OT...calling all geeks

OK, I finally got tired of bsods, lockups, illegal ops etc, etc. so I
upgraded to WinXP Home Edition today. So far, what I've seen I like; the
only fly in the ointment seems to be that windows open slower and it takes
noticeably longer to boot up and shut down. I'm used to windows fairly
snapping open with W98 (when it wasn't locked up, etc) I have 512 megs RAM
and an Athlon 1.2 gig processor. Am I gonna have to go to a faster
processor to kick this thing in the butt or what? One small negative in
this whole thing is my scanner software does not work with WinXP..time for
a new scanner I guess.

Frank Church
...'fishin' for help to keep this partly on topic

OK, I finally got tired of bsods, lockups, illegal ops etc, etc. so I
upgraded to WinXP Home Edition today. So far, what I've seen I like; the
only fly in the ointment seems to be that windows open slower and it takes
noticeably longer to boot up and shut down. I'm used to windows fairly
snapping open with W98 (when it wasn't locked up, etc) I have 512 megs RAM
and an Athlon 1.2 gig processor. Am I gonna have to go to a faster
processor to kick this thing in the butt or what? One small negative in
this whole thing is my scanner software does not work with WinXP..time for
a new scanner I guess.

Frank Church

No, you should be fine. You will probably want to find one of the pages on
the Internet on tuning XP. Things like Instant Messager will be running in
the background and you can kill them. Just google the XP tuning or
"secrets."
Go to your scanner's home page, they may have new XP signed software. The
1.2 GHz, 512 RAM, should be fine, especially after some tuning. I let one
of the serious MS geekazoids point you at the appropriat pages.
G'nite Dad
--
Frank Reid (the one who didn't become a squiddly)
Reverse email to reply

"Frank Reid" moc.deepselbac@diersicnarf wrote in message
...
OK, I finally got tired of bsods, lockups, illegal ops etc, etc. so I
upgraded to WinXP Home Edition today. So far, what I've seen I like; the
only fly in the ointment seems to be that windows open slower and it
takes
noticeably longer to boot up and shut down. I'm used to windows fairly
snapping open with W98 (when it wasn't locked up, etc) I have 512 megs
RAM
and an Athlon 1.2 gig processor. Am I gonna have to go to a faster
processor to kick this thing in the butt or what? One small negative in
this whole thing is my scanner software does not work with WinXP..time
for
a new scanner I guess.

Frank Church

No, you should be fine. You will probably want to find one of the pages
on
the Internet on tuning XP. Things like Instant Messager will be running
in
the background and you can kill them. Just google the XP tuning or
"secrets."


This is new to me. I also have XP, 1.2 gig and 512 megs, and I also noticed
that my bootup is a lot slower than my desktop, with 256Meg and a slower
processor. I googled "xp tuner" and got a lot of german stuff. Where do I
find more info on tuning my laptop for faster performance?

Also, Frank, I have found that my version of Norton slows things down a lot,
too.

--riverman

riverman wrote:

This is new to me. I also have XP, 1.2 gig and 512 megs, and I also noticed
that my bootup is a lot slower than my desktop, with 256Meg and a slower
processor. I googled "xp tuner" and got a lot of german stuff. Where do I
find more info on tuning my laptop for faster performance?
http://support.microsoft.com/

Go to http://support.microsoft.com/, and then, when you're finished,
come back.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

"rw" wrote in message
hlink.net...
riverman wrote:

This is new to me. I also have XP, 1.2 gig and 512 megs, and I also
noticed
that my bootup is a lot slower than my desktop, with 256Meg and a slower
processor. I googled "xp tuner" and got a lot of german stuff. Where do
I
find more info on tuning my laptop for faster performance?
http://support.microsoft.com/

Go to http://support.microsoft.com/, and then, when you're finished,
come back.


Wow, thanks rw. I looked through that site, but I didn't find any info on
how to make my computer bootup faster. I guess 'tuning' is a rather general
term; I already know how to do a lot of stuff, but I know there's a lot more
to it. Maybe I should ask if anyone has specific things I should do to speed
up my startup time? I already saw Frank's suggestion about disabling
Messenger. Any other things that are obvious to folks that know about this?

--riverman

"riverman" wrote in message
...

