How to speed up performance of windows xp

Select File Explorer from the taskbar and find the files you want to move. Select your removable media from the location list, then select Move. Get more info about freeing drive space in Windows. Windows 11 includes many visual effects, such as animations and shadow effects. These look great, but they can also use additional system resources and can slow down your PC. Select Search , type performance , then select Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows in the list of results.

Your PC settings let you choose where files will be saved by default. You can save files on your PC or to OneDrive by default and sync files between the two locations.

This lets you get to your files from any device that can connect to the internet, and it helps make sure your files are backed up in case your PC is ever damaged or lost. You can pause OneDrive syncing temporarily and see if it helps improve your PC performance. You can also visit Fix OneDrive sync problems to check for any sync issues. When you turn on your PC, some programs start automatically and run in the background. Many programs are designed to start automatically when Windows does.

Sometimes you can determine which programs start automatically by looking at the program icons in the notification area on the far right of the taskbar.

To try to find out the name of the program, point to the icon with your mouse pointer. Even after you check the notification area, you might still miss some programs that run automatically at startup.

To stop a program from starting automatically. Open Startup Apps settings. In the Startup Apps area, find the program you want to stop from starting automatically and set it to Off. Note: If you turn off a program and it continues to start automatically when Windows starts, you should scan for viruses and malware. See the next section for more info. A virus, malware, or malicious software could cause your PC to run slowly. Other symptoms include unexpected pop-up messages, programs that unexpectedly start automatically, or the sound of your hard disk constantly working.

The best way to handle viruses and malicious software is to try to prevent them by running antimalware and antivirus software and keeping it up to date. However, even if you take precautions, your PC can still become infected. For more info, see How to protect your Windows PC. If they are, choose the one you want to run, and then disable or uninstall any others. If you have another antivirus program installed and turned on, Windows Security will be turned off by default. To scan for viruses using Windows Security.

Open Windows Security settings. On the Protection updates screen, select Check for updates to make sure you have the most recent updates. Wait for Windows Security to finish scanning for viruses and malware. Run the recommended advanced scan. This scan takes longer but searches more extensively for threats on your PC.

If no viruses are found, restart your PC and try to reproduce the performance problem you were having with your PC.

To scan for malware and viruses with Microsoft Defender Offline. The scan might take 15 minutes or so, and your PC will restart again after that. Restoring your PC undoes recent changes that might be causing problems. If you think a recently installed app, driver, or update for Windows could be causing problems, you might get things running normally again by restoring your PC to an earlier point, called a restore point.

Select Search on the taskbar, type advanced system , then select View advanced system settings from the list of results. On the System Protection tab, select System Restore. Select Recommended restore to go with the most recent restore point Windows has made automatically, or Choose a different restore point to select one yourself, then select Next. If you chose to select a different restore point, select one, then select Next. Either way, select Finish to begin restoring.

In the search box on the taskbar, type create a restore point , then select Create a restore point from the list of results. On the System Protection tab, select Configure. One of the best ways to get the most out of your PC is to make sure you have the latest version of Windows 10 installed.

Sometimes apps that were made for an earlier version of Windows will still run on Windows 10, but they might slow down your PC. In the search box on the taskbar, type troubleshoot , then select Troubleshoot settings , which has System settings listed underneath it. Select File Explorer from the taskbar. In the search box on the taskbar, type advanced system , and then select View advanced system settings , which has Control panel listed underneath it.

In the Temporary Files area, select Delete temporary files that my apps aren't using. Select which files you want Storage Sense to delete your choices are files in your Recycle Bin and in your Downloads folder , then select the corresponding time intervals.

Windows will take a few moment to clean up your files, and then you'll see a message indicating how much disk space has been freed up. In the search box on the taskbar, type disk cleanup , then select Disk Cleanup from the list of results. When you find an app to remove, choose it from the list and select Uninstall. Get more info about freeing drive space in Windows Your email address will not be published. Ad blockers may interfere with some important blog features, such as comments, images, etc.

Please consider disabling your ad blocker so you can have the best experience on this website. Liz Cornwell 10 March - 3 min read. Link copied. Do you like this post? You may also like 5. Performance Tweaks. How to disable the Action Center in Windows 10 and Windows 11? How to get old classic Taskbar back in Windows 10? Enable or disable OneDrive sync when device is on a metered network.

September 26, at am. Panayiotis Katsilaretos says:. November 26, at pm. PC Repairs Melbourne says:. May 11, at pm. AGIZA says:. September 13, at am. November 27, at pm. January 23, at pm. Ashish Gill says:. March 13, at am. April 15, at am. May 23, at pm. Anand says:. June 2, at pm. On the flip side, if users complain that print jobs never print or are slow to print, or if they run a macro in one application while working in another, you may want to assign equal time slices called quanta to each process by choosing the Background Services option.

If you use the Windows XP machine as a server, you're better off choosing the Background Services option. The first option, Programs, allocates more RAM to running applications. For desktop systems with very little RAM, this selection gives the best performance.

For a server or a desktop with a lot of RAM, however, choosing the System Cache setting will yield better performance. Virtual memory is an area on the disk that Windows uses as if it were RAM.

Windows requires this type of system in the event that it runs out of physical RAM. The virtual memory space is used as a swap space where information residing in RAM is written to the virtual memory space also called the page file or swap file to free up RAM for other processes.

When the system needs the information in the swap file, Windows puts it back into RAM and writes something else out to the disk in its place.

Windows XP has a recommended default page file size of 1. You can let Windows completely manage this file or have no file at all. I highly recommend that you do not remove the paging file because you'll experience a noticeable degradation of system performance without it. One way to boost system performance is to place the paging file on a separate physical hard drive from the operating system.

The only caveat is if the second drive is slower than the primary drive, you'd want to leave the paging file where it is. You can also span the paging file across multiple disks to increase performance.

To make changes to the virtual memory, click the Change tab on the Advanced tab of the Performance Options dialog box, make your desired changes, and click Set.

Any changes you make will take effect after you reboot the machine.