and Eudora are two examples of ad-supported software. Ad-supported software crosses the line when it starts to collect data on user habits, which may or may not help the company, but it surely does not help you in the moments it is using system resources to send information. Browser hijackers are the next level in spyware annoyances, for they take over your browser and display advertisements often not suitable for all ages. Malware is anything that acts destructively toward your system, such as a trojan, worm or virus. Scumware/theifware is more or less actual theft where sneaky pieces of software try to underhandedly divert advertising revenue from other websites to themselves, usually with “contextual advertising”. This however, is not as common as the other forms of spyware.

Is spam spyware? No, however it is still a problem and a big annoyance. Spam mainly sends advertisements, but can also be carriers for spyware and malware if it happens to have an attachment and/or is an HTML message. All this sounds scary, no? Now for the million-dollar question, do you have to meekly submit and accept all of this junk? No. The spyware removal tools mentioned earlier do an excellent job. Software firewalls, such as Kerio Personal Firewall and Sygate Personal Firewall help to block spyware traffic from entering/exiting your system. Last but not least, good AntiVirus software, such as Grisoft’s AVG. Upon the completion of these scans, you may want to make a clean registry backup and system restore point. Now that a large portion and the most common problem of performance hogging has been taken care of, on to some of the Windows tweaks themselves!

Tweaking Software

Microsoft recently released a small tweaking package for Windows 2000, 2003 Server, and XP called “Tweak UI”. Basically, it allows the user to configure various interface settings without having to spend time digging through the registry. It can be downloaded here for XP, and here for 2000. There are a few tweaks included in this article that can now be adjusted via this tweak tool, so in addition to instructions for the tweak using the registry, instructions on how the tweak can be applied using the Tweak UI tool will also be noted.

Some of the more complex tweaks that do not involve the UI (User Interface) have downloadable *.reg files included with the instructions so that you can apply the tweaks directly to your registry without having to actually delve into fray and make the necessary adjustments by hand. All you have to do is download them, run them, and click “Yes” when prompted.

Space Saving Tweaks

These tweaks will go to save space on your hard drive.

Recycle Bin

By default, the recycle bin uses 10% of each drive/partition for a pit stop for deleted data before it gets permanently deleted.

To adjust the amount of space the recycle bin uses, right click on the “Recycle Bin” and click “Properties”. On the “Global” tab, set the slider to about 5%. This value will be applied to all drives/partitions. If you wish to configure the drives/partitions independently, check the “Configure drives independently” box, and proceed to go to each drive tab to adjust each slider.

Once finished, hit apply and OK. If you find that files are too large to go to the recycle bin, you will be prompted to either permanently delete, or cancel. If you don’t want to permanently delete the file yet, hit cancel and just increase the size of the appropriate recycle bin.

System Restore

Taking a look at system restore earlier in the article leads to this space saving tweak. By default, XP’s System Restore takes up 12% of your hard drive space. 12% of an 80GB hard drive is 9.6GB, and that’s 9.6GB you cannot use for data storage. How can this be adjusted? Start out by right clicking “My Computer” and “Properties”.

Select the “System Restore” tab. The window in that panel contains all your hard drives and/or partitions.

It is not necessary to have System Restore “Monitoring” every drive/partition. It only needs to be monitoring the drive/partition with the Operating System. You can proceed to turn it off on drives/partitions by hitting “Settings” and checking “Turn off System Restore on this drive.”

On the drive/partition that wish to keep System Restore working, hit “Settings” and drag the slider bar down to 2-4%. This is small enough as to not take up much space, yet large enough to provide a few restore points.

Turn Off Hibernation

Hibernation is a feature that allows your system to shut down quickly and save everything that’s open in the RAM to be stored on the hard drive until the computer is powered on again. XP and 2000 use a file called hiberfil.sys to save everything it needs when they go go into hibernation. If you never use the hibernate function, you can turn it off. When this feature is disabled, the hiberfil.sys file is deleted. This can free up the as much disk space as the amount of ram that you computer has. For example, if you have 1GB of RAM, you could be freeing up to 1GB of hard drive space.

In XP, go to Control Panel > Power Options > Hibernation and uncheck “Enable hibernation”. In 2000, go to Control Panel > Power Options > “Hibernate” tab and uncheck “Enable hibernate support”

If you should want to re-enable hibernation, go back in and check “Enable hibernation” in XP or “Enable hibernate support in 2000.

