Why is defragmenting helpfull?
This is because most files on a disk are saved in many small pieces spread over your entire disk instead of one single piece.  When you open a 1MB word document, the file could actually exist in 100 different pieces all over your disk.  Each time you read a file, Windows has to read all the pieces before it opens the file for you.  Each time your disk jumps between the pieces which are all over a disk, it is wasted time. Defragmentation places all the pieces of files together so they are a single big piece, thereby eliminating the time it takes to find all the pieces and reducing the time it takes to read the file.  In most cases, this can make your system start up and react noticibly quicker.

To start the defragmenter follow any of the two below steps:

I) Get to the defragmenter using My Computer:

1. Click the 'Show Desktop' icon on your task bar (or Launch Bar)
2. Double click the My Computer icon on your desktop
3. Right click on  the disk you want defragmented then select Properties
4. On the Properties panel select Defragment Now…
5. Click either Analyze to obtain a fragmentation report or Defragment to start the defragmenter

II) Get to the defragmenter using Windows Explorer:

1. Right click the Start button
2. Select either Explore or Explore All Users to open the Windows Explorer
3. Right click the drive letter for the drive that needs to be defragmented
4. On the panel that opens click Properties
5. On the Properties panel select Defragment Now…
6. Click either Analyze to obtain a fragmentation report or Defragment to start the defragmenter.

NOTE: You should carefully review any below actions recommended.  If you are not comfortable disabling anything to do with security, or have a sensitive system to protect, you may wish to skip this section and avoid using this recommendation.  This option also assumes you have a working and properly configured (software) firewall on the machine and possibly even a router firewall on your home network.

How helpfull will this be?

You can test this to assess the benefit to you.  Disconnect yourself from the network / internet by disabling the network NIC card you connect through or simply pulling out the network / USB cable responsible for connecting you.  You do this to be safe.  Then, disable the Antivirus software you have completely including any services it starts through the Windows Services panel.  Ensure you write down the state of all the optiosn prior to doing this.  Then restart Windows

Why is disabling this feature helpfull and is it safe?
While antivirus software is virtually a necessity today, most antivirus software will come preconfigured with on-access file scanning.  This option will scan files when they are opened and closed or one or the other.  This will have a very significant impact on how fast applications load on your system, particularly during startup.  In fact, the impact can be so much, that after installing many Antivirus applications, your system may be more than twice as slow if not more.  For this reason disabling this feature can be safe and at the same time have a significant impact on how quickly your system reacts. 

Is this safe?
Usually, when the above option is left enabled, it causes your system to scan the same file over and over again each time you do even simple actions in windows.  Moreover, it only scans the same 10% – 5% of your files over and over.  On a system that has an antivirus program, scanning files when they are opened or closed is highly unlikely to yield any viruses 99.9% of the time if the file has already been repeatedly scanned.  And even 0.1% chance of viruses would be a high rate of viruses on most computers and is indicitive of an unprotected network / workstation installation.  All good antivirus software will pick up viruses when they start to run and prevent them from doing damage anyway, provided it is an up to date version.  Moreover the weekly or daily total system file scan most antivirus applications have will catch viruses inside files cleaning them at the time.  Many viruses will reside in files you do not usually open or open very rarely anyway so this feature will not catch those until a full system scan occurs anyway.  Viruses are like any other programs and need CPU and memory to run.  As long as they are not running they are harmless.  When they do run, active memory is scanned by most if not all antivirus software which will pick up and eliminate the virus.

Disabling AVG Free Antivirus on access scan::

1. Double click the AVG icon to bring up the AVG Control Center
2. Double click the Resident Shield
3. Select any of the following three options (from lowest security impact to highest):

• Uncheck On-close scanning option
• Select Scan infectable files instead of Scan all files
• Uncheck Turn on AVG Free Resident Shileld protection to disable this feature alltogether.

Disabling Symantec / Norton Antivirus on access scan::

1. Click Start
2. Programs
3. Symantec Client Security
4. Symantec Antivirus Client
5. Select/Unselect any of the following combinations under the Configure menu File System Auto-Protect section (from lowest security impact to highest):

• Under Advanced menus Scan files when section select Modified (scan on create) instead of Accessed or modified (scan on create, open, move, copy, or run)
• Under Advanced menus Startup options section select Symantec AntiVirus start instead of System start.  (For faster boot up)
• Selected instead of All types and modify the file types
• Uncheck Enable Auto Protect (Enabled)

Disabling McAfee on access scan:

In the works!

