Streamline OS for games

[over0066]

My two roommates have old computers that create a lot of lag when playing Warcraft III. One has XP Professional and the other 2000 Professional. They both are currently unable to spend money on any upgrade, so I want to know how to get them to run better, faster. My guess is to set up new user account just for games, but I don't know how to do it without the new account having all of the programs from the original account installed. How can I change this? and will it help the performance? I thought there was a way to create a new account without any programs installed, where it would look like a fresh install after first starting the account. Is this possible? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Abzstrak]

knowing the hardware specs may help...

creating new logins probably wont help you, disabling uneeded services will alittle

 

[owensdj]

over0066, a reinstall of the operating system would probably help more than anything. In my experience, almost all users mess up their system over time by installing and uninstalling junk software or by letting the machine power down without a proper shutdown. You could also go directly to SP3 when you reinstall, and make sure you have the newest drivers for all of your devices.

By a reinstall I mean you should wipe out the the Windows directory(probably WINNT) before you install Win2K again. The best way is to just reformat the partition if you can.

 

[PrincessGuard]

It would help a little, but most likely not much.

You can create a new login and disable all the unneeded startup programs but that's probably the extent to which you can go. All WinNT logins share parts of the registry and start menu so you can't have a "clean" login, per se.