Advance Methods To Speeding Up Your Computer
Advance Methods To Speeding Up Your Computer
Applicable to Windows XP
In this article I would like to share some cool hacks and tips that will speed up your computer even further by increasing the performance of your applications. We will be trying to work on with the many different parts of the operating system that affect the speed of your applications. The amount of memory the system has, how the system is using that memory, the location of the files on the hard disk, and system performance-enhancing features are all factors that influence the performance of your applications.
Working with the Windows Prefetcher
Prefetcher is one of the component of Windows XP that predict the operations could be performed by a user. It starts loading your program seconds before you actually start it to boost the startup of the application. The Prefetcher is a very complex component and it has made with greater Artificial Intelligence. Generally, we can change its settings by hacking the registry. However, there are very less documentation about this component. So, changing any settings may cause very serious damage to Operating System. But there are some documentation which gives some information about this settings. This vast documentation can be veiw from Microsoft's Web site. Following paragram explains some most important points and explore the Prefetcher component.
Hacking the registry to optimize the Prefetcher
When we explore the WIndows Registry, we get lot of information about the settings for the Prefetcher Component of Windows XP. We can changed many settings like mode of the Prefetcher running, the number of items that are tracked by the Prefetcher.
Information about all the settings are not given by Microsoft and are not published in documention that are available for public. The only setting that Microsoft has said anything about is the EnablePrefetcher setting. Some users of Windows XP were having trouble with the Prefetcher, which caused problems with certain unknown applications, so Microsoft released information on how to disable the Prefetcher. The Prefetcher can be either disabled or set to optimize the boot only, to optimize applications only, or to optimize both applications and the boot. By default, the Prefetcher is set to optimizeboth.
To change the modes of the Prefetcher, follow these steps:
You can try all these settings one at a time. I highly recommend that you do not disable your boot prefetch, as this mode is also used in other parts of the operating system to improve speed.
Increase performence of specific applications with prefetch
I don't have much information about the Prefetch System operations. The only option to know more about is to perform more and more operations on these settings. And another way is how Microsoft uses it. One example of this is with the release of Windows Media Player 9.0. On top of all of the new multimedia technologies. We can use the Prefetcher feature with this software. Generally, all applications have a shortcut on the desktop or in the All Programms. When you see the properties of these software, these files pointing to actual software in C:\Program Files directory. For Windows Media Player software, the shortcut pointing to the target in the directore "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe". If we add the flag to these application that appears to be an option flag for the Windows Prefetcher System.
Believe me this will definitely help in speeding up an application. Lets perform an trial to check this. Open a Windows Media Player from the shotcut on desktop or from All Programs. It will take more than 15 seconds to open. Now perform the following given steps and check its performance.
Unfortunately, no list is available of what programs will work with this and what programs will not. If you load a program after modifying a shortcut and you get an error, just remove the option flag that you added and you will be back to normal. How much improvement in loading time you observe will vary, depending on the speed of your computer, how your PC is configured, and the like, but it's definitely worth a try.
Using the Intel Application Accelerator
The Intel Application Accelerator is a software which has released by Intel Cooperation. This application is very useful to boost the performance of a user's system by optimizing the flow of information between the CPU and the storage devices. According to Intel, the Application Accelerator will eliminate the data storage system bottleneck on the motherboard, which will allow the CPU to be more efficient and will speed up various aspects of the system. Accelerator claims to increase application and even game performance because it will increase the speed of disk inputs and outputs.
The score of the machine after installing the Intel Application Accelerator was 34 percent faster than when the Application Accelerator was not installed. Additionally, the boot time of the same computer was 58 percent faster after the program was installed.System Requirements
Your system must possess following requirements to run Intel Application Accelerator.
1. Processor: Intel CPU with Pentium II, III, IV or Celeronbased processors and Xeon series of processors. AMD processor not work, sorry of AMD users.
2. Must be installed Intel Chipset Installation Utility on your computer Cipset. View a table of motherboard chipsets that need to be installed. If your motherboard requires it to be installed for the System to correctly identify your chipset, visit http://downloadfinder.intel.com/ to download a copy.
3. You must have supported motherboard chipset. Visit the Intel Website to see what chipset are supported. How to install Intel Application Accelerator
It is very easy to install the Intel Application Accelerator on you computer. Just follow the below instructions.
1. Visit http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Product_Filter.asp?ProductID663 to download a copy of the Application Accelerator.
2. Then once you have the file downloaded, install the application by following the onscreen directions.
3. After the install is completed, reboot, and the Application Accelerator will be installed and running.
If you have a laptop that has a supported chipset, you should be aware that in the recent version of the Intel Application Accelerator, version 2.3, support for mobile devices was removed. You will have to install version 2.2.2 instead.