Windows XP 100 tips tricks (2)

Turn Off System Restore to Save Space
By default, Windows XP keeps a backup of system files in the System Volume Information folder. This can eat up valuable space on your hard drive. If you don't want Windows to back up your system files:
· Open the Control Panel.
· Double-click on System.
· Click the System Restore tab.
· Check "Turn off System Restore on all drives".
· Hit Apply.
· You may now delete the System Volume Information folder.
Warning! If you turn this off you will not be able to use Windows System Restore to
restore your system in case of failure.

Very Slow Boot When Networking
On some XP Pro installations, when connected to a network (peer-peer in this case), the computer boot time is over 1:40. The system seems to freeze after logging in and the desktop may not appear or will freeze for a minute. As timed with the utility, Bootvis.exe, the problem was with the driver mrxsmb.dll, adding over 67 seconds to the boot time. Turning off and restoring file and printer sharing eliminated 65 seconds from the boot time.
· Alt-click (or right-click) on Network Places > Properties.
· Alt-click on Ethernet Adapter connection > Properties.
· Un-check "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" > OK.
· Reboot.
· If you need file or printer sharing, repeat the above, re-check the box and re-boot
again.

Easy Way to Adjust LargeSystemCache
Normally, the tweak I've seen asks you to go into HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and change the value to either O or 1 to the adjustment the LargeSystemCache. However, in Windows XP, all you have to do is:
· Right-click My Computer.
· Select Properties.
· Click Advanced.
· Choose Performance.
· Click Advanced again.
· Select either Programs or System Cache under Memory Usage.
Programs = 0 for the registry tweak equivalent
System Cache = 1 for the registry tweak equivalent
· On NT Server (in this case XP), the Large System Cache option is enabled, but disabled on Workstation. The two different settings effect how the cache manager allocates free memory. If the Large Cache option is on, the manager marks all the free memory, which isn't being used by the system and/or applications, as freely available for disk caching.
· On the flip-side (with a small cache), the manager instead only sets aside 4MB of memory for disk caching in an attempt to accelerate the launch of applications. Or in a more technical approach, if enabled the system will favor system-cache working sets over process working sets (with a working set basically being the memory used by components of a process).

Slow Start-up When Using Norton Internet Security 2002
If you are using Norton Internet Security 2002, and are experiencing slow start-up of XP, (i.e. you can see the desktop with icons etc. but it takes 30-60sec before you can start using the computer), this fix might help:
· Click on Start button.
· Select Control Panel.
· Open "Network Connections".
· Under "LAN and High-Speed Internet", right-click on your "Local Area Connection" and select "Properties".
· Under "General" tab, select "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" and select "Properties".
· Select "Use the following IP address:".
· Under "IP address" enter following : 192.168.0.1
· Under "Subnet Mask:" enter following : 255.255.255.0
· Click "Ok".

Correcting System Hang at Startup
If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't work for me. Here's what you do:
· Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
· Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service.
· Disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

source:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/191328/Windows-Xp-100-Tips-Tricks