Tips for Maximum XP Performance - Part 2

Welcome back! In the last article we got rid of the resource taxing graphical
animations, talked about fonts and temp files. Let's just continue from where
we left off and get some more tip time in.

Network components: You will find these in the Control Panel
Network area. If you know what you are doing in here then great. If you really
don't, then perhaps you should jump into
our forum area and ask some questions before altering things in here. Network
components load at start-up, and if you have loaded more than you need in here,
then you are slowing down your computer start-up and allocating resources you
can't get back during run-time. Most computers hooked up on a home network only
need TCP/IP installed here. You probably don't need things like Apple Talk for
example, unless there is a Macintosh in your house you are sharing files with.
If you need it, that is fine, if you don't then removing the unused ones will
help your start-up time.

Virus Protection: I'm not going to tell you to remove your
virus protection, not on XP, however many virus protection programs take more
than their fair share of the computer resource pie. Pre-installed versions of
Norton are a great example of this; Norton (at least the pre-installed versions
I have come across) slow a computer down to a crawl. It doesn't seem to matter
how fast your computer is or how much RAM you have, the software just eats and
eats. If you have one of these versions, try uninstalling and using AVG for
a time, you will see a large jump in your computer's response time, and file
access. MacAfee has also created problems with computer response time, so check
out AVG. There are others out there as well. If you ask in the forum
area you might get some more ideas about what virus protection programs
are available.

I recieved some questions over the last week regarding games and speeding those
up, so let's talk about that now. Games are probably the most finicky software
programs out there. They are made to run as fast as possible and display a great
deal of rapidly changing information to the screen. The amount of dynamically
changing information in a session of World of Warcraft is phenomenal to say
the least.

The first thing you want to check is your Direct
X version, and you want to keep that up-to-date as often as you can. I check
at least once a month for the newest version of Direct-X.

The next thing you want to do is turn off all other programs, which includes
anything running in the system tray, down by the system clock in the right-hand
bottom corner. Those running background programs can be the difference between
30 frames a second or 20 frames a second. If you are only running the game,
then turn off the virus protection as well. Once you are done, make sure you
turn it back on, but if you are in the closed world of the game, you don't have
to worry about viruses infecting you for that time. If you are going to forget
to turn it back on however, it is better to just let it run and deal with it,
better to loose a few frames than the whole system.

If you believe that you really need to upgrade your system then go for a 3D
accelerator graphics card, before boosting your RAM or CPU. Most games rely
on 3D accelerators to render the screen and take some of the processing load
off the CPU. You will experience a much higher boost in response time from adding
a high-end 3D accelerator graphics card to your system than adding even a faster
CPU. That is unless you already have one of course. The next item on the list
is RAM, and then the CPU. Putting a GIG of RAM in a system, allows the game
to be loaded completely in RAM, and that is a great deal faster than accessing
disk drives.

If you are playing a network game, such as World of Warcraft, then taking a
look at those network drivers becomes a must. Make sure you are only running
what you have to in order to keep your connection, clean out the rest.

That's it for this section, remember that if you have any specific questions
you can always click over to our forum
and ask the experts.