If your Windows XP computer seems to be moving a little sluggish, there are a number of small things you can do to help speed it up. Instead of buying new components, try these simple steps first.
1. Turn Off Your Desktop Icons.
Believe it or not, something as displaying icons on your desktop pulls system resources and you can feel the effects if you don’t have much resources to spare. You can turn on or off your desktop icons by right-clicking on any blank area of the desktop, opening the “Arrange Icons By” submenu and then clicking “Show Desktop Icons” to either check or uncheck it.
2. Turning Off Your Desktop Wallpaper.
Displaying an image on your desktop can be appealing but it can also pull system resources if you don’t have much to spare. You can turn off your desktop wallpaper by right-clicking any blank area of the desktop and choosing “Properties”. The “Display Properties” window will open. Choose the “Desktop” tab, and choose the “Blank” option from the list of wallpapers provided.
3. Turning Off The Luna Visual Style.
The default Windows XP interface is blue, and is called Luna. It also comes in Silver and Olive Green variations. This looks really nice, but it take significant system resources to display this interface. If you need to speed up your Windows XP system, you can consider reverting back to the classic interface from Windows 98/2000/ME. To accomplish this, enter the “Display Properties” by right-clicking a blank area of the desktop. Choose the appearance tab, and in the “Windows and Buttons” drop down box, choose “Windows Classic Style” and click “OK”.
4. Turning Off The Welcome Screen.
If found that turning off the friendly Windows Welcome Screen can speed up your system’s startup time. The drawback is that if you have more than User Profile on the system, users will have to type their names in a box to log on, rather that click their name on the Welcome Screen. However, if there’s only one user or one user account on your computer, you might want to consider turning off the Welcome Screen. To achieve this, open Control Panel by clicking Start, and then Control Panel. Choose “User Accounts” from the Control Panel. If you have ‘Category View’ enabled in Control Panel, you will have to click the “User Accounts” icon, after clicking the User Accounts Category. Once in the “User Accounts” window, choose the option that says “Change the way users log on or off”. Then uncheck the option that says “use The Welcome Screen”. You can always turn it back on later through the same procedure.
These are just a few easy things you can do to see a difference in system speed. If you have a fast computer, you may or may not feel the effects of these changes. As time goes on, I will share more tips for speeding up your system, but I hope these 4 will be of help to someone.