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 
