Windows XP Starts Too Slow– How to Speed Up Windows XP at Startup

Compared with Windows 2000, Windows XP runs much faster. But to those who want to get faster working efficiency, they are still so angry to see that the computer starts too slow. Actually, we can massively speed up Windows XP boot speed with some simple settings.

1. Msconfig.
If pay attention to, you will find that Windows XP start up much faster when you first bought it. However, with the increasing programs/ files on the computer, the system will take a much longer time to start up. That is because lots of programs will add themselves to startup tab and load automatically when booting up the computer, which will make XP start too slow. For some programs that do not need to run with Windows, we can disable it by using "Msconfig": go to "Start", type "Msconfig" into the "Run" box and press "Enter", then go to "Startup" tab, uncheck the unnecessary startup items.

2. Disable unnecessary services.
When starting up Windows XP, it will recall kinds of services to maintain its proper running. But lots of them are not needed at all rather than waste valuable memory and system resources. By disabling them, we can release more than 70MB memory and speed up Windows XP at startup. Simply go to "Run", type "services.msc" and press "Enter" to open "Services". Here, you can see all the services and disable the services that you do not need.

3. Tweak Windows prefect for a faster XP startup. When booting up Windows XP, there will be a progress bar appearing. We can modify the registry to make the progress bar only run once and then log in the system. Go to "Run" and type "Regedit" to open Registry Editor and locate

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters", and right click "EnablePrefetcher" to set its value data to "1".

3. When there are abnormal shutdowns, or reboots because of system crashes recording in Windows logs, the system will automatically run a disk defragmentation when starting up the computer the next time. By default, it will wait about 10 seconds before scanning each partition. If you have to wait 10 seconds before the scan which plus the scanning time, it will be a very longer time. So you can reset the waiting time before the scanning, or directly cancel the scan to each partition to speed up Windows XP at startup. Just go to "Start"-> Run ->type "chkntfs / t:0", that is set the waiting time to 0. If you want to ignore the scanning to a specific drive when booting up the computer, for example, C drive, you can type "chkntfs /x c:".

4. Fix registry errors to speed up Windows XP. We all know that registry is the main soul of the computer, which decides the proper running of the Windows and programs installed. If there is something wrong, it will make the computer to run slowly or seriously results in frequent blue screen of death or complete system crashes. By fixing the registry errors, you can maintain system stability and make the system to much easier to reach what it exactly want and then speed it up.

With the simple steps above, you can easily make Windows XP speed up faster at startups.

If that does not help. It is recommended that you can run the best registry optimizer on the market to fix your registry. Believe me, it will return you a faster startup soon!