Get that snail out of your system
"In these pages, you'll find all kinds of tips, tweaks, hacks, and configuration settings that should help you regain some speed control over Windows XP. I'll also show you how to get rid of the clutter and junk that Windows XP picks up over time"
--Curt Simmons
When everything seems like slow motion, it's time to call in PC Magazine's favorite system doctor
You have to clean out most things after you use them for awhile. Why should your PC be any different? This indispensable book shows you exactly how to turn that snail into a cheetah by unloading the junk that Windows XP has collected, turbo-charging your system for faster response, cleaning up the Registry, and using all the safeguards provided in Service Pack 2. Just don't be surprised if your PC is faster than on the day you brought it home.
Give Windows XP a power boost
* Make programs start faster with hidden prefetch settings
* Eliminate spyware, adware, and unwanted cookies
* Dump programs you don't need (but know which ones you DO)
* Pre-schedule maintenance tasks
* Boost system startup by disabling features
* Tweak virtual memory
* Learn to work with the Registry
* Update your device drivers
* Beef up your cable or DSL speed
* Learn from special tips and tricks in every chapter
Customer Reviews & Comments
On any computer, regardless of operating system, disks can relentless fill up. On unix machines, there may be sysadmins to combat this. But on XP PCs, especially in homes, the only sysadmin is you. And you are probably not a computer professional.
The topics here are sysadmin tasks that a user should periodically do. Not all of these necessarily pertain to speeding up your machine. For example, when Simmons talks about deleting adware/spyware and cleaning up cookies, any speed increase is surely slight. But those particular tasks are such good practice that you should not hold it against him for including them in this book.
Ah, but things like adjusting virtual memory can have dramatic effect on some machines that have tool little for their tasks. Though you may pay attention to most pertinent thing he says here. Which is that in some cases, adding virtual memory will not improve matters if you actually have too little RAM. Beef up the latter, perhaps?
And turn error logging off. The book correctly says that few of you need it. Will free up some clock cycles.
