Maintenance & Performance refresher

I was wondering what people would suggest for/besides the following:


1. Is there software that terminates all besides needed processes in Windows XP with a single click??


2. Besides DEfragment & disk cleanup {negligible IMO} I understand virtual memory tweaking can help with performance... can someone please comment on a generally good guideline or program for optimal settings.. I used to use tweak xp, but can't find it... I imagine there may be something better out there now that the Wilder Forum consideres the most convinient package as of now, if atall needed (do those programs really help, IMO its more a hardware, prog load & services dependant to a great extent).. {I have this one laptop with only 512k or ram and performance drops terribly with time, I have a 2nd laptop with 1gig & a DT with 2gig and the difference is very notable, performance doesn't degrade as much, better handling/stability}


3.
a. IE / FF browser settings... In IE for temp storage settings I have 252 mb & "automatic"... I never looked into the specifics but imagine this is good enough... an outlook or comment as to whether an alteration would make a performance gain here would be appreciated.. I really wonder if these settings actually even hinder since broadband is fast and you'd want updated pages/graphics anyway... If you only visit a stretch of 5 sites on a continuous basis, why bother, since the grand majority are pages you visit are from search results that you'd generally visit a couple of times and just bookmark and leave alone till some later time... any insightful info appreciated to clarify since I can't say I'm 100% sure of anything.

b. for FF the same... however, I never really had to tweak it, it performs very well... but non-the-less.. are there any settings that are recommended or commonplace... At the same time I wonder if its the fact that I don't use bookmarks in FF.. I have about 1,500 sites bookmarked in IE.. since I'm used to the way IE organizes them... Either way, what would be recommended...


Thanks

 

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP Tweak UI is here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

I set my page file at a fixed size by setting min size = max size.
Then Windows isn't constantly resizing it. For my 1GB of RAM, it
is fixed at 512Mb, then if lots of stuff is open, I never get the
low memory message.

 

Here are some freeware programs from Acelogix.com. I have used them before when I ran XP and they all worked fine. With tweak n' tune you can adjust some of the XP settings.

http://www.acelogix.com/freeware.html

 

In terms of tweaking virtual memory, check out Tweakhounds XP guide.

 

For performance improvement, you might also be interested in PageDefrag:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspx

 

When I only had 512MB and started looking around, I found this link. http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html
"Step 4 - Tweaks" should help some, but make notes so you can change anything back if you don't like it. I have also disabled many services for speed and safety, but it a very personal based on your hardware and software.

If you have the cash, I recommend getting at least another stick of 512MB RAM if your system will allow it. That's what I did and it was like night and day. It was also fairly cheap ($30-$35 US), but it was for a desktop and not a laptop. It took a little research and some courage as a newbie, but it was well worth the effort.

You may also want to take a hard look at what real-time security programs your using. Some of them can really slow you down. There are many ways to protect a computer and some of them can be very light or use no resources. Security is also very personal based on your machine and what your going to do with the computer.

Unfortunately tweaking is not for everyone and it's not as easy as clicking one button. However the benefits can be large as well as the consequences. It's best to take it slow and document everything, that way if something doesn't work, you can reverse it.

Cheers,
innerpeace

 

It's not single click, but I've found SmartClose to be very useful.

 

from what i read mixed opinions though,last updated in 2005,but will give it a whirl,just curious if it will live up to what it promised.

 

Tried and in fact very useful.

Thanks, Empath for the tip.