When using the start menu the you will notice a delay between different tiers of the menu hierarchy.  For the fastest computer experience possible I recommend changing this value to zero.  This will allow the different tiers to appear instantly.

1. Start Regedit.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
3. Select MenuShowDelay from the list on the right.
4. Right on it and select Modify.
5. Change the value to 0.
6. Reboot your computer.

Modify application timeout

The operating system has a set amount of time that a program must be frozen for before it is timed out.  Often this number is set too high.  But in some circumstances it is set too low.  Depending on if the program is doing a lot of calculations in the background the computer may think that it is timed out. To prevent this increase the value of the timeout in the registry.

1. Start Regedit
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
3. Select HungAppTimeout from the list on the right.
4. Right on it and select Modify.
5. Change the value to the new timeout value.
6. Reboot your computer.

Disable Indexing Services

Indexing services is a small program that hogs HUGE amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy.  This system process indexing and updates lists of the files on your system, so you can search for them quickly, but it's completely unnecessary.

To disable it, go to the Control Panel and click Add/Remove Programs.  Click the Add/Remove Window Components.  Simply unclick the Indexing services and click next.

Microsoft Speed-Up-Boot Tool

Microsoft has designed a tool to help in monitoring the boot up process of your computer. The tool has many cool features that allow you to find out how long each program running at start up is taking to load and when they load. For more information, visit the website by clicking here.

Increase speed by tweaking prefetcher settings

This is an unique technique for XP, which could improve the performance significantly by tweaking the prefetcher. Recommended hardware: PIII 800 or higher, 512M RAM or more.

1. Start Regedit
2. go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher
3. Set the value to either 0-Disable, 1-App launch prefetch, 2-Boot Prefetch, 3-Both ("3" is recommended).
4. reboot.

It will decrease the boot time but double and increase the performance of your XP.

Get System Uptime Only - Windows XP Pro

In XP Pro, in order to get your uptime you must execute the SYSTEMINFO command at the CMD terminal.
As you know, this produces other system information output, and you have to scroll up to see your uptime.

If you wish to receive ONLY your uptime information, simply copy and paste the following into notepad

@echo.
@systeminfo | @find "System Up Time:"
@echo.

And save as UPTIME.BAT (save to your windows dir if you want to be able to access it anywhere)

Now when you type UPTIME you will see just:

---------------------------
System Up Time: 5 Days, 20 Hours, 13 Minutes, 46 Seconds
---------------------------

Also, if you wish to create a shortcut to IP.BAT, or run it via the Run command, it may close before you can view the result
To stop this, add @pause after the last @echo. command, this will cause the terminal to wait for your response before closing.

Example:

@echo.
@systeminfo | @find "System Up Time:"
@echo.
@pause

will result:

---------------------------
System Up Time: 5 Days, 20 Hours, 13 Minutes, 46 Seconds

Press any key to continue . . .
---------------------------

enjoy!

(information about the code: @echo. produces a blank line, @systeminfo | @find "System Up Time:" causes the output of systeminfo to be piped to the find command, which looks for the line containing "System Up Time:", find then outputs your system uptime, the optional @pause causes the terminal to wait for user input before continuing. The @ before each command tells the terminal not to echo the command being typed.)

System Settings for a Game Machine

If you are a hard core gamer then the below tweak is for you. Below are a list of windows services that we recommend you change to the manual setting. To access the services click Start -> Run -> type services.msc -> click OK

Routing and Remote Access
Alerter
Application Layer Gateway Service** (only if firewall is not used)
Application Management
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
ClipBook
COM+ System Application
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Distributed Transaction Coordinator
Help and Support
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service** (only if do you not use the cd-rw xp record support)
IPSEC Services
Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service
MS Software Shadow Copy Provider
Net Logon
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network DDE
Network DDE DSDM
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
NT LM Security Support Provider
Performance Logs and Alerts
Portable Media Serial Number
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator
Remote Registry
Removable Storage
Server
Smart Card
Smart Card Helper
SSDP Discovery Service
System Restore Service
Telnet
Themes
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Volume Shadow Copy
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)
Windows Installer
Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions
Wireless Zero Configuration
WMI Performance Adapter
Fast User Switching Compatibility ** (only if fast user switching is not used or the machine have one user only)
Protected Storage
Windows Time
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Task Scheduler
Secondary Logon
Print Spooler ** (only if the pc do not have or use a printer)
Indexing Service
Error Reporting Service
Computer Browser
Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) / Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)