Windows XP tweaks(PART I)- Startup Tweaks

It was quite some time since I did not post in this blog.To revive the blog, I am going to make
series of posts to tweak your Windows XP box.Follow this tweaks to improve your windows's functionality.These posts require a bit of time, but once done you will see the change to be awesome.

For each of the following tips,you have to know about Registry Editor.To perform any of these tweaks, first go to Start->Run and type regedit and press ENTER key.Then a window opens as shown in the below picture.


In the Left pane is the tree view.You have to use this to navigate to the key mentioned. Then follow as said.

To start with, in this Part 1, I will discuss the tweaks related to the startup of windows XP.

Windows Prefetcher
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Session Manager \ Memory Management \ PrefetchParameters]

Go to this key and there will be a setting called EnablePrefetcher in the right pane.The default setting of it will be 3. Increasing this number to 5 gives the prefetcher system more system resources to prefetch application data for faster load times during startup. Depending on the number of startup processes you run on your computer, you may get benefits from using settings up to 9. However, I do not have any data on settings above 9.So I cannot verify the benefits of settings above 9.So enter anything above 3 till 9 and test which suits best for your system. This setting will not take effect until after you reboot your system.


Master File Table(MFT) Zone Reservation
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ FileSystem]

If you navigate to this key, there you will see a setting called NtfsMftZoneReservation in the right pane.Its default value is 1. The range of this value is from 1 to 4. The default setting reserves one-eighth of the volume for the MFT. A setting of 2 reserves one-quarter of the volume for the MFT. A setting of 3 for NtfsMftZoneReservation reserves three-eighths of the volume for the MFT and setting it to 4 reserves half of the volume for the MFT. Most users will never exceed one-quarter of the volume. I recommend a setting of 2 for most users. This allows for a "moderate number of files" commensurate with the number of small files included in most computer games and applications. Reboot after applying this tweak.

Optimize Boot Files
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Dfrg \ BootOptimizeFunction]

Under this key is a text value named Enable. A value of Y for this setting enables the boot files defragmenter. This setting defragments the boot files and may move the boot files to the beginning (fastest) part of the partition. Reboot after applying this tweak.