Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Disable CD Autorun, simple computer tweak

This trick involves only three simple steps:

1) Click Start, Run and enter GPEDIT.MSC

2) Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System.

3) Locate the entry for Turn autoplay off and modify it as you desire.

How to Shutdown XP Faster??

Like previous versions of windows, it takes long time to restart or shutdown windows
XP when the "Exit Windows" sound is enabled.
To solve this problem you must disable this useless sound.

•Click Start button.

•Go to settings > Control Panel > Sound, Speech and Audio devices > Sounds and Audio
Devices > Sounds.

•Then under program events and windows menu click on "Exit Windows" sub-menu and
highlight it. Now from sounds you can select, choose "none" and then click Apply and
OK.

Now you should see some improvements when shutting down your system.

Speeding Up Your Pentium 2 by 50%

We all know that you really shouldn't try to run Windows XP on anything less that
about a Pentium 3 of some sort if you are out for speedy operations and amazing reaction times, but for those of us with the good old Pentium 2's who want to see just how well we can run XP, we have to tweak as much as we can where-ever we can.

A real killer to the system's performance is Windows Media Player. Although it may look desirable and fancy with it's rounded off edges and 3rd-Dimensional appearance, the truth is, it takes up a large amount of that precious processing power.
All of these troubles however, lead to one thing in particular with this 'new-look' over-rated music and video player...the Visualizations.
The look-great I'll admit but like a lot of software these days, it has no purpose. If you run the task manager, and click the Performance tab along the top, you'll see that when Windows Media Player is running and nothing else is active, it takes up around 50% of the processors power.
Once these visualizations are turned off, it barely takes up 2-3% of the processors power, which leaves much more room for other applications to work efficiently.


Here's how to disable the feature:
•Open Media Player.
•Make sure the Now Playing tab on the left is selected.
•Click the View menu along the top.
•Go down to Now Playing Tools.
•In the sub-menu that has just 'popped-out', uncheck Show Visualization

Deal with System Hang at Startup

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent
Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't
work for me.


Here's what you do:
•Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
•Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service.
•Disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

Performance Increase Through My Computer

Easy enough tweak to usually find out about it on your own, but still, some of us
still don't find it right away.

So here it is:

•Start > right-click on My Computer and select Properties.
•Click on the "Advanced" tab.
•See the "Performance" section? Click "Settings".
•Disable the following:

Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show Shadows under menus
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type
Use common tasks in folders
There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster.

If Win XP Won't Completely Shutdown

Go to Control Panel, then go to Power Options.
•Click on the APM tab, then check the "Enable Advanced Power Management support."
•Shut down your PC.
It should now successfully complete the Shut Down process.

Increase BROADBAND

This is for broad band connections, though it might work for dial up.
•Make sure your logged on as actually "Administrator".
•Start->Run->type gpedit.msc
•Expand the "Local Computer Policy" branch.

•Expand the "Administrative Templates" branch.
•Expand the "Network Branch".
•Highlight the "QoS Packet Scheduler" in left window.
•In right window double-click the "Limit Reservable Bandwidth" setting.
•On setting tab check the "Enabled" item.
•Where it says "Bandwidth limit %" change it to read 0.
Effect is immediate on some systems, some need to re-boot. This is more of a "counter
what XP does" thing. In other words, programs can request up to 20% of the bandwidth be
reserved for them, even with QoS disabled.