increase your internet connection bandwidth by 25%

Increasing your Internet Connection Bandwidth By 25%

For some reasons by default upon installation of your Windows XP Win 2000 Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes like Windows Updates and interrogating your PC, etc.

Well you can have the option to override the default setting "Break the Rules" , If u change it to 0 then the 20 % incrase in your bandwidth.
Click Start then Run and type "gpedit.msc" without quotes.This opens the group policy editor, then go to:
1.Local Computer Policy
2.Computer Configuration
3.Administrative Templates
4.Network
5.QOS Packet Scheduler
6.Limit Reservable Bandwidth.
7.Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth.

It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab i.e."By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default."So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO "0". This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20% (It works on Win 2000 as well.)

Posted by Jonathan at 3:43 PM 1 comments

Disable and Turn Off Windows Vista Search Indexer and Indexing Service

Windows Vista has greatly enhanced its search algorithm where the search process is now not only faster, but users can also easily search for almost all kind of files, documents, pictures, videos, emails and contacts in Outlook 2007, and even commands or application programs’ executables. To achieve the fast searching speed, indexing service plays a pivotal role. Windows Vista starts to crawl and index files on hard disks right after installed with a low priority background process. If you notice that your hard drive activity LED light is constantly flashing even if computer is idle, this is probably due to indexer at work.This is supposedly the case - indexing at system idle period in order to minimize the performance penalty affected on normal usage. However, this may not be the case in Vista, as the search indexing related processes such as SearchProtocolHost, SearchFilterHost and SearchIndexer actively running even though computer is processing other more critical tasks or running important applications, effectively slow down overall computer performance by sucking up important CPU, memory and other system resources.


So to speed up Vista, users may want to turn off and disable the search indexer and indexing service. You can and should also disable the indexing of files if you’re using other desktop search utility such as Google Desktop Search and etc. If you don’t mind the slower searching speed when performing searches, the indexing has no meaningful use to you too. There are several ways to do this, as listed at the guide below.


Disable Windows Search Service


This method effectively stop and disable all search indexing processes, and is the recommended way.






1. Click on Start button, then select Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools, and double click on Services applet. Alternatively, simply type “Services” (without quotes) in Start Search box.
2. If User Account Control asks for permission, click Continue.
3. Locate an service named Windows Search. Right click on Windows Search, and then select Properties on contextual menu.
4 Click on Stop button to stop the indexing service immediately.
5 O the Startup Type dropdown box, select Disabled.
6. Click on OK button.


To re-enable the Windows Seearch, simply change back the Startup Type.


Disable Indexing on Drives


This method allows users to selectively disable indexing on certain drives which rarely used or searched. However, it may take a long time to apply new attributes to all files, folders and sub-folders to exclude them from indexing.


1. Open Windows Explorer from Accessories.
2. Right click on the drive (or drive letter) that you want to turn off the indexing.
3. Select Properties on the contextual menu.
4. Unselect (untick) the Index this drive for faster searching option.




5. Click Apply or OK button.


To re-include the drive, simply select the option again.


Indexing Options Remove or Exclude Indexed Locations in Control Panel


This method does not turn off indexing service. Instead, it just excludes deselected folders from search index, or deselect folders from included list. The indexer processes may still run after you remove or exclude everything.


1. Click on Start button.
2. Click on Control Panel.
3. Click on System and Maintenance.
4. Click on Indexing Options.
5. To remove an Included Location, simply click on Modify button, and then untick the checkbox for respective folders under the “Change selected locations” box. To remove indexing on Start Menu and/or Users folder, click on “Advanced” button at Indexing Options dialog or “Show all locations” in Indexed Locations dialog. UAC access request continue required. Click on Start Menu and Users once at “Summary of selected locations” box if you do not see the checkbox for them.



To re-enable, simply tick back the folders.

Posted by Jonathan at 9:54 AM 0 comments

10 Ways and Secrets to Improve Vista Performance

Windows Vista has some new security and functional features with superior, elegant and beautiful visual experience, such as Windows Aero Glass Transparency effect, Flip 3D and etc. But to have and enable all these features, there is price to be paid, as there is limitation to the capability of computer on how fast it can run. However, if you feel that your Vista performance is below par and slow, there is some tricks that can help Vista to run faster, other than applying various updates such as performance and reliability updates and Service Pack 1 (SP1).

