32 MAXIMUMPC APRIL 2004
Start with the basic fast-boot tweaks.
In the BIOS, disable “Floppy Drive Seek”
and select the disk on which your OS is
located as your First Boot Device. Empty
your Start menu’s Startup folder, and in
the System Configuration Utility, clear
the checkboxes of all but one or two of
the most essential Startup items. Also,
turn off any and all unnecessary Services
(aim for a maximum of 25 Services set to
Automatic and/or Manual). Finally, defrag
your hard drive; then download and run
BootVis (which is no longer available on
Microsoft’s site, but can be found via a
half-second Google search.)
Our first order of business is to lose
Win XP’s “Luna” interface. It looks great,
but it’s slowing you down, pal. Click
Start, right-click My Computer, and select
Properties. Navigate to the Advanced
tab and click the Settings button under
Performance. Select “Adjust for Best
Performance,” and click OK.
Give your proc and RAM a boost by
taking down your wallpaper and remov-
ing all but one or two desktop icons.
While you’re at it, know this: Everyone
but you finds your Windows sound
scheme obnoxious. Spare their ears and
improve your system’s boot speed by
clicking Start, navigating to Control Panel,and selecting Sounds and Audio Devices.
Once there, click the Sounds tab, select
“No sounds” in the Sounds scheme pull-
down menu, and click OK.
Now let’s get rid of your fonts. The sadtruth about fonts is that the more you have,
the slower your boot time. This is especially
true for machines with more than 500
fonts. If your font collection exceeds the 84
that XP comes stocked with, create a folder
outside of the Windows directory and move
the fonts there. You can move them back to
the Fonts folder when they’re needed.Disable the Windows startup screen
to shave off an extra second or two.
Press Start, then Run, then type mscon-
fig, and press Enter. Navigate to the
Boot.ini tab and check /NOGUIBOOT.
Click Apply, then OK.
Generally speaking, the simpler your
hardware setup, the quicker your machine
will boot. If you have unused hardware
devices listed in your Device Manager, dis-
able them. Press Start, then Run, then type
devmgmt.msc, and click OK. To disable a
device, click on the device in question and
select Disable. (Unused peripherals inte-
grated into your mobo should be disabled
in the BIOS.)
One of the biggest culprits of a slow
boot—and OS rot in general—is a mangled
videocard driver install. Prior to your next
videocard driver update, download and
install Driver Cleaner (www.driverheaven.net/
cleaner/). This utility removes all traces
of previous nVidia and ATI drivers and
ensures that your box is squeaky clean for
your new Forceware and Catalyst drivers.
As part of your regular computer
maintenance, periodically delete the
contents of your prefetch folder to
remove outdated entries. Navigate to
C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch, press Ctrl +A,
and then press Delete.7) Lower Your Boot Speed to 15 Seconds
The System Configuration Utility is one
of the first stops on the road to a speedy
boot. Check /NOGUIBOOT to disable the
Windows startup screen and shave a few
seconds off your startup time.8) Back Up Outlook
If you’re smart and determined
to avoid a catastrophic com-
munications breakdown in the
event of a nasty crash, you back
up your Outlook folders periodi-
cally. If not, shame on you! Here
are two easy methods:
You can manually back up
your Outlook files by using
the Import/Export command
under the File menu. Choose
the “Export to file” option from
the dialog box then choose the
Personal Folder File (.pst) option.
Select the relevant folders, give
the file a name, and choose a
location to save it to. We recom-
mend backing up to your hard
drive and to a CD-ROM.
Microsoft also offers a free
add-in for Outlook called
Personal Folders Backup that
will automate the process
for you. You can download it
from Microsoft’s web site at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/.It’s easy to argue that the best gaming server is the one on which your friends are playing. If
this is the case, download XFire from http://www.xfire.com. It’s a handy Instant Messenger-like app that
allows you to quickly see what your friends are playing and what server they’re on. And in a
quasi-Friendster way, it can even help you locate friends of friends for instant deathmatching.10) Find the Perfect Online Game Server
If a floppy that you need data from has
“died,” don’t wreck it by flinging it across
the room or running Scandisk on it over
and over until smoke appears. If the data is
really valuable, it’s important to protect the
original. Flip the write protect to On to pre-
vent further damage.
A misaligned floppy drive can often be
the culprit of a seemingly dead disc. Try
reading the floppy disc in various other
machines, especially older PCs—they often
have worn out drives that have a little
more “give” to them.
Download NetZ’s ResQflpy. It’s available
for free at http://www.invircible.com. This old but nifty
utility first lets you clone the bad floppy disk
and then experiment on the clone. This may
seem unethical to some folks, but whether
you’re talking data, sheep, or humans, tam-pering with a clone is far better than jeopar-
dizing the original. Just ask Jango Fett.
Boot your PC using a DOS disc and run
ResQflpy. It will prompt you to make an
image of the floppy. Run ResQflpy again
to copy the image from your hard drive to
a new floppy that has been formatted for
DOS. (Note: The program calls for you to run
it from DOS but we’ve actually run it from
Windows XP without incident.)
Once you have your clone, try running
ResQFlpy’s FixBoot utility on it by typing
FixBoot /S from the DOS prompt. This will
recreate the boot sector on your cloned flop-
py and hopefully allow you to access your
data—if the problem was simply a bad boot
sector. If this fails, you can fall back on Win
XP’s Scandisk or Chkdsk without any fear of
destroying your original data.9) Recover Data from Dead Media
DO-IT-YOURSELF GUIDE