10 Simple Ways To Speed Up Your Windows XP

One of the factors that slow the performance of the computer is disk fragmentation. When files are fragmented, the computer must search the hard disk when the file is opened to piece it back together. To speed up the response time, you should monthly run Disk Defragmenter, a Windows utility that defrags and consolidates fragmented files for quicker computer response.

• Follow Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter
• Click the drives you want to defrag and click Analyze
• Click Defragment

2. Detect and Repair Disk Errors

Over time, your hard disk develops bad sectors. Bad sectors slow down hard disk performance and sometimes make data writing difficult or even impossible. To detect and repair disk errors, Windows has a built-in tool called the Error Checking utility. It’ll search the hard disk for bad sectors and system errors and repair them for faster performance.

• Follow Start > My Computer
• In My Computer right-click the hard disk you want to scan and click Properties
• Click the Tools tab
• Click Check Now
• Select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box
• Click Start

3. Disable Indexing Services

Indexing Services is a little application that uses a lot of CPU. By indexing and updating lists of all the files on the computer, it helps you to do a search for something faster as it scans the index list. But if you know where your files are, you can disable this system service. It won’t do any harm to you machine, whether you search often or not very often.

• Go to Start
• Click Settings
• Click Control Panel
• Double-click Add/Remove Programs
• Click the Add/Remove Window Components
• Uncheck the Indexing services
• Click Next

4. Optimize Display Settings

Windows XP is a looker. But it costs you system resources that are used to display all the visual items and effects. Windows looks fine if you disable most of the settings and leave the following:

• Show shadows under menus
• Show shadows under mouse pointer
• Show translucent selection rectangle
• Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
• Use visual styles on windows and buttons

5. Speedup Folder Browsing

You may have noticed that everytime you open My Computer to browse folders that there is a little delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing speed, you can disable the “Automatically search for network folders and printers” option.

6. Disable Performance Counters

Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea.

• Download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List
• Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom button below

7. Optimize Your Pagefile

You can optimize your pagefile. Setting a fixed size to your pagefile saves the operating system from the need to resize the pagefile.

• Right click on My Computer and select Properties
• Select the Advanced tab
• Under Performance choose the Settings button
• Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
• Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

8. Remove Fonts for Speed

Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.

• Open Control Panel
• Open Fonts folder
• Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.

9. Use a Flash Memory to Boost Performance

To improve performance, you need to install additional RAM memory. It’ll let you boot your OS much quicker and run many applications and access data quicker. There is no easiest and more technically elegant way to do it than use eBoostr.

eBoostr is a little program that lets you improve a performance of any computer, powered by Windows XP in much the same way as Vista’s ReadyBoost. With eBoostr, if you have a flash drive, such as a USB flash thumb drive or an SD card, you can use it to make your computer run better. Simply plug in a flash drive through a USB socket and Windows XP will use eBoostr to utilize the flash memory to improve performance.

The product shows the best results for frequently used applications and data, which becomes a great feature for people who are using office programs, graphics applications or developer tools. It’ll surely attract a special attention of laptop owners as laptop upgrade is usually more complicated and laptop hard drives are by definition slower than those of desktops.

10. Perform a Boot Defragment

There's a simple way to speed up XP startup: make your system do a boot defragment, which will put all the boot files next to one another on your hard disk. When boot files are in close proximity to one another, your system will start faster.

On most systems, boot defragment should be enabled by default, but it might not be on yours, or it might have been changed inadvertently. To make sure that boot defragment is enabled:

• Run the Registry Editor
• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
• Set the Enable string value to Y if it is not already set to Y.
• Exit the Registry
• Reboot

Hope you find these 10 tips useful. Have a nice day! 


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Microsoft chucks bigger salaries and cash bonuses at staff

Cash is the new king in Microsoft's battle to recruit and retain talent against the twin gravitational forces of Google and Facebook.

The world's largest software company told employees on Thursday that it's giving them pay raises and changing the way it awards bonuses beginning this September. Bonuses are getting bigger and will involve more cash compared to Microsoft stock, although stock allocations are also increasing.

The goal is to keep Microsoft competitive in hiring, according to a memo from Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer sent to staff and seen by The Reg. Ballmer said:

Through our history, we have been THE place people came when they wanted to make a difference in the world through software, hardware and services. This is as true today as it has been at any time in our history, and the changes we're rolling out today will help ensure Microsoft continues to be the place that top talent comes to change the world.

According to Ballmer a portion of stock award targets are being moved into employees' base salary, meaning more cash up front.

Funding for Microsoft's bonus and stock awards is increasing to deliver: "100 per cent or more of target bonus and stock awards to 80 per cent of our eligible employees." Ballmer said: "This is up from about 50% in prior years. The additional funding ensures our approach continues to support higher payouts to top performers."

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Adobe Updates Acrobat, Reader to Guard against Flash Zero-Day

Adobe is once again releasing software updates to address a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Flash. Adobe already unleashed an updated version of Adobe Flash itself, but today it is also releasing updated versions of Acrobat and Reader which both rely on a vulnerable component of Flash.

The updates arrived sooner than expected, perhaps in response to new exploits in the wild. The Adobe security advisory explains, "There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat, as well as via a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Word (.doc) or Microsoft Excel (.xls) file delivered as an email attachment targeting the Windows platform."

Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek describes the current threat in a recent blog post. Kandek says that the malicious Word document file attachment typically has a legitimate sounding name to lure users into opening it. But, as soon as the victim opens the attachment, the Flash zero-day vulnerability is exploited to install a remote control agent, and then a second Word document is opened which contains the real content. The insidious part is that it all happens in the blink of an eye--much faster than most users would even notice.

