Intel Application Accelerator - Speed up Disk Access

It would be great to download drivers that sped up your hard-disk access by 10's of percent wouldn't it? Well perhaps you can, Intel has made their Application Accelerator (IAA) available since last September. It reduces storage sub-system bottlenecks apparently. If you have a compatible Intel chipset (810 to 860) and a Pentium Celeron, III , 4 or Xeo

Increase XP NTFS performance

Last access time stamps
XP automatically updates the date and time stamp with information about the last time you accessed a file. Not only does it mark the file, but it also updates the directory the file is located in as well as any directories above it. If you have a large hard drive with many subdirectories on it, this updating can slow down your system.

Increase speed by tweaking prefetcher settings

This is an unique technique for XP, which could improve the performance significantly by tweaking the prefetcher (which is a cache folder).

HDD slowdown when booting

If, like I had , you have a 3min+ or slower boot time where Windows XP seems to sit for 2+ or so minutes with the XP logo doing nothing before everything comes to life, then do the following. 

Download Bootvis from www.microsoft.com and run it the next time you boot. Do a 'Trace' 
If it shows a very long 'HDD init' time of minutes rather than seconds then this is how to fix it.

This example assumes you have 1 Hard drive on your primary IDE channel and a DVD-ROM(or CD) 
and CD-R on your two secondary IDE channels.

Free-up Some More Disk Space

Windows XP uses a file called hiperfil.sys to save everything it needs when Windows XP goes into hibernation. If you are like me, and never use the hibernate function, you can turn it off. By turning hibernate off, Windows XP deletes the hiberfil.sys. This can free up the as much disk space as the amount of ram that you computer has.

Go to Control Panel/Power Options/Hibernation and untick the box. It's as easy as that. Now you will have plenty more disk space to install those mega programs!

Fix Broken and Slow Tab Issues in Internet Explorer 8

Some users that upgraded to Internet Explorer 8 experience issues with tabs not working properly or taking a very long time to load.  It seems for most users the issue can be attributed to a problem with actxprxy.dll not installing properly during the upgrade.  If you have a similar problem with IE8, fixing the issue is as simple as a running one command.

Just open up an administrative level command prompt and type in regsvr32 actxprxy.dll and hit Enter. Reboot your computer and your tab issue should be resolved.

Faster Boot-Up without tons of fonts

Many of the files that load during the boot-up process are fonts.  You probably only use a handful of them.  I suggest moving some you never use into another folder.  You won't be able to access the fonts in Word or Notepad.

1. Create a New Folder by right clicking on desktop.  New>Folder.
2. Open "Fonts" in Control Panel.  Switch to Classic View to find them easier.
3. Highlight a group of fonts younever use and move them to the other folder. Repeat if you have tons of fonts.
4. Put the folder into My Documents for easy access.
5. Reboot and see if it starts any faster for you.  If not, just copy the fonts back to the original font folder.