Slimming for your Win XP

Today's hard drives are getting bigger and bigger, and cheaper, but the software is growing faster, and many people still use 20GB and smaller hard drives. How to meet the software requirements for the hard disk? Start by thinking about the bloated Windows operating system.

The following operations are all based on the Simplified Chinese version of Windows XP installed with SP1. Most of the techniques are for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Some operations may affect the stability of the operating system. Be careful when using it.

Part 1:

After installing the operating system, you need to do the following. Fortunately, the following methods, as long as there is no error in the operation, will not have too much impact on the stable operation of the system, so you can try it with confidence.

1. Disable System Restore: System Restore can back up the state of the system at ordinary times and restore to the previous backup state after a problem occurs. Although this function is more practical, it takes up a lot of hard disk space. Usually, 12% of the available space of each hard disk partition is used to save the restore point. If you don't need this feature, you can disable it.

Right click on the "My Computer" icon and select Properties to open the System Properties dialog. Then open the "System Restore" tab, select the "Turn off System Restore on all drives" checkbox and confirm.

2. Transfer paging file: The paging file is the virtual memory we used to contact in Windows 98. By default, the paging file is placed in the root directory of the system disk. In order to save system disk space, we can transfer the paging file to other partitions. If you have more physical memory (for example, 512MB or more), you can also The maximum value of the paging file is set smaller.

Open the "Advanced" tab of the system properties, click the "Properties Settings" button, then open the "Advanced" tab in the new pop-up window, click the "Change" button, and then "Virtual Memory" Re-specify the location where the paging file is saved in the dialog box. Remember to click the "Settings" button next to the specified location, and you should change the initial and maximum settings of the system disk to 0 (Figure 1).

3. Temporary Folders: Many software will generate temporary files during use. These files will be saved in the temporary folder of the system disk and will be automatically cleared when the software is closed. However, some software may not be able to completely empty the temporary files due to design reasons or abnormal exit. Over time, the temporary folder will occupy a lot of hard disk space. Moving them out of the system disk is also easier to manage.

Also on the "Advanced" tab of the "System Properties" dialog, click the "Environment Variables" button and reassign the "TEMP" and "TMP" variables in the window of Figure 2. Location, it should be noted that the environment variables are divided into the current user's environment variables and system variables, respectively, to do the same settings. Select each variable and click "Edit" to re-specify the variable value (where the variable value refers to the new path, such as d:\\temp). The new temporary folder settings will take effect after you restart the system.

4. Disable hibernation: Whether you are going to use hibernation or not, Windows XP is enabled by default. This will waste a space on your system disk that is comparable to your physical memory. . If you are not going to use hibernation, it is best to disable hibernation to save space.

Right click on the blank space on the desktop and select Properties to open the Display Properties dialog box. Then click the "Power" button on the "Screen Saver" tab to open the Power Properties dialog box, then open "Hibernate" Tab, uncheck the "Enable Hibernate" option, and the new settings will take effect immediately.

5. Transfer IE cache: The webpages we have browsed will be saved in the IE cache, so if you open the same webpage again in the future, IE can directly call the webpage from the cache instead of connecting to the web server. To speed up access time. But now that broadband is becoming more popular, it seems that there is no need to use the cache on the hard disk to speed up access, then we can disable the IE cache or move to another location.

Open the "Internet Options" dialog box under IE's Tools menu, then click "Settings" under "Temporary Internet Files". If you are not ready to use IE Cache, drag "Used Disk Space" Slide the slider to the far left, otherwise you can click the "Move Folder" button to assign the IE cache to the hard disk partition outside the system disk.

6. Uninstalling Unwanted Components: Windows XP has no custom installation mode, so almost all components will be installed into the system. If some of these components are not available to you, you can also uninstall them. However, in the same case, we can't uninstall anything. Try the following method:

Enter "%systemroot%/inf/sysoc.inf" in the run and press Enter to open a board with WordPad. The inf file, which shows the installation and uninstallation of all Windows component programs, and we can modify this file to uninstall components that are usually not uninstalled at all. Open this file and click "Replace" in the "Edit" menu of Notepad, then enter "hide" (without the quotation marks) in "Find Content", then click the "Replace All" button on the right side, then save the file and shut down. Re-open the Add-Remove Programs in Control Panel and click on "Add and Remove Windows Components". Now you can directly uninstall many components that were previously not allowed to be uninstalled. And if you need to use these components in the future, you can reinstall them.

7. Transfer "My Documents": "My Documents" is a special folder. By default, all application generated documents will be saved in this folder, and this folder will be saved. In fact, it is also in the system disk. Transfer this folder to another partition, on the one hand can reduce the size of the system disk, on the other hand, if the system suddenly crashes and cannot be repaired, we can directly format the system disk to reinstall the system without worrying about how to back up "my" Important files saved in the document.

Right click on the "My Documents" folder, then select Properties, open the Properties dialog box, and click "Move" to transfer "My Documents" to other partitions.

8. Turn off memory dump: Although Windows 2000/XP is very stable, there may still be major problems, and the external performance is blue screen or crash. As a system administrator, I definitely want to know why the system is going wrong. Therefore, Windows 2000/XP uses a memory dump technology. If a major problem occurs, the system will first save the data in the memory to a dump file, and then restart, and the administrator can transfer through analysis. Save the file to understand the system's failure. Obviously, for our average users, there is no need to dump these files because we simply don't understand. Then disable it.

Under the "Advanced" tab of the "System Properties" dialog, click the "Startup and Recovery" button and select "None" in the "Write Debug Info" drop-down menu. And you can search all the "*.dmp" files and delete them. At the same time, enter "drwtsn32" in the run and press Enter to open the Watson doctor tool, where you cancel the "Dump all thread context", "Append to existing log file" and "Create crash dump file" Choice (Figure 3).

9. Transfer fonts: Usually Windows will save about 200MB of various system fonts. These fonts are saved in the system disk, and we can transfer most of them to other partitions. And does not affect the use of fonts at all.

We know that the installation and uninstallation of fonts is very simple, just copy it to the Fonts folder or delete it from the Fonts folder. Because we can choose to copy only the shortcuts of the font files when installing the fonts, this method can transfer almost all the fonts to other partitions. For example, to install a new font, open the Fonts folder in the Windows directory, and then click "Install New Font" under the "File" menu. Then the interface of Figure 4 will appear. Find the folder where we saved the font file, and then Select all the fonts you want to install (you can select multiple font files at the same time by pressing Shift), and finally uncheck the "Copy fonts to Fonts folder" and click "OK" on the right. By observing, it can be seen that the fonts thus installed are completely different from other fonts in the display, and a small arrow similar to the shortcut is added to the font. And we can also copy the system's built-in fonts to other folders, then delete (uninstall) in the Fonts folder, and then use the above method to install shortcuts. It's important to note that some important system fonts are not allowed to be uninstalled (because you can't remove them from the Fonts folder), then you should not tamper with these fonts.