Why can this speed things up for me?
Your registry is a list of startup options, commands and what-not that windows reads and goes through on each startup or even during runtime for your applications.    When the registry has erronous entries or links to files that no longer exist etc, Windows will take time to look at each of the settings in the registry including any broken links and try to find the files each time.    Eliminating a broken link or broken registry keys allows windows to process process the correct ones instead of wasting time on erronous ones each time.

There are a number of tools out there that can be used for this:

1. Registry Mechanic from pctools.com
2. Windows Registry Repair from 3bsoftware.com
3. RegCure from regcure.com
4. RegistryFix from registryfix.com

NOTE: The effect of this option on your installation will depend on the number of partitions you have on your current drive and number of physical hard disks in your system.  Effectiveness of doing this is generalized in below table (Benefits are dependent on how much you use email and the size of your email box):

 Why can this speed things up for me?
If you have alot of email dating back, relocating your inbox to another physical drive or logical drive can reduce space usage on your main drive as well as contention with other running applications.  The lower your space usage on your main partition/drive the quicker applications will generally respond and the less wait time you will have.  The greatest benefit here is if you have another hard disk in the system.  Placing the Inbox emails on another drive can improve performance since accessing your email in anyway will not impact the main disk (ie C:\>) where Windows runs from nor other applications that share the same drive.

Another significant benefit here is that if you ever need to reinstall Windows on the main drive C:, your Outlook files would already be out of the way and not clobbered by the new installation.  In addition, new emails you receive will not go to using up space of your main Windows drive C: and thereby reducing your maintenance on it.

Microsoft Outlook Express:

1. Locate your existing Inbox file.
   • From the main menu, select Tools -> Options -> Maintenance tab -> Store Folder… button.  Panel with folder/filename settings should appear.
   • Note the path under the Your personal message store is located in the following folder column of the open panel.  The path may appear  C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{A8034645-C37F-4373-A1E5-594B8705A2A9}\Microsoft\Outlook Express  or similar.   This is the root path of your mailboxes in Outlook Express.  Your mailboxes should reside in the above path.  Optionally, copy and paste the folder into an Explorer window to find it's contents.  Close Microsoft Outlook Express.
2. Create the same folder path on another partition or drive.  For example, instead of C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\you might now create  D:\Your\Choice\Of\Pathwhere D: would reside on either another partition or even better, a partition residing on a separate hard disk.Replace D: with your choice of drive or partition.  You could optionally also select something like D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path\<USER> for the individual accounts, if any.
3. Copy (NOT move) your inbox from your old path residing in C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\ to the new path you created under D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path.  For example if your old mailbox was named C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\Inbox.dbx it would now be D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path\Inbox.dbx or similar after being copied.
4. Change your Office Outlook settings to point to the new path.
   • Select Tools -> Options -> Maintenance tab -> Store Folder… from the main menu on the mailbox you would like to move.  Panel with folder/filename settings should appear.
   • Click Change… on the Store Location panel then select the new path you created above (Per above case D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path\).
   • You may receive "There appears to be an Outlook Express message store already in the folder you have chosen.  Do you want to switch to using that store?  If not, it will be deleted and replaced with your current store." or similar message.  Select Yes to use the store you copied. 
   • Save your new settings and restart Outlook Express.
5. Test your new mailbox location.  Send yourself a couple of emails as a test to ensure they arrive and you can reply to them fine.  DO NOT delete your old mailbox just yet.  Allow for about a week of testing your new inbox location before you do anything to the old mailbox and it's location.
6. Repeat the steps for any other mailboxes you have.
7. After one week, if you do no notice any issues with your new setup, remove the old mailbox under C: to free space.  To remove your old inbox from C: simply delete the old inbox dbx files residing in C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\.

Microsoft Office Outlook:

