3 Reasons Your Computer Loads Slow

Why your computer loads slow can be attributed to a few reasons within the Windows operating system and because of some types of programs that clog up your memory and CPU usage that slows the computer down when loading to Windows and then when you log into Windows as well. The three main reasons why your computer loads slow are as follows:

Invasive Software
One reason your computer loads slow is that you may have some software that runs on startup that consumers and amazing amount of power leaving nothing for other programs and the user. Most often this culprit is an anti-virus checker that scans your startup and files every time you start your computer causing it to load slow. To combat this you can often disable the startup check or even disable the entire program and only use it manually if you feel secure enough as many virus checkers are overkill.

Fragmented Hard Drive
When data is moved around your computer and programs and files are deleted, installed, changed and manipulated it causes an issue called fragmentation which is when data is all over the hard disk and simply put, Windows has to spend a lot of time following references and links to all parts of the hard drive to collect all the data needed to run itself and other programs. This can cause your computer to load slow and continue to be slow when in operation as well. To fix this you can go to the System Tools in Windows which has a program called 'disk defragmenter' which finds all these fragments and sorts them in order creating a faster running hard drive. Be warned though a badly fragmented drive can take hours to defrag!

Registry Errors
One problem which is harder to fix and is a major reason your computer loads slow is that of registry errors. The registry is where Windows stores all the software and hardware instructions to run your computer, unfortunately over time errors appear often from programs not uninstalling correctly. This is harder to pick and harder to correct that the other reasons but when your computer loads slow even if the other things are fixed this will always be an invisible issue causing performance problems.

Source : http://www.ezinearticles.com/index.php?3-Reasons-Your-Computer-Loads-Slow&id=1251863

Speed Tweaks For XP - Get Maximum Windows Performance

We would surely want to get the best out of the operating system that we have in our own computers. Sometimes, many experience a little slow down with our Windows operating system. We still haven't fully identified some of the things that could speed up our Windows XP operating system. All you need to have are some speed tweaks for XP. Once you are able to know some of these, you will have your Windows XP work to their full advantage without even budging a little. This article will offer some of the hundreds of speed tweaks for XP to give your Windows a little performance boost at every use.

Having the best out of your Windows XP system is not only about making it work faster than you want it to be. It is also being able to see the fonts clearly in your screen so you could input data faster. ClearType is one of the options provided by Microsoft in their systems in order to provide the users with a clearer and more improved appearance of text, especially when they are using LCD flat screen monitors. All you have to do is to visit the Microsoft Typography services and follow the instructions that it says. After installing the software provided in the link, you can now adjust ClearType in your Control Panel.

The Windows Media Player is another tool which we often use in our computer. Sadly, though, there are times that we haven't fully used the capability of this program to its best extent. If you are a movie buff and you would like to watch a flick while enabling the best high quality video and audio in your media player, then all you have to do is to tweak your XP to set it in an above normal priority. Just create a new textfile in your C drive, but give it with a .bat extension. Once that you've saved it, right click the file and choose Edit. Put this line in the textfile: start /AboveNormal C:\"Program Files"\"Windows Media Player"\wmplayer.exe %1 %*. Save the file and close it promptly, making sure that it has a .bat extension. Next step is to register your media files to be included in this batchfile. In Windows Explorer, go to Tools, then choose Folder Options. Go to File Types. Go to the AVI filetype and click Change. Point to the Above Normal file that you have created and click OK.

If you want to speed up the performance of your system, then you have to adjust the graphics. Sure, Windows XP boasts of a lot of state-of-the-art graphics, but this can sometimes make your system run slower. Go to the My Computer icon and click Properties. Go to the Advanced tab, and click the button under Performance, and navigate to the Visual Effects tab. Select Adjust for Best Performance. This will let your windows assume a Windows 2000 look, but nevertheless, this will speed up the performance of your operating system.

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NTP Servers - Basic NTP Configuration

Network Time Protocol has been developed to keep computers synchronized. All computers are prone to drift and accurate timing is essential for many time critical applications.

A version of NTP is installed on most versions of Windows (although a stripped down version called SNTP -Simplified NTP- is in older versions) and Linux but is free to download from NTP.org.

When synchronising a a network it is preferable to use a dedicated NTP server that receives a timing source from an atomic clock either via specialist radio transmissions or the GPS network. However, many Internet time references are available, some more reliable than others, although it must be noted Internet based time sources can't be authenticated by NTP, leaving your computer vulnerable to threats.

NTP is hierarchical and arranged into stratum. Stratum 0 is timing reference, while stratum 1 is a server connected to a stratum 0 timing source and a stratum 2 is a computer (or device) attached to a stratum 1 server.

The Basic configuration of NTP is done using the /etc/ntp.conf file you have to edit it and place the IP address of stratum 1 and stratum 2 servers. Here is an example of a basic ntp.conf file:

server xxx.yyy.zzz.aaa prefer (time server address such as time.windows.com)
server 123.123.1.0
server 122.123.1.0 stratum 3
Driftfile /etc/ntp/drift

The most basic ntp.conf file will list 2 servers, one that it wishes to synchronise too and an IP address for itself. It is good housekeeping to have more than one server for reference in case one goes down.

A server with the tag 'prefer' is used for a trusted source ensuring NTP will always use that server when possible. The IP address will be used in case of problems when NTP will synchonise with itself is. The drift file is where NTP builds a record of the system clock's drift rate and automatically adjusts for it.

NTP will adjust your system time but only slowly. NTP will await at least ten packets of information before trusting the time source. To test NTP simply change your system clock by half an hour at the end of the day and the time in the morning should be correct.

Source : http://www.ezinearticles.com/index.php?NTP-Servers---Basic-NTP-Configuration&id=1257344