Teach you how to fly your Win XP

After Microsoft Windows XP was launched, it impressed a large number of computer users with beautiful interactive interfaces, coupled with excellent overall performance (including significantly shortening the start time and continue to use, and the Rapid Response of applications), so many users have to upgrade their operating systems to Windows XP, a good experience. However, in the process of use, people found that the interface is indeed a lot of beautiful, but the performance seems not so satisfactory. Why?

In fact, Microsoft has declared before Windows XP release that Windows XP does not require the most advanced processor, but it should have at least 300 MHz, A Pentium II-level or higher processor can achieve better performance. In terms of memory, 64 MB is the minimum memory requirement for running Windows XP, and MB is the minimum operating environment recommended by Windows XP. Of course, if there is more than 128 MB of memory, it is certainly a good thing, but in contrast, increase the memory from 64 MB to M, and then add the memory on the basis of MB, what we can see is that the performance gap is relatively small, and it depends on the workload to a large extent-this is like looking for "inflection point of the curve ", the benefits of increasing additional memory capacity after the inflection point will be relatively reduced-for most workloads, the inflection point is between 64 MB and MB. (Editor's note: Tests in the personal computer lab show that for most commercial applications, upgrading the memory from MB to MB will also significantly improve the performance of Windows XP, but after MB, unless image processing or other operations are performed, the performance improvement will not be obvious .) Therefore, before upgrading the operating system to Windows XP, you should first know whether the hardware conditions meet the above requirements. Do not blindly start the operation; otherwise, the expected results will not be achieved.

When the hardware meets the basic conditions, you can also improve the operating efficiency of Windows XP from the following aspects.

New installation of Windows XP usually provides better performance than upgrading the installation, because this installation can control the location of files and file metadata on the disk to a greater extent. That is to say, during Windows XP installation, You can dynamically determine the code and data required for startup based on the computer configuration, and optimize the storage location of these files on the disk. When a computer is started, Windows XP can send a large number of I/O requests that can be effectively processed at a high throughput, and find the best time to send these requests, these requests are also intertwined in the device detection and initialization phases. This can be done without increasing the entire startup time, thus greatly shortening the time required for system startup. During the installation process, it usually takes three times to complete the observation and optimization of this fast start.
Increase the system's html "target = _ blank> partition capacity by switching to a high-speed hard disk

According to Microsoft, the hard disk space occupied by Windows XP is 1.5 GB, plus the capacity of Office and other application software, the total capacity of the system partition should be 4 GB to 8 GB (depending on the number of applications ). Windows XP uses the virtual memory technology like Windows in the past (see figure 1). This technology refers to the use of extended memory by dividing a space on the system partition when a computer is working, to make up for the lack of physical memory. This space usually ranges from dozens to hundreds of megabytes. You can also change the virtual memory file to another partition by setting it (but it is recommended that you use the system partition) or adjust the disk space it occupies, but in any case it occupies part of the hard disk storage space, especially when large applications are used and the physical memory capacity is relatively small, the capacity of the virtual memory file is larger. Therefore, you should leave sufficient space for the system partition, that is, you must increase the capacity of the system partition when upgrading the operating system to Windows XP.

Configure hardware

This includes the BIOS settings that are commonly mentioned. For example, let the HDD-0 as the first boot device, open the DMA mode, allow memory fast self-check, boot does not detect the soft drive and so on, these settings can speed up the computer to varying degrees of START and run, there are many related articles, which are not described here. This is especially important for computers that use two data transmission lines to connect the hard drive and the optical drive. The popular hard drive and motherboard IDE interfaces support the DMA100 transmission mode at the same time. Therefore, the hard drive is usually connected to the motherboard's Primary IDE interface using the 80-line data transmission line. Most optical drives only support the DMA33 or PIO transmission mode. Therefore, the optical drive usually uses a 40-wire data transmission line to connect to the Secondary IDE interface of the motherboard. When the optical drive is released, the default jumper is Slave, so it occupies the Secondary Slave interface, which makes the Secondary Master no device, in this way, it takes a long time for the computer to perform self-check and start the operating system to detect the Secondary Master device without response, which wastes a lot of time. Therefore, we should change the jumper of the optical drive to the Master to occupy the Secondary Master interface, and leave the Secondary Slave interface empty, which can effectively shorten the system startup time by 10 ~ 15 seconds. This method works in all the operating systems of Microsoft.