General Performance Tweaks

The tweaks listed here help improve overall system performance and increase your system’s operating efficiency. Proceed with caution when turning off services in some of the following tweaks. It’s best to turn just one off, let the machine run for a few hours or days to ensure everything is operating properly, then proceed to turn off another one. When turning off services, there are two options: manual and disabled. “Manual” leaves the service off until called upon, while “disabled” disables the service so it does not come on at all. To access this selection, right click on a service and click “Properties”.

All the services normally get loaded upon startup and often control vital system functions, such as memory management, file management and hardware devices.

Sometimes these services are not necessary and can be turned off, thus freeing up some system resources that could be put to better use doing something else. As for general tips to start you off, if you’ve taken care of spyware (if you haven’t, it’s highly suggest you do), programs set to load at start up can inhibit performance. You can check to see what’s loading down in the system tray. Use XP’s msconfig, and this msconfig tool for 2000 to take care of programs loading in the system tray. Be careful what you turn on and off, though. You may inadvertently turn off a program that you may actually need loaded at startup. With that mentioned, on to the rest of the performance tweaks.

Disable Administrative Alerts

Few people use or have even heard of this feature. What it does is use Windows Messenger to send messages between computers pertaining to administrative notifications and alerts. If you already have Windows Messenger disabled, it makes so sense to have this service enabled, for it won’t work without Messenger anyway. To disable this service, go to Start > Run and type services.msc. Double click “Alerter” and on the “General” tab, set the startup type to “Disabled”. Do the same to the “Messenger” service. “Messenger” is not the Windows Messenger service.

Also, to make sure it never runs at startup, open up regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Policies/Microsoft/Messenger/Client and change the dword values “PreventRun” and “PreventAutoRun” to 1 (if they do not appear, simply create them). You can also use this downloadable registry file to apply this tweak.

Disable Indexing Service & Use a Better Substitute

In order to search through a hard drive faster, XP keeps a record of all files on the hard drive. It sounds useful, but if you use Windows’ search tool infrequently, the indexing service just constantly runs in the background without being taken advantage of and used. Indexing can slow down actions as simple as opening or closing files. To disable this service, go to Start > Run and type services.msc. Double click “Indexing Services” and set the startup type to “Disabled”. If you want to search, there is a freeware program called Locate that can index 400GB of data in under 2 minutes and can perform instant searches. File > Update Databases re-indexes all your drives, in case you miss where the indexing option is located. You should only re-index before a search. This way, system resources are used only when you actually need to perform a search.

In addition, you can use Task Scheduler (a.k.a. Scheduled Tasks) to run the shortcut named “Updtdb32? in place of using the “Update Database” option manually within the program. For example, have the task run daily at a time you are not usually at your computer, such as early in the morning. So, all the files that had been added, moved and changed from the previous day can be indexed. If you have this re-indexing task done daily, it only takes a few seconds each time it is done. You can get to the task scheduler by going to Start > Run. Type %systemroot%\Tasks, and hit enter. Double click on “Add Scheduled Task” and the wizard will help take you through the process of setting up a scheduled task. Make sure you hit “Browse” when asked for what application you want to be run. Navigate to the folder where you have the “Updtdb32? shortcut. Other than that, creating the scheduled task should be fairly self-explanatory, thanks to the wizard.

Disable “Last Access Date” Timestamp

Every time a folder on an NTFS drive is accessed, the timestamp of the date of access is updated on that directory and all its subdirectories. On systems with a lot of subdirectories, this can bog down the system considerably by adding this to whatever else machine happens to be doing.

To disable this feature, open up regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/FileSystem. Create/modify the DWORD value “NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate” and set the value to 1. You can also use this downloadable registry file to apply this tweak.

Disable Performance Counters Running in Background

There is a performance monitor located in XP in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Performance that does not usually see the light of day with most users. What it does is track a number of different areas regarding your system’s performance, such as CPU activity and hard drive access. It runs constantly in the background using up system resources without most people even using it. If you have no use for this and wish to reclaim some system resources, there is a tweak to turn it off.

First, you will need to download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List Utility. Go to C:Program FilesResource Kit and run the Exctrlst.exe utility.

Select each line in the “Extensible performance counters” window and clear the “performance counters enabled” button below. This must be done for each counter. When it’s finished, just exit the utility.

The next time you access the performance monitor, there will be no information available or shown.

