Increase Your Cable Modem or DSL Speed in XP

This tweak is for broad band cable connections on stand alone machines with WinXP
professional version - might work on Home version also. It may also work with networked machines as well.

This tweak assumes that you have let WinXP create a connection on install for your
cable modem/NIC combination and that your connection has tcp/ip - QoS - file and print sharing - and client for Microsoft networks , only, installed. It also assumes that WinXP will detect your NIC and has in-box drivers for it. If it doesn't do not try this.
•In the "My Network Places" properties (right-click on the desktop icon and choose
properties), highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the
bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK.
•From the Windows XP CD in the support directory from the support cab, extract the
file netcap.exe and place it in a directory on your hard drive or even in the root of your C:\ drive.
•Next, open up a command prompt window and change directories to where you put
netcap.exe. then type "netcap/?".
It will list some commands that are available for netcap and a netmon driver will be
installed. At the bottom you will see your adapters. You should see two of them if using a 3Com card. One will be for LAN and the other will be for WAN something or other.
•Next type "netcap/Remove". This will remove the netmon driver.
•Open up Control Panel->System->Dev Man and look at your network adapters. You
should now see two of them and one will have a yellow ! on it. Right-click on the one
without the yellow ! and choose uninstall. YES! You are uninstalling your network
adapter, continue with the uninstall. Do not restart yet.
•Check your connection properties to make sure that no connection exists. If you get
a wizard just cancel out of it.
Now re-start the machine.
•After re-start go to your connection properties again and you should have a new
connection called "Local area connection 2". Highlight the connection, then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK.
•Choose connection properties and uncheck the "QOS" box.
•Re-start the machine.
After restart enjoy the increased responsiveness of IE, faster page loading, and a
connection speed boost.
Why it works, it seems that windows XP, in its zeal to make sure every base is covered installs two separate versions of the NIC card. One you do not normally see in any properties. Remember the "netcap/?" command above showing two different adapters? The LAN one is the one you see. The invisible one loads everything down and its like your running two separate cards together, sharing a connection among two cards, this method breaks this "bond" and allows the NIC to run un-hindered.

Increase BROADBAND

This is for broad band connections, though it might work for dial up.
•Make sure your logged on as actually "Administrator".
•Start->Run->type gpedit.msc
•Expand the "Local Computer Policy" branch.

•Expand the "Administrative Templates" branch.
•Expand the "Network Branch".
•Highlight the "QoS Packet Scheduler" in left window.
•In right window double-click the "Limit Reservable Bandwidth" setting.
•On setting tab check the "Enabled" item.
•Where it says "Bandwidth limit %" change it to read 0.
Effect is immediate on some systems, some need to re-boot. This is more of a "counter
what XP does" thing. In other words, programs can request up to 20% of the bandwidth be
reserved for them, even with QoS disabled.

Win XP Won't Completely Shutdown

Go to Control Panel, then go to Power Options.
•Click on the APM tab, then check the "Enable Advanced Power Management support."
•Shut down your PC.
It should now successfully complete the Shut Down process.

Performance Increase Through My Computer

Easy enough tweak to usually find out about it on your own, but still, some of us
still don't find it right away. So here it is:
•Start > right-click on My Computer and select Properties.
•Click on the "Advanced" tab.
•See the "Performance" section? Click "Settings".
•Disable the following:

Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show Shadows under menus
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type
Use common tasks in folders
There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster.

Deal with System Hang at Startup

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start
button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent
Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't
work for me.
Here's what you do:
•Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
•Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service.
•Disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

Turn Off System Restore to Save Space

Turn Off System Restore to Save Space when you are out of space on your operating system drive.

By default, Windows XP keeps a backup of system files in the System Volume Information
folder. This can eat up valuable space on your hard drive. If you don't want Windows to
back up your system files:
•Open the Control Panel.
•Double-click on System.
•Click the System Restore tab.
•Check "Turn off System Restore on all drives".
•Hit Apply.
•You may now delete the System Volume Information folder.
Warning! If you turn this off you will not be able to use Windows System Restore to
restore your system in case of failure.

Speeding Up Your Pentium 2 by 50%

We all know that you really shouldn't try to run Windows XP on anything less that
about a Pentium 3 of some sort if you are out for speedy operations and amazing reaction times, but for those of us with the good old Pentium 2's who want to see just how well we can run XP, we have to tweak as much as we can where-ever we can.

A real killer to the system's performance is Windows Media Player. Although it may look desirable and fancy with it's rounded off edges and 3rd-Dimensional appearance, the truth is, it takes up a large amount of that precious processing power.
All of these troubles however, lead to one thing in particular with this 'new-look' over-rated music and video player...the Visualizations.
The look-great I'll admit but like a lot of software these days, it has no purpose. If you run the task manager, and click the Performance tab along the top, you'll see that when Windows Media Player is running and nothing else is active, it takes up around 50% of the processors power.
Once these visualizations are turned off, it barely takes up 2-3% of the processors power, which leaves much more room for other applications to work efficiently.


Here's how to disable the feature:
•Open Media Player.
•Make sure the Now Playing tab on the left is selected.
•Click the View menu along the top.
•Go down to Now Playing Tools.
•In the sub-menu that has just 'popped-out', uncheck Show Visualization

How to Shutdown XP Faster??

Like previous versions of windows, it takes long time to restart or shutdown windows
XP when the "Exit Windows" sound is enabled.
To solve this problem you must disable this useless sound.

•Click Start button.

•Go to settings > Control Panel > Sound, Speech and Audio devices > Sounds and Audio
Devices > Sounds.

•Then under program events and windows menu click on "Exit Windows" sub-menu and
highlight it. Now from sounds you can select, choose "none" and then click Apply and
OK.

Now you should see some improvements when shutting down your system.

Disable CD Autorun, simple computer tweak

This trick involves only three simple steps:

1) Click Start, Run and enter GPEDIT.MSC

2) Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System.

3) Locate the entry for Turn autoplay off and modify it as you desire.