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PC911 > PC Training Videos > Speed Up Your Computer Video #4

Speed up your windows xp computer Video #4

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Windows Xp Tune up Video #4

“ Display and Paging File Settings”

Now we are going to get into the real performance optimization. What we dealt with previously was cleaning the hard drive and ensuring file structure integrity.

While on your Desktop, right click anywhere in the open area and choose Properties. On the Themes tab you will see under the Theme setting that it is set to Windows Xp theme. The Windows Xp theme use a lot of your computers resources, memory and processing. So we are going to change it to Windows Classic and click Apply. This will make your desktop look like the original windows.

Now we are going to look at the Screensaver tab. Screensavers were originally created to stop screen burn in. This would happen in the older monitors when you left your computer on to long with the same image, when you turned it off you could still see your icons. This really does not occur anymore with the new monitors today. So we are going to go ahead and change our screensaver to None, and then select Apply and then click OK to close out the window.

Now we are going show you how to review how much memory your computer has. We will need this information in a task we will be doing shortly. Go to the Start menu, right click My Computer, and choose Properties. On the General tab towards the bottom, you will see what kind of CPU you are using and how much RAM you have. Go head and right down the amount of RAM and save it for later.

Now on the Advance tab, under Performance click on Settings. On the Visual Effects tab you can see all the many visual effects Windows Xp has to offer. Like the shadow under your cursor. Letting Windows choose what is best for your computer is not the best option when considering performance. We are going to select Adjust for best performance, and click Apply to turn off all the fancy tricks in Windows Xp.

Now choose the Advance tab under Performance Options. Here is where we are going to need the information you wrote down about how much memory you have. Select Change under the Virtual Memory section.

Virtual memory is basically a page and file that is use to write information that is not needed in RAM at the moment. The file does not need to be larger then amount of RAM you have. It is recommended that you make the Max size the same number as your Initial size. Your Initial size needs be twice the amount of RAM you have. If you have 256MB of RAM then the Initial size would be 512. If you have 512MB of RAM then the Initial size would be 1024. So go ahead, change your Max size to the same as your Initial size, and select Set then select OK. You may be prompted to restart your computer. Go ahead and restart to complete this action.

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