1. Add More Memory (RAM)

Undeniable, Windows Vista consumes a lot of memory. Windows XP can run and fly under system with specification of only 512 MB, but Vista will crawl with this ‘low’ specs. In fact, 1G is not enough, and 2G is probably considered just a ‘entry level’ memory level for Vista. To enable and turn on all special visual graphical effects, it’s recommended to upgrade to 4GB of memory. Luckily, the RAM module is getting cheaper and cheaper nowadays. Money to buy additional memory for faster speed and better experience will surely worthwhile to spend without regret.

2. Use ReadyBoost

If you own a notebook or laptop computer, or your computer no longer has any extra memory slot available, or already hit the maximum RAM supported by motherboard. In this case, Vista has another feature, called ReadyBoost, which allows the system to use ReadyBoost compliant USB flash based memory (USB flash drive, pen drive, memory key, USB key, thumb drive, flash memory all belongs to this category) to expand the memory. It also has the added advantage where the speed to retrieve data from flash memory is faster than virtual memory files stored by physical hard disk drive. If you have a USB flash memory drive (or you can buy one as it’s even cheaper than RAM, but make sure it’s high speed and support ReadyBoost), and use it to turn on ReadyBoost feature, you can control the space used by ReadyBoost. This is useful to keep certain amount of space free to store your own data.

3. Use a Good Video Accelerator Card or GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) Display Adapter

Just not a long while ago, hard disk drive (HDD) still spinning at slow 5400 RPM with no cache, and together with CPU and RAM, are thought to be the bottleneck for a performance driven computer. However, this trend has changed. With more and more graphics intensive application, especially on Vista with outstanding visual affect, the bottleneck is actually due to graphics card or display adapter and Video RAM (VRAM). The built-in on-board video card which integrated in the motherboard, such as Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) or Extreme Graphics, is simply not good enough. The lower throughput performance of on board graphics card is caused especially by performance penalty imposed as both the CPU and GPU have to access to main memory over the same bus, as the video card is sharing the computer’s main memory for storage. Thus a good high end video card is necessary with large amount of dedicated VRAM. And, if you want to play games in Vista, the video card must support DirectX 10.

4. Delete and Disable Extra Unnecessary Startup Programs

When you buy a computer system pre-installed with Windows Vista, you will find that there are a lot of extra, additional, unnecessary, and worse useless programs automatically run themselves on startup. These applications include, but not limited to, drivers and software provided by the OEM (original equipment manufacturer), anti-virus software, anti-spyware software, instant messaging program and many many more. These programs, most are not used or little used, not only take up memory resources when they’re running silently in background, but will also slow down the computer start up speed. So, for the startup items that you not using, it’s best to disable them from starting up. To do so, use System Configuration Tool (MSConfig) that comes with Vista.

5. Turn Off Appearance Visual Effects

Windows Vista provides a lot of appearance improvement visual effects such as animated controls and elements inside Windows, transparent glass, desktop composition, window animation when minimizing and maximizing, smooth edge of screen fonts, show window contents while dragging, menu fading and shadow effect, shadow on mouse pointer and etc. All these features will use memory and CPU resources. Turning off and disabling these visual effects in System Properties’ Performance Options (select “Adjust for best performance”) will allow system operation to run faster.

6. Adjust Indexing Options

Unlike previous operating system, Vista has done tremendous improvement to hard disk search function, but the searching depends greatly on full indexing done on files and programs stored on the HDD hard disk drive. The index allows files, folders and programs can be found faster, and almost immediately when searching is done. When indexing process is running, it will affect and slow down the speed of other running program. The workaround to this problem is to enable indexing only on folders or drives that contain documents you will search, and exclude the rest of the area from indexing. To adjust which place you want to include or exclude in indexing, open Indexing Options under System and Maintenance in Control Panel. Using this trick, overall computer performance can be improved without disabling indexing.

7. Disk Cleanup and Defragmentation

An old trick to tune up Windows system. Fragmented data on hard disk will slow down the computer operation. Vista provides two utilities, namely Disk Cleanup to delete and remove unused files, files in recycle bin, log files, dump files, downloaded program files, temporary Internet files, hibernation files, thumbnails and other temporary files, and Disk Defragmenter to defragment the disk drivers. Both tools can be found by clicking on Start button, then go to All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools. You can also schedule the defragment program to run automatically periodically to tune the performance of system. Using third party defragment tool is possible too.