1. Locate your existing Inbox file.
   • Select Tools -> Options -> Mail Setup tab -> Data Files from the main menu on the mailbox you would like to move.  Panel with folder/filename settings should appear.
   • Note the path under the Filename column of the open panel.  The path may be similar to  C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst.  This is the root path of your mailboxes.  Your mailboxes should reside in the above path.  Optionally, click Open Folder… to open an Explorer window to that folder.  Close Microsoft Office Outlook.
2. Create the same folder path on another partition or drive/partition combination.  For example, instead of C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\ you might now create  D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path where D: would reside on either another partition or a partition residing on a separate hard disk. Replace D: with your choice of partition or partition/drive and path.
3. Copy (NOT move) your inbox from your old path residing in C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\ to the new path you created under D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path.  For example if your old mailbox was named C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst it would now be D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path\Outlook.pst or similar after being copied.
4. Change your Office Outlook settings to point to the new path.
   • Select Tools -> Options -> Mail Setup tab -> Data Files from the main menu on the mailbox you would like to move.  Panel with folder/filename settings should appear.
   • Click Add… on the Data Files panel and the first listed selection Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst).
   • Browse to and select your copied Outlook PST file in D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path. You should now see your new PST file listed in the windows along the old one.
   • Notice that the old PST file you had on C: is marked Mail delivery location and will need to change.  After you added the new PST file, close the panels.
   • To set your default delivery, select Tools -> E-mail Accounts… -> View or change existing email accounts -> Deliver new e-mail to the following location: then select the newly added PST data file from above step or select New Outlook Data File… to add a new PST data file directly.
5. Test your new mailbox location.  Send yourself a couple of emails as a test to ensure they arrive and you can reply to them fine.  DO NOT delete your old mailbox just yet.  Allow for about a week of testing your new inbox location before you do anything to the old mailbox and it's location.
6. Repeat the steps for any other mailboxes you have.
7. After one week, if you do no notice any issues with your new setup, remove the old mailbox under C: to free space.  To remove your old inbox select Tools -> Options -> Mail Setup tab -> Data Files and click Remove on the old mailbox to disassociate the old Outlook.pst.  Follow this by deleting the old outlook mailbox PST file residing in C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\.

Mozilla Thunderbird:

1. Locate your existing Inbox file.
   • Select Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings on the mailbox you would like to move.  Panel with server settings should open up.
   • Note the path under Local directory: at the bottom of the open panel.  The path may be similar to C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail.  This is the root path of your mailboxes.  Your mailboxes should reside in the above path.
2. Create the same folder path on another partition or drive/partition combination.  For example, instead of C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\ you might now create  D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail where D: would reside on either another partition or a partition residing on a separate hard disk. Replace D: with your choice of partition or partition/drive and path.
3. Copy (NOT move) your inbox from your old path residing in C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\ to the new path you created under D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\.  For example if your old mailbox was named C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\mymailbox.connectiontype.myISP it would now be D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\mymailbox.connectiontype.myISP or similar after being copied.
4. Change your Thunderbird settings to point to your new mailbox location:
   • Select Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings on the mailbox you would like to change.  Panel with server settings should open up.
   • Change the path under Local directory: at the bottom of the open panel.  The path may be similar to C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\mymailbox.connectiontype.myISP.  This is the root path of your mailboxes.  Change this to your new path D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\mymailbox.connectiontype.myISP .
5. Test your new mailbox location.  Send yourself a couple of emails as a test to ensure they arrive and you can reply to them fine.  DO NOT delete your old mailbox just yet.  Allow for about a week of testing your new inbox location before you do anything to the old mailbox and it's location.
6. Repeat the steps for any other mailboxes you have.
7. After one week, if you do no notice any issues with your new setup, remove the old mailbox under C: to free space.

Why can this speed things up for me? 
temp (temporary) folders can constitute a large portion of your drive space.  (See further down on how to locate temporary folders on your windows installation)  These folders, as the name implies, only store temporary files when a program runs.  Once the program exits the temporary files are no longer used but still take up space impacting the overall performance.  Even if the program is restarted again, it will not use the same temporary files it created the last time it ran, and will create new ones.  Smart applications will clean up after themselves but many won't, such as installation programs.  So such old files can be removed.  How do you know which files can be removed from the temp folder?  Because the applications don't generally use the same files in the temp folder again when windows or an application is restarted, a general rule of thumb I use is to remove anything older then one day. (NOTE: You will get a warning if you try to delete a file that is currently being used by an application)  You can optionally click the date column in Explorer, to list files by date, then select the ones older then one day for deletion.  For starters, you can remove files older then five days and potentially zip (compress) them out of the way if you are really not sure if you should be removing anything.

Checking other paths, files can also be found in places such as:

C:\Documents and Settings\<USER>\Local Settings\Application Data\

that were perhaps part of some old installations.  You can optionally do a search for some old unused files such as old downloaded temporary installation files left around by the previous installer.  An example below will search for files with dates in the range of years 2000 – 2004 and the words 'msi' (Microsoft Installer files) on drive C:

Generally it is a good idea keep the main drive your Windows is installed to no more then 75% capacity of your disk or partition.  In fact the lower the capacity the quicker file retrieval can be and less fragmentation the disk will experience.  For fragmentation, see first item above.  To this end here are a few locations you can check for starters:

Unless you are also saving large files to your C: drive one of the largest folders you will probably see are the below three:

C:\Documents and Settings and C:\Documents and Settings\<USER>\

C:\Program Files

C:\WINNT\Installer

C:\WINNT

or

C:\Windows

temp or tmp folders within the above listed paths.

