Windows XP

[mikeymike]

I will concur with this. Some laptops are very slow when compared to desktop machines.

The main thing that really gets on my nerves with my laptop (Dell C400) is the really slow disk.  A benchmark on my PC's disk comes out at around 35 - 40MB/sec.  The same benchmark on my laptop comes out between 5 - 10MB/sec.  As my laptop has an absurd amount of RAM (half a gig, absurd IMO), I allocate half of that to a ramdisk and install OpenOffice and Mozilla to there.

At least it runs silent or very near silent :-)

[mikeymike]

I just bought a new laptop with Windows XP pre-installed and going to give it a bit of test drive tonight
so i would be interested in reading some of good/bad
points and tips -sensible comments ?

Yes, first things first IMO, reinstall the OS with a proper install CD (rather than recovery CD which just contains an image if the usual poor factory install).  The install guide for win2k on my site can mostly be applied to WinXP as well.

[mikeymike]

Cheers Mike, I'm gonna check over your sit in case I've missed anything. Where abouts do I look on your site?

"Windows AdminCentral" (desperately for lack of a better name).  It's linked off the front page, but here's the direct URL to it: http://www.legolas.com/wac/

[mikeymike]

I would suggest checking out www.TweakXP.com/, I'm sure you'll find some useful tips there. I recommend going over your services and disabling the ones that you don't need (things like the Indexing service are often not needed).

I just had a quick browse around and I wouldn't advise taking what they say for gospel.  For example, two articles, one named "disable automatic updates", then another a page down "disable automatic updates properly", both contain different solutions, and yet only both combined will probably disable automatic updates and keep it from using up memory.

Heh - an even better one - two articles both about installing without ACPI, it just doesn't bother advising that maybe one ought to disable ACPI in the BIOS before starting the install  :lol:

[mikeymike]

Talking of BIOS's my crappie BIOS doesn't have an option to enable HT on my CPU, even though my CPU support such an option...
Any ideas as to how I can enable HT?

I don't know for definite how hyperthreading works deep down, I would guess it requires at least some motherboard support, so age of motherboard *may* be a factor.  A mobo BIOS update might help, but look for something specific in the respective manufacturer's website regarding what the BIOS updates do.  Support for an even newer CPU might encompass what you're after.

I wouldn't regard my advice on newer P4 related matters that highly, the last P4 I had anything to do with was a 1.7 pre-Northwood :-)

If you're using Windows say NT4 or 2000, it should detect it as dual CPU, so I've heard from a reliable source.  XP will detect it as a single HT capable CPU.

You might want to download something like wcpu 3.1 to read off the capabilities of your CPU and motherboard.  It might give you some more information to go on.

[mikeymike]

Bad: Networking. XP has known networking problems. It frequently tries to reauthenticate with other computers, and often is incapable, even with proper usernames and passwords. It's not unusable mind you, but definitly anoying.

That's just SMB (Windows file/print services), that prob is with every version of Windows.

Disable SMB.  It's bad for you.

[mikeymike]

Using MSConfig one can disable system services... which one can I safely disable...?

The 'services' MMC snap-in would be a better choice of config tool, but anyway.  There's a million articles out there about service config, what's used for what, etc.

For newbies, I'd recommend the following method of service tweaking:

- stop the service.  Continue using Windows without restarting, and see if anything unusual screws up.  If it does, start that service and leave it alone.

- set the service to manual.  Restart.  99% of the time, if the system needs that service, it'll start it when it needs it.  Otherwise the system will start normally, but pop an error.  Many services have dependencies on other services.  These are usually listed in the 'dependency' tab of the service properties.

- Occasionally, your system will act completely normally with the service set to stopped/manual, but then on restart it'll start it again.  Set the service to stopped/disabled, and test your machine more thoroughly.  If you experience no issues as a result of the service you're playing with, leave the service disabled and restart the machine.

I don't think there are any services that can be stopped that your system won't manage to boot at all without them.

Another tactic is to install the Recovery Console.  Search the MS support site (URL - IE only) for that and it'll give you instructions of how to install it.  Then search for what commands are available, there are a useful few which allow you to configure service startup options from the recovery console.