Tweaking Tips for windows 2000

sean.ferguson

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I have a laptop running windows 2000 professional SP4 and im looking for any help with making it run a little faster, the current specs follow;

Celeron Coppermine 700MHz
192MB PC100 (64+128)

Obviously little can be done with the CPU, but making the OS and Apps respond a little quicker would be nice, if at all possible. Im using a PCMCIA 3Com card, so the 3Com management suite is installed and will need to stay, i have AVG Free running as well as MSN7.0 on startup. Other than that there is nothing extra added other than FireFox and Thunderbird. Everything is as it would be after a clean install.

Any Registry tweaks to speed up performance, and what are peoples view on Cablenut to tweak my adsl (512/256)?

Thanks in advance.
 
Besides disabling services that you don't need to run, and perhaps tweaking the pagefile (virtual memory) settings to optimal sizes, there's not much much more you can tweak on Windows 2000, it's already pretty slimmed down compared to Windows XP.

Open the Task Manager and tell me how many processes you're running when Windows just loaded (look on the status bar), I'll tell you if it's a normal number or if it's too many.
 
Processes: 26

I will have a look through the services and see what i can disable, i didnt think there would be much but its for the girlfriend. She uses it the most and i am trying to get it running as nice as possible for her. thanks :)
 
hehe, yeah i had a look through. Im now down to 25 processes :p Im going to download that crap cleaner, see what it can do. Thanks alot xTweaker... reps to you ;)
 
if you're on 32 bit color, go to 16 bit...most people don't see any visual differance at all with this setting...just a few almost imperceptable rough edges on some icons...color is the same to the human eye.

this will give you the biggest boost in performance on any machine that's short memory

trimming services really only helps at the start, since memory is eventually released from the services that aren't referanced whether they're on or not, and you shouldn't ususally be turning services off that do get referanced...error reporting would be an exception to that rule of thumb though.

your color screen however is always referanced and memory never gets released...you will see a huge differance if you're not on 16 allready
 
you know perris, that had completely never entered my head thanks. Is it true what i here that 32-bit uses almost 4 times more ram than 16-bit?
 
thekore said:
you know perris, that had completely never entered my head thanks. Is it true what i here that 32-bit uses almost 4 times more ram than 16-bit?
even true color, (24 Bit) is too high for anyone running less then 512 mbs memory.

theoretically, of course those settings give the most accurate reproduction of colors (in pictures and in the colors on desktop objects). But it's literally impossible to distinguish between the 65,000 colors available at the High Color (16 Bit) setting and the 16 million colors available with 24 Bit color....32 bit is even more redundant

some images lose the edges around their icon, but very few...really, if you're not doing graphics of some sort, 16 bit is not noticeable visually, but a huge differance in performance.

did you get your iso burned?
 
Thanks perris, Im going to go down and get it just now while she is at work. :)

Perris said:
did you get your iso burned?
In short, no. I have tried everything and nothing will work. I have come to the conclusion that it is either corrupt (during when the iso was made) or it was made using some very odd application, either way i have given up on it for now.

Hipster Doofus said:
See if you can get a hold of some cheap memory.
Its a very old laptop, i have already just last week upgraded from the stock 64MB and added a 128MB SODIMM, i couldn't afford the 256MB to take it to its limit unfotunately.
 
thekore said:
Thanks perris, Im going to go down and get it just now while she is at work. :)


In short, no. I have tried everything and nothing will work. I have come to the conclusion that it is either corrupt (during when the iso was made) or it was made using some very odd application, either way i have given up on it for now.


Its a very old laptop, i have already just last week upgraded from the stock 64MB and added a 128MB SODIMM, i couldn't afford the 256MB to take it to its limit unfotunately.
did you do a data check on the iso? (checksum). do you know how to do this?...the utility started on linux and was ported to windows so I think you know how to do a check..it's done on the download though, so just re download the iso and give it another go

as far as the laptop, you're hitting your pagefile all the time with that small memory

if you have a hardrive lying around, put the pf on the extra hardrive, you'll save some i/o comflicts.
 
yeah, the pagefile wont help with the slow hardrive. Either way its running a little faster with the colour change already, which is good :)

as for the ISO, i checked... it seems fine. But like i said, not really to bothered anymore. :p
 
I bet it's hard to find a visual differance with that setting also.
 
I would suggest installing "x-setup pro 7" and tweak away....
One of my laptops I have W2Kpro also for my autocad...

this program make its simple and easy...without having to run throught the whole dang registry to tweak everything....give it a shot kore... :)

http://www.x-setup.net/
 

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