To get the size of folders in Windows, right click on a folder in Explorer (To start Explorer right click Start button in Windows and select Explore All Users or Open All Users) and select properties.  A tally from that folder upwards will show up in a pie chart.

 You could potentially also search for other files such as ones with word temp or tmp in them then decide if any are worth removing.  The search is usefull in this regard especially in locating temporary old and stale folders no longer being used by anything, though you still need to use your judgement what to keep and what to delete.

Why can this speed things up for me?

Swap files on a system can be large and relocating them to another drive can be a good idea especially if you have a separate hard disk.  This option will only free space on your windows root partition if you do not have a separate hard disk.   It will have little to no impact on speed of your workstation unless your windows root partition (C:) is full and space is what you need to free in order to increase performance.

To move your swap file to another physical disk (and separate partition) do the following:

• Right click My Computer in either Windows Explorer or the Desktop.
• Select the Advanced tab.
• Click Performance Options… button.
• Click Change… on Performance options panel.
• Select the drive letter (partition) where you want to create a swap file on.
• Select the Initial Size (MB) and Maximum Size (MB).  This should be the same as the one you have on the main (C:) drive / partition.
• Unset the swap file from the main windows drive (C:) by clearing above boxes.
• Save your settings.

Virtual Memory Allocation Screen sample:

Naturally, the less applications you have installed, the less space you use.  In itself, the additional space freed by uninstalling some can help tramendously in the performance of your PC.  In other ways, the less applications windows has installed, the quicker Windows can start up since Windows will then have a smaller registry to work through.  In addition, and this being a major benefit to performance, any background services those applications needed would be removed as well further speeding up your Windows response time and start up time.

This is very common and your'e probably even familiar with it but here it goes:

Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add / Remove Programs.

One of the things I do here is to use the Sort by Size option then go down the list of largest space users to lowest space users in determening what should stay and what should be uninstalled.  It is, however, noteworthy to mention that many installed programs may have your personal files within the paths that are being summarized for space usage.  So for example, if a Canon application has a path D:\Program Files\Canon Files\ and is reported to be 4GB it may have your personal data under the path.  This is important since though even if the application is removed, the space freed might be only a few megabytes because the actual data under the folder is really YOUR DATA.  In such cases you would need manual intervention and visit the path to move or remove the files you do not need.  Something to keep in mind when uninstalling.

Why can this speed things up for me?

Simply that the applications won't take so long to start during boot up time will be the major benefit here.  Some installed applications will auto-configure themselves to constantly start up at boot time.  However, if you find yourself only rarely using Startup list applications, these could be good candidates for removal from the start list, and load them from Start -> Programs instead.  The Startup list is something you need to weigh carefully.  Some people like to use them to quickly start up applications they use daily, such as at work.  If you really need something started up automatically when windows starts, you should probably leave it in the Startup list.  

To do a check with regards to what is started on your system:

Start -> Programs -> Startup

Alternately, you can use explorer to access this path:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

or

C:\Documents and Settings\<YOUR USER>\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Applications listed there will be started up during boot time.  Some applications get configured to start up automatically after installations but may not be needed everyday.  You'll need to weigh your options here what you can remove from the start list and what you can leave.  It's important to note, that removing the applications from the Startup folder / list won't actually delete the application just keep it from starting next time windows starts up.

Why can this speed things up for me?

The main benefit is that startup time will be reduced significantly.  It's not all that practical to start up a service hundreds of times when in all that time it might be used only once. 

This option has significant impact during start up time but is generally technical and involves good knowledge of background services and applications to do:

To change Service settings navigate to

Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services

Once you do this click the Startup Type column to order the services startup time by their startup state.  Look into the services that are started up Automatically then right click the services to change it's startup state at boot up time and to Start or Stop the service.  Before you change any services, careful consideration will need to be payed to what is needed and what is not.    If you are unsure about a service, it's best to leave the option unchanged unless you are willing to test disabling a service.  In any case, it is highly recommended to save all your settings prior to making any changes, whether you do so in a file or simply write the settings down elsewhere.

This utility is similar to disabling services you no longer need above.  For Windows 2000 users, you can obtain the utility from the merijn.nu winfiles page as it is not included in Windows 2000 by default but is included in all other Windows distributions.  The Windows 2000 msconfig.exe can be fairly easy to use however you will still need to tell which service you need at startup and which you won't before disabling them.  Most users can disable services such as some Java, Createive Sound Blaster, ATI / GForce, MP3 player etc. startups.  However the names of the executable files are not always synonymous with the application and telling isn't easy from another critical service that should not be turned off.

