XP Processes and performance

[Spikadelia]

Got a new PC and have put together a network running XP on both PC's. I used 98 SE before on the old machine.

My old PC (P3 500, 256 RAM) is a sluggish beast and I notice there are an enormous amount of processes running using up memory in XP.

Any tips as to what to close down to acheive the best performance when running NC..... i.e the bare minimum to run the system and the game.

There are a lot of processes I don't recognise.

Ta furry mutch for any advice. ;)

[Rachius]

Never run XP on anything under a 500. Not worth it. Either 2000 or 98SE if you want windows.

[Omnituens]

agreed.

XP for show, 2k for the pro

[s0apy]

don't shut down any processes, other than obvious things like IIS and SMTP if, god help you, they have installed themselves for some reason.

everything else is either related to something else that you DO need, or is harmless enough anyway.

ok, that's not absolutely true, but you can end up getting right royally screwed if you start shutting down processes without knowing exactly what they do. and to know exactly what they do, you need to go on at least 3 or 4 3 week long intensive windows courses at a good few thousand quid a time.

out of the box, XP is fairly well optimised (granted not as good as 2K, but in the long run it's an easier OS to get along with) for modern hardware anyway, but truley the only thing that will make XP go faster is more RAM and a faster processor.

and, horrifyingly, the only thing that will make NC run faster is also more RAM and a faster processor - graphics cards do, basically, squat. going from an nvidia geforce4 ti 4800se 128mb to a 5900fx ultra with 256mb ram gave me presicely 0 extra fps on average. lol.

[Omnituens]

voodoo 3 3000 to a GF4 MX 440.

very little FPS gain.

I need a new mobo/cpu/ram :(

[Rachius]

XP Pro is fine if tweaked. But its idle processes are too much for a slow cpu to handle.

Anyone had experience with Win2k3? Thinking about getting ahold of that instead of 2k.

[Al3X]

rofl, i runned xp on a pentium 2 350 before i got my new putter :) and i even had a decent fps (geforce 1 32mb videocard).
note: neocron turned at "medium" graphic options
but it worked :) and good too :lol:

[Drake6k]

do what I did...

Go to start/run and type msconfig
Go to startup and uncheck everything you dont want starting with your system. Like all that spyware. That will get rid of lots of strange processes. (It is safe to uncheck everything)

Then look up every processes on google!
You'll learn what every one of them does and if its a system process or not.
If its a a driver for sound/video card or something then you may wanna leave it running. If its a virus or spyware then get rid of it lol. Look for a free virus scan called AVG if you need one.

Also go to microsoft.com and download Tweak UI for xp.
You can turn off little extra show crap xp has and your system will run faster.

Less you have running the faster your computer will run.

[Hippieman]

Uh its easy for a P2 233 with 64 Ram to run XP.

Lets see go to run and start.
Type in MSCONFIG
Go to services
Click the services you dnot need. I just put disable all on some comps.
Click ok
Restart.

Damn it I was a bit too late...

[Darkborg]

Win2k3 is not a good idea for gaming afaik.
But then again i might try it again as i found i had serius problems with my onboard sound and i now have an audigy yay me :)

generally i got low fps but that might stem from the above fact.

[Scikar]

Originally posted by Omnituens
voodoo 3 3000 to a GF4 MX 440.

very little FPS gain.

I need a new mobo/cpu/ram :(


Have you looked at things like disabling anti-aliasing, turning down texture detail and mip-map quality, and especially enabling fast writes?

[Artie]

i can get windows xp to less than 13 processes...it's great.

Do the msconfig thing...works wonders. Get spybot S&D for the spyware.