Help speed up xp pro safely...

**attyallanlatras** · June 30th, 2009 05:48 PM

from boot, windows xp pro on my dell mini 12 seems fast. however, when I try to shutdown. things are quite slow. At times it takes around 5 minutes and it is still not off. What I do is I manually turn it off using the push-on button (and I do not know if pushing that button is in itself safe)...Can anyone suggest what I can do to speed things up....TIA

BTW, I have already updated the XP Pro to SP3 since the OS is genuine...

**ghosthunter** · June 30th, 2009 06:27 PM

Set your power button to HIBERNATE mode instead of pwoer down. It will save you a few seconds on powering up.

Alternative, you can use SLEEP MODE but it will mean the netbook will still use power in trickle mode. Power up from SLEEP is much faster.

**attyallanlatras** · June 30th, 2009 08:40 PM

Originally Posted by ghosthunter

Set your power button to HIBERNATE mode instead of pwoer down. It will save you a few seconds on powering up.

Alternative, you can use SLEEP MODE but it will mean the netbook will still use power in trickle mode. Power up from SLEEP is much faster.

how to hibernate? what is sleep mode? I am under windows xp pro and not vista or 7...TIA

**ghosthunter** · June 30th, 2009 11:16 PM

Originally Posted by attyallanlatras

how to hibernate? what is sleep mode? I am under windows xp pro and not vista or 7...TIA

go to CONTROL PANEL and click POWER OPTONS.

click the tab ADVANCED.

at the lower half of the window, you'll see "Power Buttons" with three sets of options. You can try figuring out the other two since the labels are self explanatory. What we are interested in is the "power button" option (second option). Select STAND BY (aka sleep mode).

click OK. Close the control panel.

Test it by pressing the power button of your netbook. After it's somewhat powered down, press the power button again.

Note: in sleep mode, the netbook is not fully powered down. Power is still running to critical parts of the computer like memory and cpu but in small amounts. Depending on the netbook (and battery size), a fully charged battery can sustain this mode for a full day to half a week.

Alternative is to choose HIBERNATE. This will force the PC to write the current memory contents to a file on the HDD and fully power down when you press the power button. If you press the power button again, Windows will load the last saved status from the HDD. Not as fast but this option doesn't use up the battery.

**Horsepower** · July 1st, 2009 01:29 AM

Honestly, just sell that thing and buy a Lenovo S12 (nVidia 9400M + ATOM), stuff it with 4GB of ram and opt for the HDD instead of the SSD and you're all set!

**Elroi** · July 2nd, 2009 05:17 AM

here's some tricks i'm using in xp pro sp2.. but you must be familiar in using regedit if you want to try this..

first, create a back-up of your registry or make a system restore point (in case something goes wrong)..

1. Go to Run, type Regedit and open the registry editor.

2. Now, find the following key : “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop” and select HungupAppTimeout; double click on it and modify the value to 1000. Click OK.

3. Next, scroll a bit down on the same key and find WaitToKillAppTimeout ; double click on it and modify the value to 1000. Click OK.

4. Next, find the following key : “HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop” and look for HungupAppTimeout and WaitTo killAppTimeout and modify their values to 1000, just like above. Click OK .

And last on the registry…

5. Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l and modify the last key WaitToKillServiceTimeout to 1000. Click ok and close the registry editor.

WARNING: Just to be safe, do not put values lower than 1000..

and that's it.. you can now do a "shutdown" test...

HTH