Windows XP cleanup/speedup guide for Beginners, Experts and DAW-users

Please note that most of the tips here apply equally well to Windows 2000 ("win2k"), and many also apply to other Microsoft operating systems such as Vista and Win7.
Also, there are few, if any, optimisations, in existance, for general XP which do not apply equally to DAWs (digital audio workstations), graphics workstations and other computers in specialised scenarios. I have listed a few specialised tips for audio workstation users at the bottom, but these are the minority.

Easy Stuff

First of all, go into control panel/system/advanced/performance and set switch to 'adjust for best performance' (turns off a lot of stuff).
If you don't have Service Pack 3 already installed, install it. Some people will, of course, disagree with me here- but as long as you've got the firewire fix installed it's much better - one hell of a lot more secure too - plus there are significant performance increases in some areas with SP3. Note that SP3 causes problems with some wireless adaptors, particularly on notebooks, so if you're running wireless, you need to check with the manufacturer or their website to see if the drivers specifically support SP3.
Right-click each hard drive and turn off indexing for all files and folders (indexing saves inconsequential amounts of time when doing user searches for files, but overall slows system down). Note: you don't need to do this if you're also turning off the indexing service in the advanced section below.
Backup old projects and data on CD/DVD/External hard drive and delete from HD. The less files you have, the less time the drive spends searching through the file system. And less clutter of course, so you can focus on what's new.
If you're using Internet Explorer, change to Firefox or Opera, or Chrome (all are more secure, less-resource-heavy and faster).
If you're using Outlook or Outlook Express, change to Thunderbird or Eudora (both are more secure, better spam-filtering).
If you're using Windows Media Player, change to VLC and/or Media Player Classic (both are faster with less bloat). Remove Windows Media Player, cause it steals associations periodically (follow my method or buy XPlite). If using Media Player Classic, the Windows Media Codecs themselves can in fact be installed separately, without installing WMP, via Windows Media Lite.
If you're using Quicktime or Realplayer, uninstall, then replace with VLC or alternatively with both QuicktimeAlternative and RealAlternative (all of these programs are faster, with less bloat).
If you're using an Anti-virus program of some kind (AVG free or Microsoft Security Essentials recommended), turn off any "Shield" options i.e aspects which scan a file before you can use it or before running a program. Unless you or your family do the idiot thing ie. download programs and run them without virus-scanning them first, all these "Shield" programs do is slow down disk access and overall system performance.
Turn off action sounds in 'control panel/sounds and audio devices' (less incidental CPU & ram use - oh, and no annoying sounds).
Use Tweakui from microsoft to turn off any things which annoy you.
Finally, remove/uninstall any software you don't want/need (control panel/"add/remove programs"), deleting directories where the app doesn't clean up after itself (fewer files means faster disk access and more space, plus cleaning up means less junk in the registry). If you have a lot of preinstalled software from, for example, HP or Dell, you might want to download and run the PC decrapifier, which will automatically uninstall all bloatware that got preinstalled with windows. Of course, you might want to keep some of that, so use your discretion.
Then download Auslogics Registry Cleaner. Run it (means less junk to seek through when the OS or program is looking for a given registry entry).

Though I myself have never had problems with the registry cleaning programs listed here, it can sometimes be worth making a backup of your registry before you do any optimisation, just-in-case. A program for doing so easily and without hassle is the freeware app Erunt (by the same guy who makes the NTREGOPT program below).
Use the Registry/Starting Programs portion of JV16 Power Tools to remove miscellaneous startup programs that you don't want (e.g MS Office or Quicktime "Quickstart" ram-hogger apps, designed to make the program appear to start faster, when actually all they do is load a portion of the program at boot-time, and other miscellaneous useless annoyances like Java, Adobe and Quicktime updaters, etc). You can also do this using MSconfig (start menu->run->type "msconfig", hit enter, go to startup tab).
Download CCleaner Slim (also known as CrapCleaner) and run the cleanup wizards on that (both registry and file).
Then download and run NTREGOPT - and reboot (defragments the registry, removing the 'dead spaces', saving time and ram - does not work on Vista/Win7).
Scandisk all hard drives/partitions (tick the option 'automatically repair errors" when you do this - it may ask you to reboot). You can do this by going into windows explorer, right-clicking each drive, properties->tools tab->Check now.
Defragment every drive - an easy way to do this is to download the freeware tool JKDefrag which uses the windows defragment system to defrag all drives without you having to lift a finger - and it also does a better job of it, too!
(BTW JKDefrag is a necessity on systems using FAT32 drives, as the Windows Defragment tool will refuse to defrag large FAT32 partitions).

