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Windows XP Optimization Guide Posted


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Greg

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

 

Having just recieved a new Boxx box last week (built and delivered in RECORD time--four or five days ahead of quote) I was fighting XP to be more like W2K, which I really like. I had already done some of the things you cover, but not all of them. I really needed the direction and I wouldn't have done it without the help. I didn't get to turning off the extra services yet, but I will. I did not have time to read the side article to determine what I was not going to need.

 

The ZIP250 drive is DOA, which is quite a surprise. It will read but won't write without freezing up. But Boxx got me a replacement this morning. I am actually too busy with work to open the machine up, so I'll just work around it in the meantime.

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Thanks guys.

 

I didn't change my mind completely about XP...but I know alot of people who have recently moved to Xeon's have been upset at some of the things XP has brought into the picture...mainly hiding win2k and throwing a whole lotta crap all over the place.

 

Jeff,

 

Did you notice a different in gui performance after the tweaks though? After some of them it seems like the mouse becomes "life accelerated" hehe.

 

Now just have to update the Max Faq (later this weekend) then upload the boxx article...

 

Weeeeeeeee

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Originally posted by Jeff Mottle:

So after all my tweaking I got my system down to a whopping 210MB. LOL. This is what happens when you use one machine to drive 12 external devices and try to run two businesses and a personal workstation. Here's my taskbar:

 

filepush.asp?file=Untitled-1.jpg

Not exactly all tweaking, Jeff, cause I still see the original XP look there...

But, for sure you won't be able to reach the ideal mem usage with all the stuff you got running in the background there. I assure you that Greg's results are after a fresh boot with no utilities like yours running at all, and I can also assure you that if he keeps his machine unformatted for a month or two, and sturt working with it, his mem usage will double.

BTW: you wanna consider another cheap system for all site managing, internet, email... and keep your dual for work only. Don't you also have a laptop?

Regards.

 

Greg, I guess the Xeons, Hyperthreading, and time I guess... changed your mind about XP pro. If you remember a few months ago after you recomended so, I switched back to W2K from XP pro on my dual AMD 1.2. It ain't so bad at all, but next week I'm going to get my new "tenants" (two 2100+) to replace the palomino 1.2s, so I'll go back with XP pro.

Thanks for the article, which accept for palying with the services I had it all.

Thanks.

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  • 1 month later...

Greg,

I made a fresh install of XP on a P3 800mhz with 256mb machine.

Mem usage after instalation without changing anything was 71mb. After changing everything thats in the article, mem usage went down to 68mb.

Is it that big of a change?

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Originally posted by Greg Hess:

Do you notice those changes?

Not really, but that was a fresh install of XP with nothing on it, so everything worked pretty fast anyway.

I'd assume that disabling all these features would help the OS to stay fast as it gets "older"...

Thanks.

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hi greg,

thanks for the optimisation advice and links, which i followed thru with (win 2kpro and win xp pro).

came to the conclusion that microsoft's appropriation of ram and system resources has worsened. optimisation produced a slight benefit, but once modeling and rendering commenced, windows couldn't contain itself and bloated out.

 

following some advice, installed windows nt4 workstation, sp6; and windows explorer 5.0 (an experiment on a 2Gb hdd; all other model/render apps installed on another main hdd); no other microsoft (eg. office) products installed.

the memory footprint was very modest (35Mb), and the os was stable. most of the system resources were allocated to the modeling and rendering, rather than wrestling with the os.

 

for memory intensive work, might consider continuing tweaking with nt4. the footprint overall was much much smaller, and system resource allocation both fluid and fast.

 

$0.02

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With XP Pro, the optimizations should make an immediate difference in fluidity of use, more so then actual ram reduction.

 

Remember that all optimizing was done after all OS updates, and all driver packs were installed.

 

If your system craps out after the updates, then something is wrong with the system.

 

NT4 is only a viable OS if its on a non networked machine. Microsoft has already announced the death of NT4, as they will no longer attempt to fix/patch it in the future against security vulnerabilities.

 

This of course will make any Nt4 machine on the network exceedly vulnerable to security holes within the operating system.

 

2k's death isn't set for another 3 or 4 years I believe.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just got a new machine two weeks ago and went thru the optimization process last night and followed it step by step.

 

Now I am getting error upon error, upon error. So tonight after I finish damning my machine to hell. I am going to try and go backwards and see what the hell happened. The only thing that sucks is it takes about 5 minutes before any of the windows open once I select the icon. So it will most likely be following this process tonight.

 

1. select icon...

2. curse at machine...

3. drink beer..

4. repeat steps above til problem is fixed or I am laying on the floor smashed.

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