It is often necessary to complete some regular PC maintenance tasks to speed up XP performance, especially as these ageing computers struggle to handle more modern applications. In this article, we'll take a look at some simple tasks you can do to improve how hardware, applications and the operating system all perform.
The starting point for any XP performance improvements is to look at how the existing hardware is being used. Check to make sure that there is at least 10% of the hard disk kept empty for virtual memory to expand. If this is not the case, remove some old programs and use the Disk Cleanup program to clear down temporary files and cookies.
With some space now cleared away on the disk drive you can choose to increase the maximum size of the virtual memory in the performance options window (system, advanced). In addition, you can improve disk read/write access times by defragmenting the hard drive. Doing this actually reorders how files are stored on the hard drive to reduce the number of read commands that are necessary to access each individual file.
Next, you should run some PC repair software to remedy any corruption, faults or virus damage to the Windows registry file. This can occur as programs are installed, removed and changed and shared configuration settings are altered resulting in associated programs being affected.
It is fair to say that the more applications running on a computer, the more demands there will be on the CPU and RAM. Therefore, it is worth opening the task manager, checking which processes are using up a lot of RAM memory and working out ways to solving this. If the program is not required then you could remove or disable it initially. If the program is necessary then you could consider checking for updates, search online for performance tweaks or even replacing the program with a competitor’s application which can do the same task, but will perform better.
Note that you will need to run these checks to speed up XP performance on a regular basis (approximately every four weeks) as your PC will gradually dis-improve over time as new applications are installed and the hard disk fills up.
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