Slightly more advanced stuff

Check out a windows services guide for your operating system and disable the ones you don't need (black viper's services guides are excellent references). In particular disable themes (16MB memory usage) and the indexing service.
If still using IDE (PATA) drives, turn on UDMA66 (Ultra DMA) support. By default in Win2k and WinXP UDMA66 support for PATA/IDE drives is turned off, limiting the speed to the lesser UDMA33 standard. I don't know why this is, and Microsoft does not explain why on their guide on how to turn it on, save to say that this is by design. I don't know what the setting is by default in Vista.
MDGx's guide on how to turn it back on is the most accurate one (see further down his page). Please note that unless you're using ATA66 cables and both drives on any given channel are UDMA66-capable, this setting won't have any effect on your system.
Virtual memory settings: Control panel/system/advanced - go to the virtual memory settings and set the pagefile to a fixed size approximately 1.5x the amount of RAM in your system (1536MB on a 1GB ram system) - a healthy size and one your system is unlikely to ever need, but it's worth having it that high just in case. This is simply a rule of thumb, if you want to be more specific about your exact virtual memory requirements, load up as many apps as you're likely to use at once, or your most ram-hoggin apps, then hit ctrl-alt-delete, go to the performance tab and check out PF (pagefile) usage on the left. 4096MB is the limit per-pagefile under XP 32-bit (you can have multiple pagefiles, one for each partition). You are unlikely to ever need this much unless you run specialised apps which use vast quantities. The limit is much higher under 64-bit versions of windows.

Max and min pagefile sizes should - typically - be the same - this typically prevents pagefile fragmentation, unless your drive is already too fragmented to allow you to create a single, unfragmented file that size.
Turning off pagefiles, even if you have a large amount of ram, is typically detrimental to your system's performance (more information: 1/3rd of the way down this page). Also, some apps won't run (eg. photoshop 6.*) without one.
Putting the pagefile on a drive other than the drive that your system partition is on, is ideal (separate partitions on the same disk will not make a significant difference), as most of the time data is being transferred from the system drive and into the pagefile.
Control panel/system/system restore and tick 'turn off system restore for all drives'- NOTE: don't do this if you don't have an alternate method for restoring your system drive in the event of a system crash/power surge/hard disk error (I recommend Savepartition - a freeware app for 'ghosting' (backing up) any partition into a file on a FAT32 drive).
Make sure disk performance counters are disabled (a server feature that is useless on desktop machines) by going Start->run and typing "diskperf -n".
If you have the money, download XPlite from www.98lite.net and remove IE, Windows Media Player, Outlook Express and anything else you don't need.
If you don't, Nlite is an even better option (see "Misc stuff", below), but of course requires re-installation of the operating system, from scratch.
Go through your directories and delete any miscellaneous files you've created and left lying around.

Networking stuff

Go Control panel->Network Connections and right-click the specific network you want to alter, click properties. Click the network device "Configure" on the right. Go to the 'advanced' tab. Here you can edit and alter settings to do with your network adaptor. These are specific to your particular ethernet adaptor, so cannot be entirely generalised. However, generally some will reduce CPU load by using the adaptors own internal chipset (any 'offload' options), and some can drastically alter your network performance (jumbo frames, interrupt moderation rate, etc). Look up the various settings on the net and see whether the defaults are what they need to be, then alter accordingly.
Download TCP/IP optimizer from SpeedGuide.net, run and set the settings to "Optimal" for each of your network adaptors. This will enable and change window's settings for that specific network connection, resulting in, in some cases, major increases in thoroughput and overall speed. I have found that changing the values to anything greater than the settings for 2500Kbps does not result in any speed increase - for my two gigabit networks.
NOTE: TCP/IP connections may sometimes benefit from creating static IP's, in the case of internal networks rather than internet connection networks, however this is more of a trouble-shooting tip than an optimisation.