8. Change the Power Plan Setting

Adjust and change the preferred power plan setting to “High Performance”. This setting can be set in the Power Options applet under System and Maintenance in Control Panel. By default, Vista will set preferred power plan option to “Balanced”, restricting amount of power supply it can consumes to 50% under normal circumstances. Of course, you have to be prepared for higher electricity bill.

9. Turn Off Windows Sidebar

Windows Sidebar is cool, but if you’re not using it, or not fully utilize sidebar, turning if off will save some system resources. To close Sidebar permanently, right click on Sidebar icon on notification area (system tray), and select “Exit”, then answer “No” if prompted whether want to start Sidebar automatically when Windows starts. You can also right click on sidebar itself and then select Properties to adjust whether to start Sidebar on Windows boots up setting. If you don’t want to disable Sidebar, remove as much as possible unnecessary gadgets and plugins.

10. Turn Off Windows Aero

If you still feel your system is not fast enough, turning off and disable Windows Aero theme will likely to make the system flies and run a lot faster. Windows Aero Glass effect is one of the most attractive feature in Vista, and one of the main reason people is migrating to Vista. So it’s up to your choice of performance, or visual effect. To disable Aero, right click on desktop, select “Personalize”, then click on “Windows Color and Appearance” link. Next click on “Open classic appearance properties for more color options” link. In the Appearance Setting dialog window, set Color Scheme to anything other than Windows Aero in the drop down menu. “Windows Vista Classic” is a natural choice.

Posted by Jonathan at 8:46 AM 1 comments

Saturday, September 15, 2007
Speed Up Windows

If the early reviews of Windows Vista tell us anything, it's that many people will continue using Windows XP for a very long time. As such, now may be the best time to review some of the very best tips, tweaks, and utilities that keep WinXP running at peak efficiency, along with some of the most popular Windows applications, such as Word, iTunes, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. These tips are squarely aimed at power users, so we'll be working directly with the Registry and infrequently used Preferences screens at times. We'll avoid beginner's tips, so check out our Web site to cover the basics. Also, be sure to check out our "Backup! Backup! Backup!" sidebar before proceeding.

Speed Up Windows

Who wouldn't want a faster Windows? Better yet, you can apply any of these tweaks independently from any of the others.

Reset the Icon Cache. If you're experiencing a stutter or lag as you browse through your Start menu which can become huge over the years), or your Desktop icons disappear and reappear regularly, our Icon Cache might be corrupted and/or filled with old icons. Refresh the Icon Cache by deleting the IconCache.db file from your profile directory (usually C:/Documents and Settings/Username/Local Settings/Application Data). WinXP will automatically re-create it.
Kill the Indexing Service. The Windows Indexing Service lets you perform "advanced searches" on local directories and network stores, which sounds good in theory. In practice, the process of indexing files seems to occur at the worst moments, and the searches it performs aren't nearly as good as similar tools, such as Google Desktop or Copernic Desktop Search (both free). You can disable it from the Services window; click Start and Run, type services.msc, and press ENTER. Right-click Indexing Service, click Properties, and set Startup Type to Manual. Remove it permanently by opening Add/Remove Programs, clicking the Add/Remove Windows Components button, and unchecking Indexing Service.

Speed up all Explorer windows. When you open My Computer or an Explorer window, you may notice all your icons first appear as generic Windows icons before slowly filling in. You could also see the "wagging magnifying glass" icon appear before anything else. This is Windows automatically searching for network printers and stores. If you aren't on a LAN or would prefer to manually search for network resources, stop the automated process by opening My Computer and clicking Folder Options from the Tools menu. Click the View tab and uncheck Automatically Search For Network Folders And Printers.

Speed up Explorer's Detailed View. Explorer's Detailed View (choose Details from the View menu) displays information about your files in columns. If you have column headings such as "Pages" or "Bit Rate," then Windows must "peek into" every file to populate those columns, which can take a lot of time. To speed things up, turn off any columns you don't really need to see by right-clicking a column header and unchecking anything you don't want. Click More at the bottom of the pop-up menu in order to see the complete list of available columns. 56 April 2007 / http://www.computerpoweruser.com/

Make menus appear faster (or slower). You may think Windows works as fast as it can to display menus (including the Start menu). In reality, there's a built-in delay between when you click your mouse and when the menu appears. Reducing or eliminating the delay makes Windows "feel" much faster. After running Regedit, find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\Desktop\ and select MenuShow- Delay. Next, right-click the entry and select Modify and reduce the number to around 100. Experiment to find a number that suits your system and mood. Increase the number to slow menus down.