I have pointed out that the similarities of the back to back zero-day flaws in Flash seems to indicate they are related, and suggest that perhaps Adobe rushed the patch so much the first time around that it missed some key element of the vulnerability. But, an Adobe spokesperson stressed that the two Flash vulnerabilities are completely unrelates, explaining, "The two vulnerabilities existed in entirely different parts of the code and different ActionScript Virtual Machines (AVMs)."

The affected software includes Adobe Reader X (10.0.1) and earlier versions for Windows, Adobe Reader X (10.0.2) and earlier versions for Macintosh, and Adobe Acrobat X (10.0.2) and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh. Users of these products are strongly encouraged to download and install the updated software as soon as possible.

Adobe is still holding out for the regular quarterly update cycle in June to patch the Windows version of Adobe Reader X. Adobe states that the Protected Mode sandbox security in Reader X for Windows will prevent any exploit from executing, so it does not consider it a priority for developing an out-of-band update.

Intel Advances Solid State Storage

Intel Monday announced availability of its latest line of solid-state drives (SSD), which replaces the company's earlier X25-M SATA (Serial ATA) SSDs.

The new SSDs -- dubbed the Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) SSD 320 Series -- take advantage of 25 nm NAND flash technology. They also add new features such as increased security, including 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard support, as well as upgraded power management capabilities, such as redundant storage in case of power failure.

Available now, the SSD 370 Series come in 40, 80, 120, and 160 GB sizes as well as 300 and 600 GBs, the company said in a statement.

Intel's pitching the new, third-generation SSD line as delivering greater space with higher access speeds for less money.

"Our third-generation SSDs have larger capacities and performance improvements while providing better reliability and data protection, along with a 30 percent price drop," an Intel spokesperson told InternetNews.com.

Intel first delivered the X25-M SDD drives during the summer of 2008.

The first generation SSDs were built in a joint venture with Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU), using then-new 34 nm technology. After a slightly bumpy start, however, they have done very well, according to the company. The new line is targeted at everyone from consumers to PC enthusiasts to IT organizations.

The SSD 320 Series is designed for both desktop and laptop PCs and, because they are solid state, are more rugged than hard disk drives (HDD).

"An upgrade from an HDD to an Intel SSD can give users one of the single-best performance boosts, providing an up to 66 percent gain in overall system responsiveness," the Intel statement said.

The SSD 320 Series uses a 3 gbps SATA II to interface with what the company claims is more than a billion SATA II PCs worldwide. The drives can handle 39,500 input/output operations per second (IOPS) on random reads and 23,000 IOPS for random writes, the company said.

Overall, the SSDs deliver sequential write speeds as high as 220 MB per second (MBps), and read speeds as high as 270 MBps.

As for price, the 40 GB SSD costs $89 in thousand-unit lots, while 80 GB drives run $159. Additionally, the 120 GB SSDs are $209 and 160 GB cost $$289. At the high end, 300 GB drives cost $529, while the 600 GB drives run $1,069.

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Oracle Q3 Earnings Build On Sun

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) is continuing to grow its business, with strong revenues for its third fiscal quarter. Growth is coming from all sectors, including hardware from its Sun Microsystem acquisition.

"We saw strength across all regions, industries and product segments," Oracle President, Mark Hurd, said during the company's earnings call. "Engineered systems have fundamentally changed the game. The systems actually changed the entire value proposition of both hardware and software."

Oracle reported third quarter 2011 revenues of $8.8 billion, a 37 percent year-over-year increase. Net Income was reported at $2.2 billion, representing a 78 percent year-over-year gain. Earnings per share were up by 75 percent to $0.42 per share for the quarter. Moving forward, Oracle provided fourth quarter revenue guidance for total revenue growth on a GAAP basis to range from 10 percent to 14 percent at current exchange rates.

While growth came across a number of segments, one particular area highlighted by Oracle during its earnings call was a 29 percent growth in their software license revenue stream.

"You can really see our momentum in our Apps business as we continue to take share from SAP," Oracle President, Safra Catz said during the call. "So over the last couple of years, our new license revenue for applications has grown 53 percent in constant currency or about more than 10x faster than SAP over the same period."

Growth is also coming from improved execution on the hardware side of Oracle's business. A key part of that business is the technology that Oracle acquired as part of the acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

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Microsoft Adjusts Pricing for Client Access Licenses

With the recent revisions of some of its business software offerings, Microsoft announced new pricing for the so-called "client access licenses" (CAL) that users must have in order to access those products.

However, the changes in configuration and costs won't take effect until August.

The changes may not be difficult to spot, however, especially when it comes to price.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has two types of CALs -- a Core CAL and an Enterprise CAL (ECAL) Step Up edition. That is, a customer who needs more than the Core CAL provides antes up to upgrade to the ECAL option.

In the current version, the Core CAL provides licenses for basic server products such as Windows Server, Systems Center Configuration Manager, SharePoint Standard edition, and Exchange Standard edition, according to a Microsoft FAQ (as PDF) online.

By comparison, the ECAL Step Up option currently adds CALs for Active Directory Rights Management Service (RMS), Forefront Unified Access Gateway, and Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) Suite. It also includes CALs for Systems Center Client Management Suite, besides SharePoint and Exchange ECALs.

Right now, the ECAL Step Up bundle provides both Standard and Enterprise CALs for Microsoft Lync 2010.

Released in November, Lync is Microsoft's latest shot at a unified communications package, "unifying enterprise voice, instant messaging and Web, audio and video conferencing -- all within the same user experience and back-end infrastructure," the company said last fall. Lync replaces Microsoft's Office Communications Server.

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