"rw" wrote in message
hlink.net...
riverman wrote:

This is new to me. I also have XP, 1.2 gig and 512 megs, and I also
noticed
that my bootup is a lot slower than my desktop, with 256Meg and a
slower
processor. I googled "xp tuner" and got a lot of german stuff. Where
do
I
find more info on tuning my laptop for faster performance?
http://support.microsoft.com/

Go to http://support.microsoft.com/, and then, when you're finished,
come back.


Wow, thanks rw. I looked through that site, but I didn't find any info on
how to make my computer bootup faster. I guess 'tuning' is a rather
general
term; I already know how to do a lot of stuff, but I know there's a lot
more
to it. Maybe I should ask if anyone has specific things I should do to
speed
up my startup time? I already saw Frank's suggestion about disabling
Messenger. Any other things that are obvious to folks that know about
this?

--riverman


Check out a small program called "Tweak XP 3.0.1 Pro" from www.totalidea.com
You might find some tweaks useful.

/Roger
And if you don't already use NTFS then convert.

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 11:44:26 +0100, "riverman"
wrote:

Any other things that are obvious to folks that know about this?

Probably the most obvious things are to do a 'disk cleanup' and 'error
checking' on your boot drive and then defragment it. If you are
comparing XP boot times to win9x boot times I doubt you will ever get
it faster, since XP is booting an OS where win9x is just a DOS shell.
--
Charlie...

riverman wrote:

Wow, thanks rw. I looked through that site, but I didn't find any info on
how to make my computer bootup faster.

I'm having trouble with my Epson Stylus Color 600 printer. The paper
comes out with horizontal lines on it, even after I clean the print
head. Can any Epson printer geeks help?

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

riverman wrote:
This is new to me. I also have XP, 1.2 gig and 512 megs, and I also
noticed
that my bootup is a lot slower than my desktop, with 256Meg and a slower
processor. I googled "xp tuner" and got a lot of german stuff. Where do I
find more info on tuning my laptop for faster performance?

Also, Frank, I have found that my version of Norton slows things down a lot,
too.

--riverman


Norton changed over the years from a handy set of tools to a resource
munging hog. Ditch it, or, if you really really want to use it don't run
anything on startup.
Virusscanners can cause your system boot to last forever, or so it seems.
Run MSCONFIG and check what is loaded at boottime. Disable anything
you're sure of (!!) you don't need. The services tab allows you to kill
virtually anything, but unless you really know what you're doing keep
out of it.
In control panel / system / advanced / performance you can tweak the
visual effects. Quite often the performance loss you experience is
merely perceived, because of the fade-in/fade-out of windows and all
kinds of 'experience enhancements'. Fiddle around with some settings and
see what you like/need/want to live with.
so much for now,

Herman

"Herman Nijland" wrote in message
...
riverman wrote:
This is new to me. I also have XP, 1.2 gig and 512 megs, and I also
noticed
that my bootup is a lot slower than my desktop, with 256Meg and a slower
processor. I googled "xp tuner" and got a lot of german stuff. Where do
I
find more info on tuning my laptop for faster performance?

Also, Frank, I have found that my version of Norton slows things down a
lot,
too.

--riverman


Norton changed over the years from a handy set of tools to a resource
munging hog. Ditch it, or, if you really really want to use it don't run
anything on startup.

What do you recommend as a virus scan? Is there one that will only
initialize when you insert a disk, or open email?

Virusscanners can cause your system boot to last forever, or so it seems.
Run MSCONFIG and check what is loaded at boottime. Disable anything
you're sure of (!!) you don't need. The services tab allows you to kill
virtually anything, but unless you really know what you're doing keep
out of it.

This might be a rich idea. Right now, everything loads at boottime. I
don't know at all what to disable, but I'm sure I don't need much of it.

In control panel / system / advanced / performance you can tweak the
visual effects. Quite often the performance loss you experience is
merely perceived, because of the fade-in/fade-out of windows and all
kinds of 'experience enhancements'. Fiddle around with some settings and
see what you like/need/want to live with.
so much for now

Whew! I reset the adjustments from 'let windows choose for you' to 'set for
maximum performance', and I felt like I just traded a 2004 Lexus for a 73
Beetle. I couldn't live with the graphics :-( But this might explain why
my battery only lasts for about 1.5 hours.


Thanks for the leads. I'll do some more fooling around, and unless I totally
screw the poodle, I'll get back to you.

--riverman