Speed up folder access by disabling the Last Access Date. Windows updates the time and date a user accessed a file or folder, and, needless to say, because Windows accesses lots of files and folders all the time, updating these stamps can significantly tax your system. If you don't need to know when you (someone else) last accessed a file or folder, you can disable this feature with a Registry edit. Open Regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL _MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENT CONTROLSET\CONTROL\FileSys tem. Right-click anywhere in the right pane, point to New, and click DWORD Value. Create a new DWORD Value called NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate; then right-click it and click Modify from the pop-up menu. Finally, change the Value Data to 1.

Reduce CPU usage when selecting AVI files. Similar to the Explorer's Detailed View, when you select an AVI file in Explorer, Windows attempts to determine the file's width and height to properly display it in its Properties dia- log box. Unfortunately, if the file is bro- ken or if this information isn't stored in the AVI's header frames, Windows scans the entire AVI file (consuming nearly 100% of the CPU time all the while) looking for the information. And if that AVI file is hundreds of megabytes (or more), then you're in for a long wait. If you can live without this information, tell Windows to stop searching with this Registry edit: Go to HKEY_CLASSES _ROOT\SYSTEMFILEASSOCIA- TIONS\.AVI\SHELLEX\PropertyHandler.

Speed up a sluggish Start menu by axing personalized folders as one of your options. This only works with the Classic Start menu. The Startup And Recovery dialog box offers a couple of useful tweaks to assist with crashed programs and dual-boot systems. Here, you can prevent your system from automatically restarting after a BSOD or hurry through the boot menu if you have two Windows OSes on the same machine. Track down the Default value, which should be {87D62D94-71B3-4b9a- 9489-5FE6850DC73E}, and delete it. Microsoft has also addressed this issue with a hotfix if you'd prefer to avoid rooting around in the Registry for this specific problem. Open a Web browser and go to support.microsoft.com/kb /822430 for more information.

Speed up shutting down. When you choose to shut down from the Start menu, Windows attempts to close any open programs and windows. Although this usually works well, a stubborn pro- gram or error condition may leave Win- dows hanging for a full minute before shutting down (or restarting). By chang- ing four Registry keys, you can speed the process up significantly. After you
open Regedit: Change HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\Wait ToKillAppTimeout from 20000 to 1000; Change HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\ HungAppTimeout from 5000 to 1000; Change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\ CONTROL\WaitToKillServiceTimeout from 20000 to 1000; and
Change HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\ CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\Wait ToKillAppTimeout from 20000 to 1000.

Reloading Registry changes without restarting. If you're experimenting with changes to the Registry, restarting your system every time you want to see changes take effect may become annoying and consume a lot of time. Shutting down Explorer.exe and relaunching it, however, rereads the Registry. There are a lot of ways to do this, but here's our favorite method: First, close any open applications and files. Next, bring up the Windows Task Manager (pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE is the fastest way), and click the Processes tab. Select Explorer.exe and click End Process. Click Yes to accept the Task Manager Warning if you receive one. (Your Desktop icons should disappear at this point.) Next, click the Task Manager's File pull-down menu and click New Task (Run). Finally, run Explorer; the Desktop icons will return and the Registry changes should be in effect.

Load Windows faster with a static IP address. Most wireless and wired Ethernet cards are, by default, config- ured to receive an assigned IP address via CPU / April 2007 57 spotlight If Windows is automatically searching for networked folders and printers, it can make icons display dreadfully slow the first time you open My Computer. Disabling this feature can speed things up. DHCP at boot time. This usually only takes a second or two if your DHCP server is working properly, but if there's ever a problem—the DHCP server is down, a network cable is unplugged, or you have a slow/cheap router—Windows can sit around for a long time, waiting for that IP address. Most of the time, in a home environment, you'll always have the same IP address assigned to you, so why not cut out the DHCP wait altogether and assign a static IP address to your PC? Assuming you're behind a router, load its configuration utility and note what IP addresses the router is assigning via DHCP. Open Network Connections in the Control Panel, right-click your network card or Local Area Connection, and click Properties. In the dialog box that opens, select Internet Prototol (TCP/IP) and click Properties. Click the Use The Follow IP Address, assign yourself a static IP address (such as 192.168.1.10), and set the DNS server address to the IP address of your router. Reboot and try to access the Internet. If you can't, simply reset your connection to DHCP.

