squiffythewombat

Hi Guys, This tutorial assumes you have followed tutorial one and now have XP in classic mode.

"Users of this information please note, this information is a suggestion and should be used as such, Scale models in anyway will not accept responsibility to loss of information or disruption in operation of your pc after carrying out these 'adjustments'.

If in doubt do not make any changes to anything you are unsure of."

**Prefetch Clearing**
When you load a program windows saves a little bit of information to your memory so that next time you run it, it will start that much quicker! However if you run lots of various programs or you want to free up as much memory as possible (gamers like this because more memory=faster games) then you can clear this information in the prefetch folder. I reccomend doing this anyway as whatever programs you frequently use still reappear here anyway.

1. Press windows key and E to launch explorer.
2. Double-click your hard-drive (normally c
3. Now double-click the folder called "windows"
4. Now in find a folder called "prefetch" and double click it.
5. Now press Ctrl & A (this selects everything in a folder)
6. Now press Delete.
7. Now close the explorer window.

**Hard Drive Defragmenting**
A hard-drive is much like a car engine, it requires certain maintance to make sure it runs smoothly and without hiccups. One should consider defragmenting your hard-drive much like an oil change in a car, only unlike the car this task should be performed weekly to keep your hard-drive in tip top condition.

1. Left-click the start menu
2. Navigate to Programs>Accessories>system tools>disk defragmentor. This will launch the windows defragmenting program.
3. In the middle you will see a white box with your hard-drive in it.
4. Left-Click C: (your hard-drive) so that it is highlighted blue.
5. Left-Click defragment at the bottom of the screen. This will now start the defragmention process.

This process should be done weekly. The more red stripes you see in the top bar, the more defragmented your hard-drive is. You will notice in the bottom bar that once defragmented the red stripes have been re-arranged.

**Keeping Space Free**
A hard-drive requires that it always has free space on it. There are several reasons behind this, the most common is swap files, virtual memory and object such as "system restore". The general rule of thumb is to always keep 25% of the drives capacity free. For example if you had a 100gb drive, you would want to always keep 25gbs free.

**Services**
As an operating system, XP has many tasks to perform and one way of controling aspects of these tasks is using services. However XP will run services that are usless to you unless your a business user! These can be removed in "computer management"

1. Click the start menu
2. Goto run
3. Type "services.msc"
4. Maximize the window by left clicking the small square.
5. Scroll to where you see a service called "messenger" (not this is not MSN messenger)
6. Right-click this and goto properties. This will launch a new window.
7. In the middle is a drop-down menu called "start-up type". There are three options; manual/automatic/disabled.
8. Make sure Disabled is selected!
9. Left-click Apply
10. Left-click OK

Now repeat this process for the following services;

1. Clip Book Service
2. Computer Browser Server
3. Error Reporting Service
4. Fax (if you dont send faxes turn this off)
5. IMAP CD Burning (if you use a program to burn your cds turn this off to see a time improvement-If in doubt dont touch this one)
6. Indexing Service
7. Infared Monitor (if you dont have any infra-red devices)
8. Net Logon Service
9. Remote Registray Service
10. Themes Service

Once you have turned off those services and defragmented your computer a restart is best.

NOTES
Its worth noting that if you have not defragged your computer since buying it this may take a LONG time! If your copy of XP was installed recently then it may not take so long. If you have less than 10% free on your hard-drive you might not be able to defrag in which case you need to free up some space by deleteing some files or uninstalling some programs.

As usal, any problems or comments, post away on this thread! :-)