1) My XP boots dead slow novadays due to lots of installed software (my gf to blame), eventhough registry has been cleaned.
Well, install one more piece of software:
AutoRuns. Use it to see what the heck is being loaded at boot up and elimiate what's not needed. How do you know what's needed or not needed you ask? That's easy, check with this site:
Start Ups. Then check your services. A good guide for that can be found at
Black Viper's web site (look for Windows XP Services). Be sure to disable the Indexing service as it's pretty useless and resource hungry.
2) Documents and Settings-folder.. 656mb .. and I ain't got even one god damn document saved there. Thats loadsa settings.
Yeah, lotsa software likes to store stuff there for you (isn't that thoughtful). I suggest moving the My Documents folder to another partition (can't remember how to do that, but there's a way, I'm sure you can find it if you search for it).
3) Windows-folder is almost 2 gigs.
Well... there's System Restore which can use up a lot of disk space, plus all the Windows patches you install store uninstall information as well. It's easy to see how things can add up when your system stores backups on everything you touch!
When I install Windows on a machine (and I've been doing that often for friends and family as of late) I always setup three partitions: C: OS only, D: Apps only, E: Data (aka documents, files, mp3's, etc), including temp files and swap file. If you like you could also make a 4th partition just for the swap file and temp internet files. Seperating the temp files from the OS and Apps really helps reduce the fragmentation. Data on the otherhand tends to change anyway, so there's less harm in mixing temp files with the data.
4) It's awfully slow in general use, one big reason being hd fragmentation. IE loads in about 5 secs or so
There's many things that can cause that, not just fragmentation. Check out this link for some things to try:
TweakXp - Performance Tweaks. Good luck!
5) Swap is yelling for mercy eventhough I have half a gig memory
Well, if you really do have lots of memory (like more then a gig) you CAN shut off the VM if you like. It's easy, just go into the VM settings and set the swap file size to 0 on all drives. Even if you don't shut it off, you should NEVER allow windows to automatically manage your VM. Pick a large partition and use it to store the swap file. The min and max file size should be identicle. A good rule of thumb for your swap file size is around 1.5 times your actual memory, but I use a 1:1 ratio. If you have a gig or more you might wanna go less.
There are also tools out there that can defragment your registry files. Defragmenting your swap file isn't that hard, simply set you VM to 0, reboot, defragment your drives and then reset the VM and a new swap file will be created. Hopefully you'll have enough contiguous free space to keep it all together.
Make sense? Ah nevermind, just reinstall everything, that always works! ;-)
-- Mike
