Top 20 Tips to keep your system faster.

Follow these tips and you will definitely have a much faster and more reliable PC!

1. Wallpapers:They slow your whole system down, so if you're willing to compromise,

have a basic plain one instead!

2. Drivers: Update your hardware drivers as frequently as possible. New drivers tend to

 increase system speed especially in the case of graphics cards, their drivers are updated

 by the manufacturer very frequently!

3. Minimizing: If you want to use several programs at the same time then minimize those

 you are not using. This helps reduce the overloadon RAM.

4. Boot Faster: The 'starting Windows 98/XP' message on startupcan delay your booting

for a couple of seconds. To get rid of this message go to c: and find the file Msdos.sys.

Remove the Read-Only option. Next, open it in Notepad or any other text editor. Finally,

go to the text 'Options' within the file and make the following changes: Add BootDelay=0.

To make your booting even faster, set add Logo=0 to remove the Windows logo at start up.

5. Restart only Windows: When restarting your PC, hold down Shift to only restart Windows

 rather than the whole system which will only take a fraction of the time.

6. Turn Off Animations: Go to DisplaySettings from the Control Panel and switch to the

 Effects Tab. Now turn off Show Windows Content While Dragging and Smooth Edges on

Screen Fonts. This tip is also helpful with Windows XP because of the various fade/scroll

effects.

7. Faster Start-Menu Access: Go to the Start menu and select Run. Now type Regedit and

hit Enter. The Registry Editor will appear on the screen. Now, open the folder

HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop. You should see a MenuShowDelay value.

 If you don't then do the following: right click on a blank space in the right pane and select

 New String. Change the name in the new value to MenuShowDelay.Now that we have the

MenuShowDelay value, double click on it and enter 0 in the value data field. This sets the

 start menu delay to 0 milliseconds.

8. Resolutions: If you are willing to do anything for faster performance from your PC, then

 try lowering yourdisplay resolution. The lower it is, the faster your PC.

9. Turn off Active Desktop: Go to your Display Properties and switch to the Web tab.

Uncheck View My Active Desktop As a Web Page. Since the Active Desktop option under

Windows 98 uses a lot of system resources, this option can have a dramatic effect on the

 speed of the whole system.

10. Defragment Often: Windows 98'sDefrag tool uses Application Acceleration from Intel

 which meansthat when you defragment your drive, data is physically arranged on the

drive so that applications will load faster.

11. Take your PC to Bed: Using the Advanced Power Management feature under Windows

 98 gives youthe option to use the sleep command. That way, you can send your PC to sleep

 instead of shutting it down and then restarting it. It's assimple as pressing a button and

 thenpressing the same button to wake it up. You can tell Windows after how many minutes/hours

 of inactivity to automatically sleep the machine in the Advanced Power Management section

 of the Control Panel.

12. Faster Internet Access: If you use the internet for reference and the sites you visit are rarely

 updated then try the following. In IE (the same can be done in Netscape) go to Tools, Internet

 Options. Next, click on Settings... in the Temporary Internet Files section. Finally, select Never 

for the first option and doublethe amount of storage space to use, click OK!

13. Benchmarking: Benchmarking can be very useful when run frequently. It can tell you how

 your PC's components are performing andthen compare them to other machines like yours. 

For example, when you overclock your PC, you want to know how much more speed you have

 and whether it is stable. All this and more can be discovered using benchmarking. An excellent

 piece of software for doingthis job is SiSoft Sandra which can befound in the Downloads

 File Archive!

14. Refresh the Taskbar without restarting: If you in some way change the taskbar, either in

 Regeditor elsewhere, you can refresh the task bar without restarting. Hold down Ctrl Alt Del,

 and double click onExplorer. Say Yes to close Explorer, but no to closing Windows. This will 

refresh the Taskbar and system tray.

15. Quick CD Eject: Instead of pushing the button on your drive, right-click your CD drive letter

 in My Computer and click on Eject. This willalso remove any icons that have become associated

 with the CD drive

16. Start Up Programs: Windows canbe slowed down when programs run on start up. To eliminate

 this, check your Start up folder. You can access it from the start menu: Start, Programs, Start Up. 

Another way to eliminate programs from loading even before Windows actually starts is by doing

 the following: Click on Start, then Run. Type msconfig. It will take quite a long time for this program

 to load, but when you finally see it on your screen, explore the different tabs. They all have to do

 with how quickly your PC boots, so select what you want, and uncheck what you don't want!

17. Fonts: When Windows starts, it loads every single font in the Fonts folder. Therefore, the more

 fonts youhave, the slower the booting process. To get rid of unwanted fonts, simply go to the Fonts

 folder under c:windows and remove whatever you don't want. Fonts thathave a red letter 'A' as 

their icon are system fonts, so don't delete them.

18. Stretching Wallpapers: Don't"stretch" your wallpaper in Windows 98 since it actually slows

 Windows down when you drag icons around on the desktop.

19. RAM Matters: If you have less than 32MB then you should seriously think of upgrading it to

 at least 64MB. Windows runs much more smoothly with 64MB or higher and tends to use less

 hard disk spacefor virtual memory.

20. Partitioning: A very nice little thing you can do to boost system performance. By partitioning

 your hard drive, splitting one physical drive into several logical ones, you can gain several 

advantages. 1. If you get a virus or you accidentally format a drive, not all will be lost. 

2. By placing the swap file (Win386.swp) on a separate drive, The swap file will be less 

fragmented and thus, faster. 3. Place Windows on a separate drive and whenever you need to

 reinstall it, you rest assured that your data is safe on a separate drive. Partitioningcan be done

 using a few programs such as FDisk which comes with DOS.However, FDisk formats everything

 on the hard disk before partitioning. Alternatively, you can use Partition Magic from Power Quest 

to partitionyour hard disk without losing your data