After months of removing, installing, and reconfiguring programs, Windows can be bogged down with things like files that aren't used by anything and broken links in the registry. Other settings which are turned on by default also can hurt performance. With a few programs, and few setting changes, you can improve Windows' performance.
Note: As always before making any changes, backup your important data.
Uninstalling programs that have not been used in ages may help increase your computer's performance. To uninstall programs, go to the Control Panel and click Add or Remove Programs.
Look through the programs that are installed, this tool can tell you how frequently the program has been used. Just click Remove when you have the program that you want to remove selected and follow the instructions.
As the hard drive adds and erases data it gets thrown all over the disk, it does not end up in orderly rows, and the hard drive needs to work hard to put the data together. Using a disk defragmenting tool as found in Windows XP can help you out.
Open My Computer and right-click on Local Disk, and then Properties. Select the Tools tab and then click Defragment Now. In the window that pops up, select your hard drive and then click Defragment. This will take a while so you should do this at night or when the computer would otherwise be idle.
Oftentimes there are many programs that run at startup, but do not need to be running. To look at what startup programs are running at startup, go to the Start Menu, then Run, and then type in msconfig. Click OK and in the window that pops up, select the tab labeled Startup.
If you don't know whether or not a program needs to be running at startup, visit our Startup Programs database.
Having lots of network drives mounted (connected) can slow your computer down by a considerable amount, especially at startup. To disconnect from a network drive, open My Computer, go to the Tools menu and select Disconnect Network Drive. Select which drives are no longer needed and then click OK.
This is a tool that you will want to keep handy in the future, and it's included with Windows XP. To open it, open My Computer, right-click Local Disk and then click Properties. Select the General tab and then click Disk Cleanup.
A window will popup and you will see that it is scanning your hard drive. After a short wait it will tell you how much space you can save by taking to its suggestions. I recommend cleaning out the Temporary Files and Setup Logs. You will likely reclaim several hundred megabytes of space.