Misc Stuff

I don't recommend defragmenting your drive (or doing registry cleans) more than once every three months. More often than that is certainly a waste of time in the vast, vast majority of cases. Personally I recommend defragmenting every six months to most users. Maybe if you're doing a lot of shifting around of files or reinstallation of operating systems etc etc then maybe you will get additional benefit from defragmenting every month or so, but this would be a special-case. Note: The NTFS file system is not as heavily affected by defragmentation as FAT32 file systems are. FAT32 file systems also take longer to defragment.
Processor scheduling: there are a lot of sites which will tell you to set this to background services for audio applications and other specialised activities - I can't say I recommend this at all, except on a per-user basis. If you find your particular program that you use most of the time performs better/more reliably then go for it - otherwise, leave it alone. I've seen no evidence of performance increase with it changed to background services for any activity.
If you're installing XP from scratch I heartily recommend creating an Nlite'd version of your XP installation disc (you will need a running windows installation with Microsoft .NET 2 installed to run Nlite, as well as your Windows XP disc, the "Network" (full) Installation version of Windows XP service pack 3, and the Post-SP3 update pack).
Firstly, this enables you to configure everything the way you like it in the base install without having to do it in a gazillion different locations within windows later on. Secondly you can strip all the irrelevant stuff you don't use out safely.
And thirdly you can integrate (slipstream) service pack 3 and the update pack above into the installation so that you're not stuck with lots of redundant dlls on your HD later on.
Example: my previous (non-nlite) XP installation was 1.3GB for just the windows folder, with SP3 installed and all service pack uninstallation directories removed. By contrast, my current nlite'd xp install with service pack 3 integrated created only a 512MB windows folder, total.
So there's a considerable difference right there.
There are more pages on the web than I can count on how to optimise an Nlite installation, so just use google it if you're worried. The version of nLite for Vista is called 'vLite'.

Drive and Partitioning Stuff (for experts)

About WINXP file systems:

FAT (FAT8 or FAT16) is the fastest for less than 2000 files, yet also has the most limitations. Maximum partition size is approximately 2GB.
FAT32 is slightly faster than NTFS for less than 2000 files, can't store files > 4GB and you have to defrag it often. Maximum partition size is approximately 500GB - the XP partitioning tool is artificially crippled to only allow the creation of FAT32 partitions when the maximum size is 32GB, but external partitioning tools and previous windows versions can create FAT32 partitions at their real maximum size, and XP will work fine with them.
NTFS is slightly more secure, does not fragment quite as much as FAT32 but is slightly slower on most PC's when the number of files on a partition is less than 2000. On systems with massive amounts of files (example: file servers, network drives, web servers, sample/audio partitions)) I would recommend NTFS - this has to do with the algorithms NTFS uses for locating files, which are more scalable than FAT's method. I would estimate the performance difference to be about 5% (FAT32 > NTFS for low number of files, NTFS > FAT32 for large amount of files) of overall disc performance (not of total system performance, of course). Maximum partition size is huge (many terabytes).
NTFS's file allocation mechanism is grossly wasteful - it reserves at least 10% of the drive for the Master file allocation table, though it will give up this space to other files when the parition runs low on space. Therefore, for partitions which are solely storing singular files (pagefile or partition backup files) or infrequently-used data (program installers etc) it would not be the first choice.

