*NEWBIE*=Questions

[Fifaheat]

hi, what a nice forum!

right, some questions about XP....

1.)how do i get into safemode from XP?
2.)Whats the best performance tweak youve ever done on XP?
3.)Does winxp have a built in firewall (someone told me it did)
4.)have u modfied the virtual memory on it?

thanx

 

[Lonman]

Hello and welcome.

1) Right before XP starts to load (just after bios post) start tapping the F8 key. This will bring up the boot option for Safe Mode, etc.

2) Defrag regularly, still working on "the" tweak

3) Yes.

4) Yes.

 

[Fifaheat]

cheers m8,

When i try to defrag it, i analyse it and it says i don't need to defrag it. Ive installed loads of stuff on it!

When it does defrag, roughly, how long does it take?

 

[Lonman]

To many variables like processor speed, disk speed/size. Can't make a global guesstimate when it comes to defrag. The first 1 is gonna take a while. Then if you run it on a daily basis it will get MUCH quicker because defrag compliments XP's native optimization cycle real well. My daily defrag now takes less then a minute on a 20gig partition with 2.11gig of stuff on it. If you have a large drive with say 7-10gig of apps and what-not, you could be looking at a couple hours.

 

[AmarSingh]

when i had win 98se on my system and norton utilities 2001, speed disk would optimize in about 1 hour with about 25-30 tgb of data on one partition (when the terrible native defaggger would take 5-6 hours). Now that I have xp, norton utilities 2002 takes about 3 hours. Dont know why.

 

[Paisley]

I have a 10 gig hd and an 80 gig hard drive. The 10 took about an hour while the 80 gig took several hours the first time I ran defrag. The 80 gig is half full. I use it to store files and programs on.

With XP, I would recommend the DiskKeeper defrag program. It seems to take a while but it really works great. From what I have read, the XP defrag utility is a lite version of Diskkeeper.

Paisley