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 overload on
RAM.
4.
Boot Faster: The 'starting Windows 98/XP' message on startup can
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 startup.
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 Display Settings
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_USER\Control
Panel\Desktop. 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 your display 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 Action 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's Defrag tool uses
Application Acceleration from Intel which means that 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 you the 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 as simple as pressing a
button and then pressing 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 double the
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 and
then 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 doing this job is
SiSoft Sandra which can be found in the Downloads File Archive!
14.
Refresh the Taskbar without restarting: If you in some way change
the taskbar, either in Regedit or elsewhere, you can refresh the task bar
without restarting. Hold down Ctrl Alt Del, and double click on Explorer. 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 will also remove any icons that have become associated with the CD
drive.
16. Start Up Programs:
Windows can be 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 you have, 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 that
have 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 space for 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. Partitioning can 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 partition your hard disk
without losing your data.
