Apache Systems 

Home page                                   TUTORIALS

Computer                  

Links                                       How to speed up your PC. Part One

1)          Make sure you have a fast Processor  or CPU (the Heart of a PC) . This chip is made up of millions of Tiny Transistors. The CPU understands only 0 & 1. All info sent to it is in those two digits. A small amount of electricity can kill thousands of these transistors . A similar short resulting from water exposure will also permanently damage these circuits.  

            These days a CPU runs faster then 2 Giga Hertz. Want to go faster so the CPU can display a complex picture quickly. Need a fast CPU.

2)     Need more memory. The greater the memory you have the more programs one  can open . With more memory the PC will keep more programs in Cache and retrieve them quickly. If a CPU has to retrieve a program from the Hard drive it takes longer. Win 98 has to have more then 128 MB. A XP needs more then 256 MB.  

3)    Have a large and faster hard drive.

                                                                   Part Two 

1. Wallpapers: They slow your whole system down, so just have a plain wallpaper. Not a program  running in the background.

2. Drivers: Update your hardware drivers as frequently as possible.  New drivers will increase system speed especially in the case of graphics cards, their drivers are updated by the manufacturer very frequently and the one stop to get all of them is Microsoft update site. Book mark it!

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 95/98' 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 option 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. Put PC TO SLEEP: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. 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.B. 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!

13. 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.14. Stretching Wallpapers:Don't "stretch" your wallpaper in Windows 98 since it actually slows Windows down when you drag icons around on the desktop.

15. 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.

16. 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!

Thanks to Cyber PC