Is your computer a bit sluggish? If you have Windows XP, it’s partly because there are alot of applications (called “services”) working in the background that you have virtually no use for. Simply disable them and you will free up memory (RAM) and CPU and boost your computer’s performance. Here’s how. Don’t worry, it’s all reversible.
The morass of services you can disable (and why) is at techtree.com. Go there to get your list. Then click Start, Run, and type “services.msc.” Click “OK” and work your way through the morass. If in doubt, just leave it. Thanks to Lifehacker.
I cleaned house and everything is OK.
Another clean and simple way too enhance your computers performance is to disable programs that load and continue to load during the duration of the time your computer is turned on.
There are many programs that automaticall load onto your computer when you start up, most of them are necessary for the computer to run. However loads of spyware and installed programs latch on by defualt to start during the boot.
How to fix this is simple.
Start Menu > Run > Type in mscongfig.exe > Hit “OK”
Now you are in your Systems Configuration File.
**If you dont know what it is or what it does, it is a good rule of thumb not too touch anything in here if not needed.**
Moving on. You will see 6 tabs ( general-system.ini-win.ini-boot.ini-services(as mentioned in original post)-Startup
Go to “Startup”
The descriptions are fairly self explanatory. I would remove and internet application such as yahoo search bar things of that nature. Next is anything the resembles a pop up for intance i used to have an adware that was called savebates or other that would load pop ups from time to time. last but not least is Applications. Applications such as Skype, Acrobat and so forth latch on and load at start up, removing these and opening them manually as needed will greatly increase not only start up speed but also memory allocation since there not open in the background.
Hope some of this helps.
Niklas
*EDIT** msconfig.exe
Thanks Niklas, excellent tips.