You can discover what each file is for by typing it's full file name in a search engine like Google to find details which can help you decide whether to disable it or not.  If you're looking for a one stop shop take a look at the Startup Application List from sysinfo.org.

 When installing applications, virtually all will give you the location where you can install the application.  There is a clear advantage here on a two drive system.  Normally you would be presented with a path such as C:\Program Files\ where over time it can lead to space and consequently performance issues.

Instead of using the C: drive to install applications on, select D: or E: or any other drive as an alternative.  The application will work just as well if not faster.  Even if the directory Program Files\ doesn't exist on the target partition, it will be created.  On a two drive system where C: is on one and D: is on another, having applications staggered over the two partitions and consequently using two separate hard drives could potentially decrease start up time of two applications kicked off at the same by as much as half the time it normally takes to start both up.

The main benefit here is that the same application will not have to wait and compete for disk reads / writes.  If one drive reads files at 100MB / s, two drives will, in theory, read at 200MB / s and is really where the benefit lies.  It's in some ways similar to filling a bucket with water using a standard garden hose.  Two hoses will fill the bucket at twice the rate of a single one.

Disk cleanup is one of the easier things to do but not necessarily the most thorough one.  Start disk cleanup in the following way:

• Right click on Start button.
• Select Open All Users or Explore All Users
• In Explorer, right click on a partition such as C:, D:, E: etc. and click Properties… .  Panel will appear.
• Click Disk Cleanup… on the General tab.

These are small applications that attach and download themselves into your PC and linger on drastically slowing down your PC.  There are a number of ways to prevent these:

1. Use Firefox browser instead of Internet Explorer.
2. Install and periodically run the free Ad-Aware application to remove malware.
3. Use the Windows Defender application from Microsoft.
4. HijackThis, Bugoff and CWShredder from merijin.nu (WARNING: Use caution when using these.  Please also note the original site merijin.org no longer belongs to the author and has changed to merijn.nu)
5. Visit Wikipedia's Spyware Removal page for more utilities.

Also visit the SECURITY section of this site for more details on blocking common entry points Viruses and Malware / Spyware applications use.

This is a Windows XP key.  This value in the registry controls whether certain commonly used applications are loaded before they are actually started.  This speeds up application startup performance since the data would then already be loaded in memory when a certain application is started.

However, there is a big downside to this.  This feature works like the Startup option earlier in many ways.  It starts up a chunk of some commonly used applications in the hope that they will be used on each windows startup.  If you have a system with plenty of memory and CPU power, this feature can speed up application start up time considerably but perhaps at a cost of a longer boot up time.  Alternately, leaving this option off, can speed up boot time considerably at a cost of slower application start up once windows is booted.  The choice is yours as to which one you prefer more.

Here are the steps to do this:

1. Click Start then Run…
2. Type regedit.exe and click Ok to run
3. Locate the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
4. Locate the Name called EnablePrefetcher
5. If the value is anything other then the four values below, change it to one of the below:

• 0 = Disabled

• 1 = Application launch prefetching enabled

• 2 = Boot prefetching enabled

• 3 = Application launch and boot enabled

From here you can experiment setting this value.  The typical value to use is 3 however, again, you may get better performance using 0 instead.  In either case, ensure you always write down the values you used in case you have to revert.

NOTE: This option is an advanced feature.  Please use caution when running it and make bacups where changes need to be made.  These instructions are also for Microsoft Windows XP.

Defragment the boot files which are typically skipped in a traditional defragmentation.

1. Navigate to Start -> Run…. In the open text box type cmd.exe then click Ok.
2. Run rundll32 advapi32 ProcessIdleTasks

to defragment the boot files.

To enable windows to do this automatically, run regedit.exe by going to Start then Run… again and look for the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction

Ensure a string called Enable is set to Y.  If not, set it to Y.

For most porpuses and unless you know what you are doing, selecting default settings in BIOS can give you peace of mind.  It is also recommended to use automatic settings whenever possible to let BIOS autodetect it’s environment. 

There is another benefit here.  In case your system resets, BIOS settings will automatically default to the default settings and you won’t need to adjust anything.  In most cases, BIOS will autoconfigure for best possible settings.  There are also optimized settings for maximum performance as an option in most BIOS applications.

Alternately, you can tweak your BIOS, if you have an idea of what it is that you are doing.  However, choosing poore settings can lead to hard drive, memory and CPU errors so caution is highly advised.  Choosing an incorrect settings might not by itself cause a problem, but your system in reacting to the failures that occur thereafter, can take measures that ultimately damage your system.  For example, setting wrong hard drive parameters, can cause windows to try to correct the issue (where non software issue really exist) and corrupt your file system so even resetting the BIO setting back, won't undo the damage.