Disable The Desktop Cleanup Wizard - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

By default the Desktop Cleanup Wizard runs every 60 days to clean up unused shortcuts and other desktop items. Do you need this over-friendly tool? At any rate, you don’t want it to run automatically— use this hack.

Navigate to:

HCU\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ Desktop\ CleanupWiz

Modify the DWORD Value called NoRun to 0, or to 1 to bring back the poor Wizard if you begin to pity it.

Turn Off Windows Animation - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Windows animations—like those that happen when you minimize or maximise windows—look good, but only if you have the processing power and/or RAM. To get the most performance out of your system turn off this setting. You could do it via a host of settings in the GUI, but this Registry |-hack does it all in one fell swoop.

Navigate to:

HCU\ Control Panel\ Desktop\ WindowMetrics

Change the value called MinAnimate to 0 to disable Windows Animation. A restart is required.

Optimise The System Cache - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Desktop systems are normally optimised for applications, and servers for file caching. Depending on how you use your system, you may want to optimise your system for either.

Navigate to:

HLM\ SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ Session

Manager\ Memory Management

Find the setting LargeSystemCache. Set this DWORD value to 1 for server behaviour or to 0 for desktop behaviour.

Some programs such as SQL Server and Exchange Server set this value during installation and override the change.

Edit The Startup Programs List - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

Many of the programs that start up at boot time do not figure in the Startup folder. If you want to stop more than one application from loading at bootup, you will normally need to go and turn off the preference in each application one by one. Tedious and time consuming. This hack can help you do this in one go.

Navigate to:

HLM\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Run

And to:

HCU\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Run

All the programs that load at boot time will be specified under these two keys. Review the applications listed in this list and delete all the entries you don’t want started up at boot time. Next bootup, they’ll be gone.

Be careful not to delete needed programs such as anti-virus and antispyware programs. You should be able to identify them by their path if not by the file name.

Load Kernel Into RAM - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

In Windows 98, programs could be loaded and kept in RAM for as long as you wanted. You could even load a video clip into RAM directly and have it play from there! XP is much more restrictive, mostly due to security reasons. But when it comes to the Windows XP kernel, there’s something you can do. By default, XP only loads the required parts of the kernel into RAM at boot time, and calls the other parts as and when needed. Having the entire kernel available in memory speeds up processing.

Navigate to:

HLM\ System\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ Session

Manager\ Memory Management

Set the value of the DisablePagingExecutive key to 1. This will make the entire kernel be loaded in memory. A reboot is required for the changes to take effect.

Only use this hack if you have sufficient memory. Recommended: 512 MB or more. Also, this |-hack may affect some programs that use the Windows swap file directly, such as Adobe Photoshop.

Disable Thumbnail Caching - Performance Enhancement Windows XP Registry Hack

One of Explorer’s features is to display a thumbnail of images and the first frame of the video when seen in Thumbnail view. Explorer can either create it when you access the folder or fetch it from the thumbnail cache. Fetching thumbnails from the cache is significantly faster, but will consume a lot of hard disk space, especially if your system is chock-full of images and video.

Navigate to:
HCU\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\
Explorer\Advanced

Set the DWORD Value DisableThumbnailCache to 1 if you are low on hard disk space. Otherwise, it makes sense to leave it at zero—the thumbnail cache can indeed be useful.