general PC tweaking/optimizing questions

Hello,

I was wondering if someone could help me out with a bit of Windows XP Professional "tweaking" or optimization.

I am trying to get someone elses PC running as well as possible. It is an AMD Athlon XP Processor with 256MB of DDR RAM and a 30GB HDD with a 128MB AGP Graphics Card.

Is there any way i can 'tweak' settings anywhere that are both safe and will give me better general performance. Games are never played, so it is purely general performance - mainly web surfing and burning DVD video to DVD discs.

Also, is it possible to make the CPU fan quieter. It seems to be quite noisy at times. It is a CoolMaster Fan with a setting knob that sits in one of the back-plates in the back of the PC casing.

Any help appreciated.
:thumbsup:

Picco

Remove all un necessary start up programs from starting when you start the computer, as this in cases delimites performance. Also, you could increase the virtual memory size but it'd be better to purchase more physical RAM and install it seeing as virtual memory reads/writes off the hard disk which is slower than actual RAM.

BTW, for DVD authoring, you're gonna need a bigger HDD than a 30gb..trust me on that one - I've got 2 250GBs :p
Keep your disks reguarly defragged as well. :)

In terms of your CPU fan, you can replace it fairly cheaply and easily with the "silent" ones. A very noisy fan sometimes means it's on its way out.

Jamie.

Change the style to the "Classic" Windows look, as that can speed up the computer considerably.

As for burning DVDs, any encoding that needs to be done will be slow, regardless of computer.