Disable Remote Registry

This service allows your registry to be edited from a remote computer. It is most likely the case that this service is not needed, not to mention a possible security risk for people concerned about their system security.

To turn it off, go to Start > Run and type services.msc. Set the startup type to “Manual” or “Disabled” for XP’s “Remote Registry” or 2000’s “Remote Registry Service”.

Disable Windows Themes

If you do not plan on using XP’s fancy blue, olive green or silver themes and aren’t running any skinning utilities that rely on XP’s theme service, then turning it off altogether and running Windows Classic Style would free up a fairly significant amount of memory. To use Windows Classic Style, simply right click on the desktop and click “Properties. Go to the “Appearance” tab and change the “Windows and Buttons” drop down menu to “Windows Classic Style”. Hit Apply and OK.

To shut off the service entirely, go to Start > Run and type services.msc. Double click on “Themes”. On the “General” tab, set the startup type to “Manual” or “Disabled” and click OK.

Keep Core Windows Operating Data in Main Memory

This tweak forces core kernel and essential driver files to stay in the RAM, rather than being shoved into virtual memory on the hard drive. In the conversion over to virtual memory, performance can drop significantly. This transfer over to virtual memory is designed to be put into effect when the system is getting low on physical RAM, however, this occurs periodically even when the system is not low on memory. In those cases, the transfer over to virtual RAM is often not necessary. Only proceed with applying this tweak if you have at least 256MB of RAM in your system.

Open regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management. Double click on DWORD value “DisablePagingExecutive” and set the value to 1.

Open Folders in Separate Processes

This tweak helps avoid software crashes and lockups by keeping explorer processes separated from the program and O/S kernel processes. Note, however, that it may contribute to occasional lock ups or freezes in the explorer.exe process. This tweak is only for systems with 512MB or more. Open “My Computer” and go to Tools > Folder Options > View and check the box for “Launch folder windows in a separate process”. Reboot if prompted.

Prefetching

Prefetching is a process unique to XP, which stores temporary settings that help load frequently accessed files and applications faster. However, after a time, the folder gets clogged up and overloaded, much like the temp directory found in all Windows Operating Systems, and needs to be cleaned out every so often. Go to %systemroot%\Prefetch, delete everything in there and reboot. This should be done as often as you normally clean out your temp directories.

Prefetching Specific Applications

Window Media Player has an extra switch included into its shortcut to help load it faster using XP’s prefetch feature. You can try this out on some of your other applications by right clicking on the program’s shortcut and clicking “properties. Add /prefetch:1 to the end of the contents of the “Target” box.

If this switch causes loading errors in programs that you add this to, simply remove the /prefetch:1 switch from the shortcut entry.

Virtual Memory – Page File

Defragging and setting a rigid area for your Page File can sometimes drastically increase memory performance and your system’s ability to multi-task. Unfortunately, Disk Defragmenter doesn’t touch the Page File. There are two ways to defrag it.

One way to defrag the page file is to download and install PageDefrag Utility. The program’s window displays a list of files and how fragmented they have become. To defrag the page file, select “Defragment at next boot” and hit OK. The next time you restart, this program will defrag the listed files.

If you want to go the “tried and tested”, yet time consuming route without using any third-party applications, and have a separate hard drive/partition, this procedure will work every time. First, move the page file to the separate drive/partition. In XP, go to Control Panel > System > “Advanced” tab and under “Performance”, click “Settings”. Go to the “Advanced” tab and under “Virtual Memory”, click “Change”. In 2000, go to Control Panel > System > “Advanced” tab; click “Performance Options” and then “Change”. Select the drive letter that displays the Page File size. Select “No paging file” and hit “Set”. Next, select the separate hard drive/partition. Select “Custom Size” and set the Initial Size and the Maximum equal to 1.5 to 2 times greater than the total of system’s RAM. For example, if your system has 512MB of RAM, set the two values equal to 1024MB. Hit “Set” and OK after you’re done. Reboot when prompted.

Now, defrag the drive/partition your Operating System is on. It’s best if this is done in safe mode and overnight when the computer doesn’t need to be used.

After defragging is completed, go to into “Virtual Memory”, per the directions listed earlier, and select the drive letter that displays the Page File size. Select “No paging file” and hit “Set”. Now select the drive that originally had the paging file. Select “Custom Size” and set the Initial Size and the Maximum equal to what you chose to set them as when you moved it to the other hard drive/partition. Hit “Set” and OK after you’re done and reboot when prompted.