Open Performance panel in Control Panel
- XP Control Panel view
- Click Start
- Open Control Panel
- Select the Performance And Maintenance category
- Click System icon to open the System Properties dialog box
- Select the Advanced tab
- Click the Settings button in the Performance panel
- XP classical Control Panel view
- Click Start
- Open Control Panel
- Click System icon to open the System Properties dialog box
- Select the Advanced tab
- Click the Settings button in the Performance panel
There are two tabs, Visual Effects and Advanced. The Advanced tab covers Processor scheduling, Memory Usage, and Virtual memory. Windows NT and later supports these options. Its old hat if you have supported servers.
- Under Processor scheduling, select Programs if your XP is a workstation and select Background services if you are using XP as a server.
- Under Memory usage, select Programs unless you have 512 MB of RAM or more. If you have lots of memory, and more and more workstations do, select System cache and XP will keep the OS kernel in memory. A BIG plus for servers. Makes workstations zippier also.
- Under Virtual memory, don't twiddle unless you have multiple hard drives. If you do, the best performance is had by moving the paging file from C: to another hard drive (not another drive letter, another physical drive). Eliminate the paging file on C: and set the minimum and maximum to the same size on another drive. This gets the paging file allocated completely at boot, avoiding delays as paging grows to maximum. How big should the page size be? Depends on memory but it usually works to go with XP defaults and, if you have time and ability to test, increase until performance doesn't change. Unless you have automated tools, this is not something you can do and know whether you have good settings.
The Visual Effects tab covers XP's new visual effects and their impact on performance. For XP working as a server, select Adjust for best performance. For normal workstations, select Adjust for best appearance. If you have lots of time on your hand, or want to find out what features effect appearance and performance, select Custom and turn on/off features and work with the options. Lots of them are glitz but some have a real impact on how crisp or viewable the page is, in particular, smooth edges of screen fonts.