Cheap isn’t necessarily better for you here.  So what happens to hosting under the hood considering the above and the prices they offer.  Here is a couple of things that might get cut to save you money:

• Hire cheaper support staff.  For example, from expensive $12 an hour support staff to $2 - $4 an hour support staff personnel outside the hosting company’s home country.
• Cut support staff wages.
• Squeeze more clients on servers.
• Use older hardware components for servers you are on.
• Charge high fees for exceeding account limits.
• Controls to setup basic things like subdomains and email accounts are likely be more involving and technical.

If you are a novice user to the web and would like to spend some time with support staff getting the help you are looking for or for customizing your account, you might find yourself following complex and seamingly disorganized and broad set of instructions to configure the most basic things.  This means heavy reliance on support staff who also have been cut and payed less, meaning, they may be less adept at resolving your issue.  This is an important consideration because otherwise, you’ll end up using alot of their time and your time.  This again leads to another potentially problematic thing.  The more time you spend with technical support telling them what to do, the more likely something can go wrong and a simple thing can turn into a nightmare.  If the support staff tell you it’s possible to begin with. 

So the bottom line is that it’s truly what you pay for.  So unless you are an expert, you might not benefit here.

You are a more experienced user.  You know and understand the ISP business and have all but the most advanced knowledge of things and what to expect.  You know things like what a .htaccess file is about and won’t call in to technical support for your ISP to figure it out.  You know how to use FTP and it’s limitations and occassional problems.  You know HTML, and have done some CSS and have an idea what XML is and even how to write an XML document.  You know how to configure Microsoft Frontpage or another publishing tool and understand how to hook it up with your host based on your reading off the ISP site or other resources online.

You also understand that an ISP, other then in regards to direct problems with a hosting package isn’t responsible to teach you how to create your site: that is your task.  You also understand that to get such support, you need to either look for it online through search engines or on the ISP website in the FAQ sections.  This is a norm and is to be expected.

In this case you still might not want the cheapest ISP.  You can probably avoid the most expensive ISP as well unless there are specific reasons to justify the cost (ie features not found anywhere else)

 You not only understand how to figure out the ISP’s instructions available either by email they provide or their website including locating the FAQ, you also know how to identify when a problem is related to what you are doing or your ISP is responsible but also how to resolve problems related to your actions without having to call technical support.

You also understand that when your website is unreachable and you determined it’s your ISP’s fault, you do not call the ISP trying to find out why you could not access your website, you take lunch for 30 minutes and try again later or work offline and get your files ready when your website comes online. 

You also understand that there will be wait times when you call. 

In this case, a cheap ISP will do for you since you understand the shortcoming of ISP’s that offer cheap solutions.  You understand their limitations. 

 This depends on what you need to do with a host.  Hosts that offer 1.5 Terabytes for their users, are betting that not all their users will use up all that space and you are likely going to use only perhaps 5% of the advertised space.

The servers the ISP uses are also probably a couple of generations old and not only do they not even have 1.5 Terebytes in total, they probably don’t even have the space on the entire server the ISP is offering you.

Then how come they offer me this space if they don’t even have it on their entire server?

This is purely Marketing.  Many ISP’s have hundreds of accounts on servers and the space of the entire server is likely no more then 500GB at today’s standards.  And that is a good server. They are simply betting that you could never fill up that space and only have a few MB of files well below 1GB worth.  This is especially true on shared hosrint accounts.

What if I do fill up the space to 100% of my account?

You will definitely not fill it up to over 30GB very easily.  Even at today’s bandwidth speeds, it would take you nearly a month constantly uploading data (24/7) to fill up your web host space to 30GB let alone anything over that.   Today’s connections are simply limited by their upload speeds.   In fact, FTP and file system limits and other software used to upload will also have their limitations further impeding your uploads.  In fact, the combination of problems along the way to filling up your space would cause you so much headaches and problems it would make the task itself very unpleasant.  All ISP’s are well aware of such limitations including the fact that it would take you forever to fill up their advertised space.

Also consider the more you upload the more you have to download when backing up.

You understand that 99.9% downtime means little.  You understand there are a number of downtimes even if you don’t see it readily available on an ISP site:

• Network uptime.
• Server downtime.
• Website downtime.

You also understand that if a company doesnt’ specify which of the three, in the least, the dowtime applies to, you know they mean Network uptime which doesn’t include any downtime from Server and Website problems.  You also understand that today’s networks have near 100% uptime and are rarely at fault for any downtime.

You also understand that downtime is an average.  This means that when some people may have downtime of 99.999%, a few would have to have downtime as low as 95% for the average of 99.9% uptime to be achieved as the ISP advertises.

You also understand that when an ISP advertises a single uptime for say only the Network part, the uptime for the other components is not guaranteed and is likely much less and that this indicates more of a marketing feature that doesn’t really reflect the actual uptime of the ISP and your site.

You also understand that when you have shared hosting and some other user is causing a problem on the servers, your site may be impacted. Further to that, you also understand that it may take your ISP some time to figure this out while your site is impacted as well.

You know there is no such thing, or is very very rare if at all, even if advertised.  You also know that when you sign up for a 2 year contract and you leave before then, you won’t get any refund or if ever most likely a prorated refund. 

As a result, you understand that you should not commit yourself to a long term contract with an ISP when you first test an ISP out but only sign up for a few months at best to test first.

You have also REALLY read the terms of service and privacy policy and fully understand it and know all there is available to know about the REAL DEAL.

