Disable User Tracking - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Useless to most users—except perhaps for system administrators— XP’s inbuilt user tracking system uses up precious resources.

The system keeps track of the programs run by a user, the paths followed, and the documents used. (Did you know your XP was spying on you all this while?) Disable this to free up system resources.

Navigate to:

HCU\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\

Policies\Explorer

Set the DWORD NoInstrumentation to 1. This will disable most of the user tracking features of XP.

Run 16-bit Apps In Their Own Processes - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Use this hack if you have more than one 16-bit application left over from the days of your nostalgia. XP runs all 16-bit applications in a single process. Having a separate process for each application can increase their stability and process.

Navigate to:

HLM\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ WOW

Browse to the String DefaultSeparateVDM. If it’s not there, you’ll need to create it. Set its value to Yes.

Unload Unused DLLs - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

After an application is closed, XP has the annoying habit of leaving the associated DLL files in memory. This can hog precious resources and memory, and also cause stability problems. Make the DLLs unload themselves from memory after the program is done running.

Navigate to:

HLM\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ AlwaysUnloadDLL

If the DWORD AlwaysUnloadDLL is not present, you will need to create it. Set the Value of the “(Default)” setting to 1. Application-associated DLLs will get unloaded when the application is closed.

Prioritise! - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Normally, multiple instances of the same application (such as multiple windows in Internet Explorer) will share a single process thread. If you have stability problems or slow application loads, launching each application in its own process will improve stability and speed up load times.

Navigate to:

HLM\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ PriorityControl

Optimise XP’s process priority control by setting the DWORD Value for Win32PrioritySeperation to… well, the default is 2, and 27, 28, 37, 38, and more have all been quoted as good values (in decimal). Experiment a little. But after doing this, open My Computer, go to Folder Options under the Tools menu, choose the View tab, and check “Launch folder windows in a separate process.”

This will run each application window in a separate process. However, note that that each process will consume the same amount of memory: this hack is therefore only recommended if you have 512 MB or more of system RAM. Ideally, a restart is not required.

Optimisation Of The Boot Files - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Normal file fragmentation scatters the pieces of a file all over your hard disk. This invariably also affects the files that load at boot time. You can defragment the files that load at system startup to enable faster loading.

Navigate to:

HLM\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Dfrg\ BootOptimizeFunction

A setting called Enable under this key needs to be set to Y (for Yes). This setting defragments the boot files, and it might relocate startup files into contiguous clusters on the volume, reducing the movement of the disk head when reading the volume.

With the setting at Y, boot file optimisation occurs automatically if the system is idle for 10 minutes. A reboot is required for the change to take effect.