Streamlining WinXP?

Hey someone should make a sticky thread about all the different methods to optimize WinXP. How to make it work better with programs, be faster, how to stay free of crappy bloatware, how to keep the registry clean, any suggestions on useful utility-type software, etc. We have a nice one about security, so something like that but with a focus on functionality and speed would be cool.

I have a question too. Speaking of registry, what's the deal with having invalid entries in it? I was reading about people bitching at QuickTime 7.0 in user reviews and how they had a crapload of invalid registry entries after they uninstalled it. Does having invalid entries slow XP down much or something?

 

How to streamline Windows XP:

1. Reformat.
2. Install Windows 2000

...seriously though, XP and 2k are the same exact OS, except for unnecessary bloat on XP's part. Making XP more like 2k is the way to lean it up.You can start off by disabling system restore, turning off the Luna theme and all of the fancy transition effects, and disabling the NTFS last access time feature.

 

You can try [google]CCleaner[/google] which will delete unnecessary files e.g. tmp and IE cache...

 

Windows is very much like a sock draw - it can get very untidy, very easily! I have been thinking about writing an 'optimising Windows XP' thread. Leave it with me! There is quite a lot you can do to make it run faster.

Why do you say that? What's wrong with System Restore!

This can incease your system performance dramatically!

Explain!

 

It eats up resources galore and it doesn't work any better in XP than it did in ME. To further aggrivate matters, it has a nasty tendency to restore malware that was previously removed. I've found that disabling system restore does more good than harm.

Every time Windows reads a file, any file, it writes a little time stamp saying the time you read the file. This feature is totally useless to most people, and adversely effects HDD IO performance -- especially on laptops and other slow HDDs. Disabling the NTFS last access timestamp feature is like getting a free performance boost.

 

How do I go about disabling this service?

 

As I said earlier in the thread:

...notice the hotlink?

 

thats a really neat site, cheers

 

so is it a big deal if your registry is messy -- with invalid entries and/or whatever other problems it is possible to have? (I don't really know what else can be "wrong" with it.)

 

The registry may be a bad idea, but it is a central part of the Windows architecture. It is fundamentally the central storage area for almost all of the system's settings. If the registry has problems, Windows has problems.