Disable automatic media speed sensing on network cards. Although this doesn't frequently happen, Windows occasionally takes a moment to check the Ethernet speed of your NICs during these times, CPU utilization can zoom to nearly 100%, causing a hiccup. You can stop Windows from checking the connection speed by manually specifying it yourself. Open System in the Control Panel and click the Hardware tab. Then, click Device Manager. Expand the Network Adapters entry, right-click your NIC, and select Properties from the pop-up menu. In the dialog box that opens, click the Advanced tab and choose Link Speed & Duplex, select the speed of your LAN (for example, 100Mbps/Full Duplex) from the Value drop-down menu.
Convert FAT32 volumes to NTFS. Most benchmarks show that NTFS is faster than FAT32, but other NTFS benefits include better security, fewer fragmentation issues, and general stability improvements. Although any new system that came with WinXP almost certainly used drives formatted with NTFS, you might still have a FAT32 drive if you upgraded your system from an earlier version of Windows.

To make the jump from FAT32 to NTFS, follow these steps:

1. Back up the drive's data.
2. Click Start and Run, type cmd, and press ENTER to open a command prompt window.
3. Type vol c: and press ENTER to find and note the volume label of partition. (This assumes you're converting the C drive; change the drive letter approprimately here and in step 4.)
4. Type convert c: /fs:ntfs and press ENTER.
5. When prompted, enter the volume name you noted in step 3.
6. Answer "y" to the remaining questions.The system will reboot and convert the volume. The first reboot after conversion may take a few minutes longer than usual, but this will only happen once.

Disable redundant 8.3 file names. As long as you're removing vestigial file systems to increase speed, why not remove vestigial file naming conventions? WinXP saves each file with two different file names. One is nice and long and corresponds to what you see in the File Explorer and command prompt. The other still conforms to DOS' old 8.3 convention and, for the most Fiddling with the Registry can even be a time-consuming process for an expert if you have to restart after every change. Instead, close Explorer with Windows' Task Manager and restart it to make Registry changes without a full system restart. 58 April 2007 / www.computerpoweruser.com spotlight part, stays hidden to everything but old DOS and pre-Win95 programs. You can disable these old filenames and save resources with an easy Registry edit. Set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM \CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\FILESYSTEM\NtfsDisable8dot3 NameCreation to 1 and restart.

Speed searching by disabling ZIP files. The default Windows Search func- tion peeks inside compressed ZIP files, which can take forever. If you don't want Windows to search ZIP files, unregistering a DLL takes care of the problem. In an open a command prompt window, type regsvr32c:\windows\system32\zipfldr.dll /u and press ENTER. You can restore this feature by simply rerunning the command without "/u."
Speed up the Classic Start menu. If your Start menu is taking forever to open and you're using WinXP's Classic Start menu, you can dramatically speed it up by disabling Personalization. Right-click the Start button and click Properties from the pop-up menu. Click the Start Menu tab, and, if necessary, the "Classic Start menu" radio button. Then, click the Customize button, scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced Start menu options list, and uncheck Use personalized Menus. Click OK to dismiss the open dialog boxes.

Speed up dual booting. If you have a second Microsoft OS on your PC, you probably have Microsoft's Boot Menu staring at you for 30 full seconds during each boot, which quickly grows tiresome. You can reduce this time to few seconds. Window XP's file extraction tool is great if you don't have a program such as WinZip, but it can be a drag if you do. Fortunately, disabling a DLL is all you need to do to clear up the problem. This will speed along the boot process when you want to boot to your default OS but leave plenty of time to select the other OS when necessary. You can use Notepad to manually change Boot.ini's timeout setting, but there's a less well-known way to use a friendly dialog box to change the timeout with virtually no chance of making a mistake. First, open System in the Control Panel and click the Advanced tab. Then click the Startup And Recovery Settings button. Use the drop-down menu to choose your default operating system and set the Time To Display List Of Operating Systems value to a shorter amount of time that still affords you the opportunity to select the OS you want to boot. Changes take effect with the next boot.

