WIN XP PRO: Any TIPS for reducing overhead RESOURCES or PROCESSES??

[DarkFudge2000]

FOlks I have a 1.4 Athlon with 256 megs ram running WIN XP PRO.....when I hit ctrl-alt-del and bring up the task manager there seems to be a hell of alot of PROCESSES running.....Anyone know or recommend ones I can shut off to increase system performance?

I remember in Win 98, you could run MSCONFIG and shut off everything except for Explorer.exe and Systray which yielded a nice clean boot each time, I know Win XP is a different beast altogether but I was wondering if the default settings with all the processes running are necessary for someone who wants to use it primarily as a hot rod gaming PC?

Any tips or sites I could go that might explain how to tweak XP PRO to the max?

thanks all!

 

[johnlog]

What you are seeing is the normal number of processes running in the background for XP. Some of those files are critical for running the OS and if you shut them down your system may run irratically or not at all until you reboot. If you made permanent changes to what runs then good luck.

It should also show all the programs you have running on screen and in the background.

My XP Pro system runs very fast with all those files running in the background with the same amount of memory you have.

 

[wizz0bang]

Sure, many of them are not needed for average non-networked users. By networked I don't mean through an ISP... I mean on a LAN. But you must know which are safe to disable or you may experience undesirable effects. Here is a good site I found:

Safer and faster XP

I've been a long time Windows user... since 3.0. NT 4.0 and 98SE were my main stays for a long time. I must say that I REALLY like XP. I am also a Linux freak... but at work, school, and for gaming, windows is a must. Now that I'm running XP, learning how to customize it and tweak it... I find that I never even boot my RedHat box... I still love Linux though. But XP (really NT 5.0 sp2 hehe) seems to finally bridge the gap between my gaming, personal use, internet habits, and productivity.... and the damn thing is stable as a rock too! More stable than Mac OSX hehe

 

[JackMDS]

Take a look here:

Win XP Services.