Tweak XP to work better with older hardware
There are several things you can do with XP to make it run better on older hardware.
- Change the display settings to use the standard Windows theme instead of the default XP theme.
- Under System Properties, Performance Options, Visual Effects, choose ‘Adjust for best performance’.
- Use 16-bit color depth on systems that use shared system memory instead of dedicated video memory.
- Set the Prefetcher to only grab boot files. Open Regedit and go to this key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters. Change the value of ‘EnablePrefetcher’ to ‘2′. Delete the contents of C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch and reboot.
Lastly, turn off any unneeded services. Here’s a good list:
- Error Reporting
- Help and Support
- Messenger
- Themes
- WebClient
- Windows Audio
- Wireless Zero Configuration