How can I make my computer run faster?

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While Leo says 256 megs of RAM is the minimum, I'd say that 512 is the BARE minimum to run Windows XP SP2 effectively.

Why is RAM so important?

Short answer... when your computer runs out of available memory-chip RAM, it starts using your hard drive as memory for the overflow. The problem is that your hard drive, even if it's the fastest SCSI speedster in the world, is much, much, much slower than memory-chip RAM. So, if your PC is having to use the hard drive for that overflow, the hard drive creates a memory bottleneck will slow your computer way down.

And something VERY important to note. If you have bought a laptop or a bargain PC, your graphics solution may be using "shared RAM". This is where the video card has no RAM of its own. Instead anywhere from 32-128 megs of your system RAM is dedicated to the video card and can't be used by the CPU.

For example, my VAIO laptop came with 512 megs of RAM, but it dedicated 128 megs to "shared RAM" for the video/display. So, while they could advertise that it had 512 megs of RAM, it was really equal to a PC with 384 megs of RAM, because 128 megs were dedicated to video and could not be used for anything else.

- Greg

i have vxd problem when window98 se loadind on my PC (P III 1.13Ghz 810E MERCURY M/B)

As opposed to what many people may have been led to believe, there are no "magical" tweaks, hidden registry settings etc. (for instance the famous "IoPageLockLimit, the setting for Critical/Delayed "WorkerThreads", "Win32PrioritySeparation", "IRQ8Priority", then "Disable8dot3NameCreation" and "DisableLastAccessUpdate"), that would noticably or yet better at all speed-up your computer. Well, except maybe those low-level settings in a "system.ini" file, but that only applies to 9x-based OSs' times. Infact, it's generally accpted by "geeks" that it's best to leave the system intact (in the default Windows state after the OS installation), rather than applying any of these tweaks.

OK sure, there are few things you can do to speed up things; but don't expect miracles. I would also recommend you to see my home-page, particularly the http://users.volja.net/tayiper/hints.html and http://users.volja.net/tayiper/tweaks.html pages. There are few useful hints there, for instance how to set things on Classic style, then how to turn-off eye-candy in XP, i.e. ballon-tips, tool-tips, fading, smooth-scrolling, menu-animation, shadowing etc.; however, note that these changes do not make a change in actual computer's speed, but they change your perception of its speed.

Then there is a registry setting for a StartMenu delay, I guess it's the one pasted below. But please, someone correct me if I am wrong, since I use Blackbox for Windows as my default OS-shell and not Explorer (so I don't use this tweak); here are the contents of the .reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"MenuShowDelay"="0"

As far as making the registry as compact as possible, and registry hives and system files defragmented to minimal number of fragments (contiguous), there are two FREE and "non-setup" programs that do this job perfectly, ehm, actually they work somehow in cooperation one with another. One program is called Ntregopt from Larshederer homepage: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de, http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/index.htm which optimizes the registry hives, i.e. it recreates each registry hive "from scratch", so therefore you need to run it just before rebooting. And while your are at the Larshederer's site, also check the Erunt program. It's a program used to backup the registry, while I especially like its sub-program Autoback contained in the same .zip archive as Ntregopt and Erunt; for a more detailed description of both programs see the page "events1.html", the 14.3.2005 entry. Erunt and Autoback are command-line programs and both are very handy to backup the registry on/after boots (I do it with a batch file so that there's no interaction at all), i.e. I've put the shortcut to that batch file into %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\ directory so that it backups registry nomather with which account one logs-on.

And I got used to use Ntregopt in cooperation with yet another FREE "non-setup" application called Pagedfrg from Sysinternals site: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html, but this one doesn't optimize the structure of registry hives, it's in fact capable of defragmenting them. Additionally, it also defragments the pagefile and services' logfiles (three files with .evt extension), and also it is run after booting, i.e. just before the "pre-logon" screen after chkdsk finishes checking the disk (of course if it was set to do so), so it is run in a manner, that if I re-structured my registry hives with Ntregopt before rebooting computer, they are defragmented when still being "fresh" on the next boot.

P.S., Anyway, I fully agree with Leo, i.e. that in your particular case, the amount of RAM seems to be the culprit of your system being/performing slow; at least slower than it should taking in consideration the speed of your CPU etc.

best regards,
Ivan Tadej, Slovenija, Europe
http://www.tadej-ivan.tk

when adding memory.. be sure to match clock speeds (pc1200 and pc3200 will function at pc1200 or not at all and cause strange voltage fluctations that can result in data corruption etc etc.) so match your memory sticks. Take the original one out and take it to the store so you have something to compare and a place to start. Of course it also depends on what your mother board can handle... call a technician.. tell him you want to upgrade memory and to make sure it's compatible with what you have installed.

I have a P4 1.60Ghz 256 RAM, and 256 Video RAM running on an old via chipset :D well i have windows xp sp2, and i remember that when i had the sp1 it was really faster than now, should I uninstall sp2 or just keep it? (im not thinking on buying ram on 2 months)

No you should buy an 1GB ram that will make your computer run really fast that should help you and to spped things up even beter get a program called optimize xp download it its good.

Hey Byron, I am really curious; do you know what precisely this program you mentioned does/sets, to speed things up ?? Does it need to run all the time, or it just applies the so-called registry tweaks ?? Because you know, in general, such programs only "rely" on the placebo-effect that users are experiencing when using them ...

best regards,
Ivan Tadej, Slovenija, Europe
http://www.tadej-ivan.tk

I have PII 730MHz with 128 MB OF RAM and i have Xp installed...Xp seems to run really slow. Can you help me?

Can you beleive it, I have Windows XP, SP2 and a Intel Celeron CPU with 2.95GHz! The stupid machine has only... ...wait for... it... ...a mere 192 mb of RAM, well below the minimum of 250mb as someone said and in the sea compared to the 500mb BARE minimum as someone else said!

Hey, my laptop is a insperon 9200, we had a computer tech come out to install more RAM, but he said that one of the memory sticks was bad, there is 2 256's but on the sytem info it only shows 256 mb of RAM. Whats that about?

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