Windows 2000 performance tips

Can anyone here give me a few performance tips for a Windows 2000 system? I tried searching google for some tips, but they all seem geared for particular performance issues like video or audio. I'm looking for some general performance tips to help increase speed a bit. The person using the system has noticed a pretty major slowdown building up over the last 6 months or so. Here are the specs:

Dell Laptop
PIV 833
256MB RAM
15 GB HD

I've removed all the annoying TSR's (like winampa, realplayer startcenter, etc) and I've scanned the task manager for any blatant resource hogs. Anything else I should look for? Any advice for paging file size?

Well there's always the obvious defrag...

Ammo

Turn of Windows 2000's annoying slow-down eye-candy

Control Panel-> Display Properties -> Effects -> Turn off unnecessary animation and fading options.

Go into the mouse control panel and turn off the pointer shadow - as on most hardware it forces the cursor to be drawn in software rather than hardware (actually this also makes some games work better if they are oldish ones which assume hardware cursors will be used). Don't use fancy custom pointers as this has the same effect.

Turn off font antialiasing and choose a colour scheme than doesn't have gradients. Set your display colour depth as low as you can manage (I find 16bit is fine, 24bit unnecessary).

In Explorer (Windows explorer not IE), turn off "View as web page" as this forces it to load a copy of IE every time you browse a folder in Window (plus it also wastes real estate with its fancy icons and stuff).

Disable active desktop (this loads IE on the desktop permanently).

On some applications there is a copy of IE permanently running in a frame (like in VS.NET) - disable this where possible. Also disable any pop-up help things which might be loading a copy of IE.

I don't use Windows much these days but when I do, I *always* take these steps. It makes a surprising difference. The Windows GUI is actually very fast when you turn off all the tat :)

Another good thing to look at:

http://www.blkviper.com/WIN2K/servicecfg.htm

There are many services that run by default that are not needed, at least not in most locations. He lists them all, what they do, and whether they could be turned off. Will save CPU/mem. One of the configurations listed is for a gaming machine, that is probably what you would be interested in.

Another thing to do is to go to your virtual memory settings:
Right click my computer -> properties -> performance -> virtual memory
Specify your virtual memory (rather than let windows do it). Set the two numbers to the same. A good general rule of thumb is a minimum setting of at least 2 * physical memory...
Keeping your page file from growing/shrinking as windows sees fit can improve your performance, but you need to be careful with it as well because if you don't have enough swap, then windows goes booooom...

There might be some reg tweaks of benefit, but I have never really looked at the tweaks from any perspective other than a security one. A good place to look for tweaks in the registry is www.regedit.com

/nebulus

Thanks for the tips, everyone. These should be more than enough to restore the speed this guy is looking for. :bigsmile:

http://fox2k.net/2ktweaks/ for tips and tweaks.

Good-luck

The blkviper site noted by nebulus200 is a great site (Thank you very much). Regedit.com is now winguides.com and a very good site too. It breaks the tweaks down into various categories and makes it easier to focus in on specific areas. Axcel216's Windows Tips & Tricks is also a good site to check out and it covers everything from Windows 95 up to and including Windows XP.
I've been 'collecting' site references for Windows 2K recently, so if you need anymore . . . let me know.
. . . V.