About drive controllers, disk access and partitions

Disk access is usually ~35% faster at the start of a hard drive than it is at the end. Hard drives read from the outside of a disc to the inside, but as the outer rings rotate same speed as inner rings, but have greater circumference, they therefore yield more data per rotation, hence a better transfer speed and access times!
Copying data between drives is far faster than copying data to the same drive, as drives cannot read and write from a disc at the same time.
Copying data between drives on separate drive controllers can be even faster, given that there is a limited amount of actions that can be happening at once on a single drive channel. However, some drive controllers perform better than others, so use your discretion.
Most onboard drive controllers use the system CPU for some calculations. However some are faster than others, and use less CPU. You can find out which is faster/more-cpu-intense using benchmarking apps like HDTune free. The most common (currently) motherboard drive controller is the Intel ICHxR (where 'x' is the version number). The ICH is light on CPU for basic operation, heavier for RAID work.
RAID - all you need to know is: Raid 0 is fast but insecure, Raid 1 is normal speed (read speed can be faster than normal, but this depends on the particular RAID controller and scenario) but more secure than a single drive, Raid 5 is fast for reading but slow for writing and no longer reasonably secure in the days of 1TB drives (ditto RAID 6 in 10 years time), Raid 1+0 is the best all-round but uses the most drives (and is therefore the most expensive) - Raid 0+1 is slghtly less secure than 1+0 (same speed).
Ideally you want a RAID card which uses it's own chips rather than the CPU for it's operations, as some RAID activity can be processor-intensive (up to 9% CPU on a 4ghz dual-core). Typically the better RAID cards are the more expensive ones. Detailed info on RAID can be found all over the net - so just use google.

Partitioning tips:

Make your system partition small (6GB is typically enough) and have it at the start of your fastest drive (e.g a 10krpm drive is good). Only use it to store your operating system and programs. Move your 'My documents' and other 'special folders' to another drive using Tweakui from Microsoft (My computer tree/special folders).
Put your least-used data (e.g program installers, backups) on partitions at the end of drives. This ensures that the faster data areas get used by the more frequently-used data.
Change your system partition to 32kb or 64kb clusters NTFS, and your data partitions as 32kb clusters (FAT32 or NTFS). From my tests I can say this improved performance - on my system at least. If you're using an SSD drive, this becomes less relevant. If you can't repartition your drives, a more expensive partitioning app such as Partition Magic can change the cluster sizes without deleting the partitions.
If you can, make a partition dedicated solely to the windows pagefile (virtual memory file) at the beginning of a disk which isn't the same disk that the system partition is stored on. It doesn't need to be any larger than the pagefile itself.
Format it as FAT32 with 4kb cluster size - it doesn't need the extra security of NTFS, needs all the speed it can get, and 4kb is the default windows memory page size, which makes writes a little more efficient.
I generally don't recommend multi-booting to different installs of XP/Vista for different tasks - the performance difference is nil if you've set up your installation correctly, but the overhead of rebooting every time you want to do something different is huge, and a big time-waste. Not to mention losing twice as much space as well as having to build and maintain two separate installations. You're better off with one customised installation which works well as a whole, than two or more customised installs.
Using this information, make up your own mind about which file system(s) you feel you should use for each drive, and format/repartition according (warning for neophytes: formatting deletes all data on a drive - don't do it unless you know exactly what you're doing). You can essentially have as many partitions per drive as you want, but four or fewer primary partitions is ideal from a data recovery point-of-view (in case of accidents).
Good free partitioning software comes and goes (typically the really good stuff becomes payware, e.g BootIt NG), so just google to find current partitioning freeware.
If you're running a digital audio workstation (DAW) - then take a look at my brief but informative partitioning for DAW's guide.

