- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
That's kind of an open-ended question, there's a billion and a half things you can do to fine tune XP to run a little bit better/faster.
Having all the most current drivers for sound, video, and platform is always recommended.
Mostly, moderating your TSRs (programs that run in the background or on system startup) is the most beneficial. Try not to have any more than, say, 35-40 (Use CTRL+ALT+DEL to view how many processes are running) threads running at any one time; especially when you're gaming.
If you don't know what a particular thread does, Google the name of the .exe before you attempt to kill it. Almost all TSR .exes are known and recorded somewhere (I haven't looked in a long time, so I can't remember where)
In the RUN line of XP, type "msconfig" (Without quotes) to view the startup programs. Check out the 'Startup' tab. This is a list of programs that automatically run whenever XP starts up. If everything in here is selected, it will slow down the PC big time. Again, Google the names of anything that seems unfamiliar. Even if you're "pretty sure," research it first. Unchecking items in this list will cause the programs to NOT load automatically, they'll only load when you run them manually (Going into 'Start ---> Programs'). The programs are NOT uninstalled or deleted in any way, they simply aren't run automatically.
A final bit of advice, check out TweakXP. This is a good bit of software to fine tune your XP settings. Be careful, as much of the stuff they tune, they expect you to know a lot about. It is possible to sort of "mezz" up a PC with invalid settings. That's what their forums and help files are for though.
Good luck.