System Optimisation Guide Part 1

If you like to have a smoothly booting and working Windows computer you need to regularly clean and optimise its workings. Apply the following steps and you will have a nice clean PC ready for my future tweaks!

Disable System Restore functionality. A replacement for it will be covered in a future guide.

Go to 'My Computer | Properties | System Restore'. Disable it on all drives.

Unnecessary Services.

Go to 'Start | Run' and type 'services.msc' to load the Microsoft Service MMC Snap-in.

To disable services, simply right-click them and set to disabled. Upon the final reboot they will be disabled from running, even if you have startup items that explicitly require them.

Automatic updates
BITS service

The above 2 can be set to 'Manual Startup' and be started as and when you feel it necessary to use the Microsoft Windows Update Service/Site.

Security Centre
Help and Support
Windows Firewall / Internet Connection Sharing
System Restore
Error Reporting
IPSEC Services
Print Spooler (Only if you don't have a printer!)
Windows Time (Manually set it you lazy git!
SSDP Discover
Secondary Logo
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Task Schedule
Wireless Zero Configuration (Use the 3rd Party Apps that come with your adapter)

I missed a few out, but I will be updating them ASAP as I have researched into their functionality more thoroughly.

Reducing Windows Bloat:

As you know Windows can get really bloated after even a few months of use, especially if you run a lot of Windows Updates. However, it is really easy to remove all this crap and have a really small Windows folder. Before you go any further right-click the Windows Folder and record its size.

Go to 'Start | Run' and type 'cmd' to load thw Windows Command Prompt. Type 'cd %temp%' to enter the Windows User temp environment, which should put you somewhere in 'Documents and settings\user\local settings\temp' or for NT/2000 upgrade users it will be 'Winnt\profiles\%username%\temp'.
Then: del /q /s * >nul
Then: cd %windir%
Then: cd temp
Then: del /q /s * >nul

Ok, now the temp folders are empty. On some of my systems I had over 4GB of failed game installs in there. So I hope it helps you like it does me!

Ok now time to really clean out the dusty Windows folders.

Go to My Computer and browse your system partition for the Windows/Winnt folder. Find the sub-folder \system32\dllcache\ and press Ctrl & A to select all and press DELETE. The files are just cached libraries and are obsolete and take up unnecessary space on the system partition.

Now back up one level to the Windows directory. Go to the menu ˜Tools / Folder Options and enable showing of hidden and system files. Refresh the page if necessary (F5) and you should see a lot of folders named something like “$something KB numbers$ foldersâ€�. Select them one by one and remove press DELETE�. These are just backup files from Windows Updates and are generally junk files.

OK, we are starting to delete some serious crap now. Lets move on to another folder. Navigate to WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\ and delete its entire contents.

Other directories are found in the system partition in the root of the system .

Msocache. These are Microsoft Office junk cache files and are safe to remove.
Nvidia / ATI folders in root dir remove as well. As these are generally install folders for display drivers.

Optimizing (Z for The Almighty slaym8) The IE Browser Cache.

Navigate to Start | Control Panel| Internet Options |Tools.
Go to the Browsing History section and click Settings.
Set the Cache/Disk Space Use to 128MB. You seriously dont need more than that!

This is often overlooked by the casual user, but lets empty the IE plugins. In the same window as before, Click the View Objects button and remove all entries, even if you need them. They can be re-installed the next time they are used.

Now simply delete the existing cache by clicking Delete from the General tab within Internet Options.

Disabling Computer Hibernation Mode - If you don't use it disable it !

Go to Start | Run and type powercfg -h off.

Optimising the SWAP File aka Virtual Memory.

Right-click My Computer | Properties | Advanced tab | Performance section | Click Settings button | Advanced tab | Change button. For most setups set the minimum and maximum to 1.5x your total amount of RAM. I will cover advanced configurations in a later addition to this guide.

OK, That is most of the manual stuff. Last thing is to clean up the Windows registry. The registry is really the beating heart of the Windows OS and dictates how it runs. Whilst the Windows Kernel is fixed, everyones registry is different. I would go in to manually cleaning it, but it is very risky for the casual user. I would suggest you download a copy of RegCleaner and let it clean it for you. One thing I have learnt over the years is how bloated the Windows Startup section can get. It also the favourite haunt of many a virus, so I consider it worth a manual enema. I will cover that now and be quite content with RegCleaner covering everything else.

Go to Start| Run | Type regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run.

Now its down to you to delete anything in here. Some of it will be necessary, like your AV solution, so keep an eye out for anything that sounds familiar or you know is 100% required to run either a peripheral or device. You can delete it all and it will not stop Windows loading, but you will probably lose some/a little connectivity. I go here often and I know what stuff is, so any questions just ask in this thread.

NOW JUST REBOOT! :thumbup:

OK, Well thats the noobs part over. I am going to follow this up with some advanced tweaks, including Drivers, HDD Optimisation, Firewalls and Anti-Virus (AV).

don't you think you're a lil bit late on XP tweaking? why not vista or so.

To Optimize Vista:

1) Insert Windows XP CD
2) Format Vista Parition
3) Install Windows XP
4) Follow the steps from the beginning of the post

Originally posted by KamisoriX@Jun 20 2007, 08:05 PM
don't you think you're a lil bit late on XP tweaking? why not vista or so.

Its the first part of an expansive tweak guide. Vista comes later, because I have yet to finalise it.

This is great. Coz all of us have small tweaks we like to make and we should share them with newbies
I would like to point that sites like TweakXP.com and TweakVista.com have lots of security,performance, ect tweaks so check them out also :thumbup:
I have huge amount of personal tweaks I like to do but I'm not sure they could be usefull to anyone else
But if you are a multicore cpu user you might be interested that in system configuration utility|boot.ini|advanced options theres a setting called /NUMPROC= or in vista /Processors next to the text is a box from there you can choose how many processors you would like to dedicate for windows "the default setting is 1"
Alltho I haven't noticed any performance gain noir loss by changing this setting I'd like to share it so you may experiment with it. "you can access system configuration utility by typing msconfig into your run box"

I've always liked Tweakguides.com.

good stuff GM, cant wait for the vista stuff, got my x64 version today.

dude this is gold, some of the stuff i've heard of, most not however...
(and some stuff i was like "duh why didn't i think of that")

i vote for having it pinned, along with the inevitable vista guide too.

i have had problems disabling the 'system restore' before.
as in i turned it off for all drives, and now i have 2 entries
for each of my drives in the list, one of it on, one off...
never thought of disabling the service, got to try that...

You should enter your guide in the July's contest over at HardwareHell :-)

I think I can use this

Originally Posted by Cameraman

To Optimize Vista:

1) Insert Windows XP CD
2) Format Vista Parition
3) Install Windows XP
4) Follow the steps from the beginning of the post

Lmao, That cracked me up so much!