Digital Audio Workstation-specific Stuff

If you're getting problems with audio glitching, latency & dropouts, try this: edit c:\boot.ini (NOTE: this file is system & hidden, so you'll need to turn off 'hide system files' in explorer/tools/folder options/view to see it, and you may need to edit it's attributes (right-click files & click "properties") to make it non-readonly & editable) - change the '/NoExecute=..." entry to just '/execute'. This turns off data execution prevention (which can cause problems/performance-issues with some drivers/firewire)- doing this from the control panel in windows (control panel/system/advanced/data execution prevention) doesn't work.
WARNING: If you screw up or delete the boot.ini file, or paste characters into it from a website (sometimes website characters aren't true ascii) XP WILL NOT BOOT.
If using firewire, revert to the original sp1 firewire drivers to re-enable proper firewire behaviour, or install the Microsoft hotfix (not recommended) - firewire support was intentionally crippled in sp2/sp3 by Microsoft (who have huge financial stakes in competing standard, USB).
Download & use PCI latency tool (freeware app) to change any high existing values (ie. larger than 64) to 32 - except for video, which can be set to 64 (pci latency settings for AGP are typically set unusually high for consumer video cards, which can cause audio problems/glitchs in some systems)- (NOTE: this can sometimes reduce performance in graphics-related applications such as games and visualisation-generators - but this is dependent on the game/visualiser in question).
If you work with a lot of VST plugins, and have the time and the money and an extra machine(s) you're not using (or using intermittently), the FX-teleport plugin from FX Max can save a lot of CPU and work time.
Consider having a small partition near the beginning of a disc for plugins (2GB or smaller, FAT/FAT16, 32k-cluster sizes best), as well as a separate partition (NTFS, 32kb cluster size) specifically for samples (note: keep audio projects and project audio files on a separate disk from your sample partition if possible, as this will create faster access if a project is using a sampler and normal audio at the same time). See the full partitioning for DAW's guide here.
Having a system which doesn't connect to the internet does not make your system even slightly faster for DAW work - that much is a myth. The small amount of files which make up an internet browser's cache do not impact significantly on system performance. Not being connected to the internet does mean you can remove virus programs and firewalls, however if you read my notes on virus programs above, you'll find that the only aspects of these programs which harm system performance are the "Shield" aspects, which in most cases can be turned off with no risk to your computer unless you are a complete moron and download programs without scanning them (or if you use insecure programs like Microsoft's Outlook and Internet Explorer).
If you're running Tracktion, I have a separate page for getting performance out of it here.

Hardware Stuff

A system optimised using all the directives above will not require more than 512MB of RAM to run well, under XP at least, and will not benefit from more than 1GB of RAM unless you have specific applications or plugins (eg. samplers, computer games) which require or benefit from more ram.
Regardless of how much ram you have, the above directives (particularly disabling specific services) will free up more of your existing memory.
More than 3GB of ram on a 32-bit system is often a partial waste of money. Please read my extensive guide to Operating systems, the 3GB memory barrier and the various OS memory limitations here for more details. Also, many 32-bit applications are not, by default, able to access more than 2GB of memory (virtual or physical). This can, however be addressed by using the freeware laatido tool to patch executables and dlls to be large-address-aware (access more than 2gb of memory).
Contrary to what many musicians seem to think, no one motherboard manufacturer is necessarily better than the other. It comes more down to the class of board you buy - Asus, Gigabyte and most of the others have entry-level boards, middle-range boards and server-class boards, as well as a range of other types. Not only that, but middle-range boards are not necessarily worse or less stable than server-class boards (though typically they will be). It pays to know your specifications well and to know what you're looking for in terms of features, what the best chipsets are and so on and suchforth. Motherboard "roundup" reviews can be helpful for initial selection. Having said that, if you're not overclocking or worried about a lack of features, Intel boards are typically the most stable and have the best warranties of all motherboard manufacturers.
10krpm hard drives are of course great, but many 7200rpm drives come close in terms of overall rate-of-transfer performance nowadays, if not in terms of actual seek times. Look up recent drive roundups on google to see what's best recently.
Your power supply (PSU) is important. More important than you think. A cheap one is fine for household machines, but not for power-hungry daw or gaming setups. Most cheap power supplies fail at even 80% total loading e.g See this video (yeah, it's corsair, a PSU manufacturer - but other people have done similar tests with the same results).
The guide here will tell you how much power you need for your system *on average* (you want to double the wattage and buy a PSU with *roughly* that wattage, preferably), but ultimately it's the brand and quality of the PSU that's more important than the power rating. A good mid-range 400w Coolermaster, Corsair or Thermaltake (for example) PSU is going to be far better than a 500w no-name brand, hands-down, when it comes to system stability and actual *genuine* power delivery.

Additional Information

OS and System RAM limitations guide (includes info about the 3GB memory switch and PAE)
Removing Windows Media Player guide
Tracktion Performance Tips
Sound-on-Sound's XP DAW Performance Tips - a few things I didn't bother going into, a lot of things I disagree with. The advice on services and processor scheduling is innacurate. Use your own discretion in reading.
RAID disk array information presented fairly cleanly and thoroughly
Nlite

All advice given without guarantee - use your brain - if anything dies/fries/stops/explodes, see a doctor (but don't talk to me).
Having said that, my contact email can be found here. If you think I've got something wrong you're welcome to tell me-
M@

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