Use hardware profiles to safely experiment with Windows. Wouldn't it be great to have two (or more) totally different Windows configurations on the same computer? As it turns out, Microsoft envisioned this scenario years ago, although it originally intended hardware profiles for notebook users who had different docking stations connected to different networks. A great use for everyone else is to have different collections of settings (both hardware and software) on the same computer. But first, you need to set the profiles up. First, open System in the Control Panel and click the Hardware tab. Then, click the Hardware Profiles button. If this is the first time you've ever tinkered around with hardware profiles, you should already have one profile, called either Profile 1 (Current) on a desktop PC or Undocked Profile (Current) if you have a notebook without a docking station; this Profile contains your current settings. Next, click Copy, which creates a duplicate of your current profile, and name it something else (such as Experiments). You may also want to select your current profile, click the Rename button, and name it something like "Original" or "Working." Finally, individually select each Profile and click Properties. From the resulting If you know your NIC's speed, you can manually set it to prevent Windows from randomly checking during an inopportune moment, causing your CPU usage to dramatically spike. dialog box, check the Always Include This Profile As An Option When Windows Starts checkbox. The next time Windows boots, it will present you with a menu that lists your different profiles. Select one with your keyboard to change hardware settings and enable or disable Windows services; the changes you make in one profile won't affect others.
Create a gaming profile to boost frame rates. After reviewing the hardware profiles tip, consider creating a special profile just for gaming. With it, you can disable unused or troublesome hardware, turn off unneeded Windows services, and reduce the number of autostart programs. With a reduced CPU and memory load, you'll have more resources available for your highend game, which can reduce stutters and pauses. When you're finished fragging folks, reboot and select your "normal" profile, and your bells and whistles will return to their previous state. SaveWindowsResources&DriveSpace Windows dedicates a lot of hard drive space to features that many power users would never use or uses default space calculations that don't make a lot of sense in the era of 500GB hard drives. Changing CPU / April 2007 59 spotlight these settings is relatively simple and saves tons of space.

Reduce Recycle Bin storage space. By default, Windows reserves a whopping 10% of each drive volume for storing files you've deleted. But how often do you really need to recover a 50GB file from the Recycle Bin? To put some of that space back into the general storage pool, right-click the Recycle Bin and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. If you only have one drive (or if you have multiple drives and want them to all have the same setting), just slide the slider to the left until you get the percentage you think is appropriate. (For a 500GB drive, 2%, or 10GB, is not an unreasonable number.) If you have multiple drives and you want a different percentage of space reserved for each drive, click the Configure Drives Independently radio button. Then, click each drive's tab at the top of the dialog box and move the slider for each drive.

Do your own backups and disable System Restore. Windows has its own on-the-fly backup and restore system called System Restore. Although Restore Points can be useful, if you have your own backup system in place, there's no need to tie up all that space with redundant backups you'll never use. Fortunately, you can completely disable System Restore, and, as a bonus, save some CPU and memory resources. To disable System Restore, open System in the Control Panel, click the System Restore tab, and check the Turn Off System Restore checkbox. Reboot for the changes to take effect. To free up the space that System Restore used to use, open Explorer (if necessary, make hidden and system files visible), and delete the System Volume Information folder on each drive.

Turn off Hibernation options. Do you ever use the Windows Hibernation feature? It's actually pretty neat, storing the entire contents of your RAM in a temporary file before sending your PC into an almost-off, low-power mode. When you wake up your system, it copies the temporary file back into RAM, and you're off and running. Still, Setting a static IP address is another network tweak that can add a boosting to a lagging system. System Restore might come in handy if you don't have a dedicated backup utility, but you might as well disable it if you have better options. if you never use Hibernate, Windows still keeps a hidden file on your hard drive—exactly the same size as your amount of system memory—waiting to dump stuff into it. If you're not ready for a hard drive upgrade and space is really tight, you can reclaim that wasted space by turning off the Hibernation feature in Windows. Just open Power Options in the Control Panel, click the Hibernate tab, and then uncheck the Enable Hibernation checkbox. When you restart, Windows deletes that hidden file (named Hiberfil .sys, incidentally), and you reclaim your space