I have Windows XP Pro SP3 & ive been trying to find ways to tweak XP so that games will run faster. I tried the following info i found on a site but it destroyed Windows: ok, here's how you make a gaming profile...now...it can be somewhat hard but don't be intimidated... go to control pannel user accounts...now create one called gaming...CONGRATES!!! you've made a "gaming" profile... now that your in that profile, take out the background and put a boring solid blue one that they have in there...right click on my computer, choose advanced>visual effects and then click on adjust for best performance. take away all of the apps taht shouldn't be running... and here's some other slightly more advanced tips.. To increase system performance Right click my computer. Click properties. Click advanced. Click settings (under performance). Click Adjust for best performance. Scroll to the bottom and check the last one “use visual styles on windows and buttons”. How to disable XP's -crud- built in CD Burner Click the start button. Select Run. Type services.msc and click ok. Go to IMAPI CD-Burning Com Services open it and click on start up type, change to "Disabled". These Settings will fine tune your systems memory You need at least 256MB of ram to do this: Go to startrunregedit -and then to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management 1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive yeilds faster performance. 2.LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory and improves system performance a lot. 3.Create a new dword and name it IOPageLockLimit - double click it and set the value in hex - 4000 if you have 128MB of ram or set it to 10000 if you have 256MB set it to 40000 if you have more than 512MB of ram -this tweak will speed up your disckcache. Reboot Unable to delete from Avi files from HD XP holds files in it's memory even after you have closed the application using them making it impossible to delete them from your harddrive. To fix this: Start -> Run -> Regedit Find the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.avishellexPropertyHandler directory and delete the "DEFAULT" key. Tweak The Swap File For Users with 256 MB RAM or more this tweak will boost their Windows- and Game-Performance. What it does: It tells Windows not to use any Swap File until there is really no more free RAM left. Open the System Configuration Utility by typing msconfig.exe in the RUN command. There in your System.ini you have to add "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" under the 386enh section. Restart your Windows and enjoy better Game performance Disable Services XP Pro runs a lot of services by default that are pointless if your not on a corporate network, the following services are ones that I safely disable thereby freeing up memory but check what each one does first to make sure your not using it for something: Go to Run and type services.msc, right click on each service, properties and choose disable. Alerter Application Layer Gateway Service, Application Management Automatic Updates Background Intelligent Transfer Clipbook Distributed Link Tracking Client Distributed Transaction Coordinater Error Reporting Service Fast User Switching Compatibility IMAPI CD-Burning Indexing Service IPSEC Services Messenger Net Logon Net Meeting Remote Desktop Sharing Network DDE Network DDE DSDM Portable Media Serial Number Remote Desktop Help Session Manager Remote Registry Secondary Logon Smartcard SSDP Discovery Service Telnet Themes Uninterruptible Power Supply Universal Plug and Play Device Host Upload Manager Webclient Wireless Zero Configuration WMI Performance Adaptor Speed Up The File System NTFS is a great file system, but its feature-set comes at a slight cost in performance. You can negate this a little with the following tips: * By default NTFS will automatically update timestamps whenever a directory is traversed. This isn't a necessary feature, and it slows down large volumes. Disable it by going to Run and type regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlFileSystem and set 'DisableNTFSLastAccessUpdate' to 1. * NTFS uses disparate master file control tables to store filesystem information about your drives. Over time these core MFT files grow and become fragmented, slowing down all accesses to the drive. By setting aside a little space, MFT's can grow without becoming fragmented. In the same key where you disabled the last access feature creat a new DWORD value called 'NtfsMftZoneReservation' and set it to 2. Disable DLL Caching Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory. 1. Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorer]. 2. Create a new DWORD sub-key named 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and set the default value to equal '1' to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory. 3. Restart Windows for the change to take effect. Tweak The Prefetch 1. Run "Regedit" 2. Goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory ManagementPrefetchParametersEnablePrefetcher] 3. Set the value to either 0-Disable, 1-App launch prefetch, 2-Boot Prefetch, 3-Both ("3" is recommended). 4. Reboot. It will decrease the boot time but double and increase the performance of your XP. SpeedUp Your Connection By 20% (Cable Users Only) 1.Log on as "Administrator". 2. Run - gpedit.msc 3. Expand the "Local Computer Policy" branch. 4. Then expand the "Administrative Templates" branch. 5. Expand the "Network" branch. 6. Highlight the "QoS Packet Scheduler" in left pane. 7. In the right window pane double-click the "Limit Reservable Bandwidth" setting. 8. On the settings tab check the "Enabled" item. 9. Change "Bandwidth limit %" to read 0. 10. Then go to your Network connections Start=>Control Panel>Network & Internet connections>Network Connections and right-click on your connection. Then under the General or the Networking tab, (where it lists your protocols) make sure QoS packet scheduler is enabled. It may take effect immediately on some systems. To be sure, just re-boot. Cheers in advance
Here are a couple of well known site's but I wouldn't be changing anything if I didn't have an image to restore, some good freebies around, Macrium Reflect and Drive Image XML (home user) are two. http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm and http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
you can probably overclock your cpu for faster performance just becareful it doesnt overheat your computer.if you need more info on overclocking then try searching this site.im sure you will find instructions on overclocking if not make a thread and ask about it.ive heard you can get programs that can improve the performance of games or optimize your computer setting to run games.if you upgrade your graphics card and ram games should run better anyway