This is avery handy thing to have running on a server when you are a web host.  This ensures that when someone uploads a very inefficient and CPU intensive task, it won’t overload the server.  By overloading I mean causing the server CPU usage to spike as high as 100%.  This is a feature that has to be tweaked on a LINUX, UNIX and Windows servers as it does not come preenabled.  In my findings by calling and emailing dozens of ISP’s only two ISP’s had this at the time one being my own ISP 1and1.com.

How is this usefull?

This effectively prevents any users from creating a scenario no a server which would cause delay for your website. 

It is also noteworthy to ask if the ISP limits CPU usage by application.  For example if an application uses the CPU for over a predetermined amount of time, it will then be asked to share CPU usage with other applications vying for CPU time.  (All very technical stuff but worth while to ask)

This question is very heavily related to the one above.  The reason i that you will be uploading stuff to your website some of which may not be what you wrote.  Possibly the software can cause some unforseen problem and cause your ISP’s server problems.  You should find out what will happen to your website once this scenario occurs.  Some common actions ISP’s will take.

1. Delete your website.  Do not expect a refund.  This is draconian and only a few hosts may end up doing this.
2. Suspend your website.  You can then contact them about the cause.  Do not expect a refund in this case, even if it’s not your fault.
3. Remove the application / script that caused the problem.  Suspend the service for your site that the script used to overload the server: IE HTTP which is the service used to display your site to visitors
4. Move the script out of the way and notify you on it.
5. Fix the script and notify you on it.

Again these points are important to know.  Ask a potential ISP what they would do.  It will also indicate their level of interest in helping you.

Learn the How and Where before you sign up.  List of questions to ask about cancellations.

1. What will happen when I cancel midway in my plan?  Find out if your refund will be prorated.
2. Where do I cancel?
3. What will happen to my site when I choose to cancel?  Some ISP’s may give you a grace period or even offer extended FTP access for you to move your files off the server.  Some may even backup your site for a period of time in case you come back to reinstate the site. 
4. Will I be given a backup of a site before or after I cancel?

Many ISP’s , perhaps due to bililng errors or miscommunication with you, may continue to charge you past your cancellation date or expiration date if you choose not to renew.

This is obviously wrong and can be a hassle.  For this reason it’s sometimes good to pay in ways other then credit that the ISP can’t continue to charge you otherwise you’ll be calling your credit card company to cancel your credit card, but that’s a hellish scenario.

When testing out a new host, you may wish to opt for other payment methods then credit and also ensure you do things proactively and not do things like cancel in the last minute.

These are essentially D.O.S. (DOS) attacks or Denial Of Service attacks.  They occur when a party on the internet wishes to take down your website and does so by trying to open thousands of connections per second to your site and the server.  When they do, subsequent connections to the site cannot occur and everyone else gets a timeout which will effectively block your legitimate visitors.

Smart ISP’s will run software to prevent this from occurring by automatic software that will be in place to prevent such attacks.

Other ISP’s will rely on their technical support to prevent such attacks which is not necessarily as good as there will be a response time involved which can stretch for a while depending on the level of support the ISP has.

Many ISP’s will limit the amount of data you and your uers in total can upload and download in total for a given month.   This is important for another reason.  If you put a large amount of files on your website, it’s possible that either malicious users or even legitimate users will download so many of the files that it will push your usage over the designated limited placed by your ISP.

This is where many ISP’s will start making alot of money on you.  They will charge you as much as $6 / Gb downloaded over your limit!  If you go over by 100GB that’s $600 they will charge you.  It is therefore highly recommended to either ensure your host has some limits in place that would send you a warning when you are approaching your quota so you can take measures to prevent it.

Smart ISP’s will implement some protection against this by allowing a certain speed of download/upload from your site in such a way that it isn’t noticible to you.  It is recommended to ask this.

This is another good question to ask.  However, unless the hack poses a threat to the server, your host will likely mention that you would be responsible for cleaning it up.

It is however good to ask what remediation steps they may be willing to help you with.  Most UNIX / Linux Administrators for an ISP may be able to assist you here in removing the intrusion and related software used in the hack.

This is essentially a plugin for the Web Server (HTTP) .  Mod security is similar to a firewall however the setup and rules are very different for mod security then a firewall.  Mod security also functions by interpreting the traffic coming in through port 80 (HTTP) for signs of problems wiht requests, and blocks requests that are determined malicious based on some defined rules.

You can visit http://www.modsecurity.org/ for more information on this.  This is definitely one you can ask your ISP if they have and use as it can save you from many hack attempts.

Most ISP’s will backup but you should ask all ISP’s if they do.  Most other ISP’s will do backups but it may not be readily clear on their site with regards how they do it.

ISP’s know that many users upload music and video files which can become huge.  Some users even hold collection of CD images (ISO’s) on their websites which are enormous.   Many ISP’s will then do backups selectively on such websites, for example skipping all music, video and CD image files.   Or they may backup only files with certain extensions such as .php, .htm, .html, .txt etc.  This is a good question to ask as well.

Call their technical support at various times in the day to determine how their response is like.  Ask some simple questions you might be interested in or better yet ask them the above questions to see their level of understanding.

Then call again a couple of days later to find out if they give you the same answer.  I have not yet found one where tech support will provide the same answer each time you call but there are some that came in very close.

Why is defragmenting helpfull?
This is because most files on a disk are saved in many small pieces spread over your entire disk instead of one single piece.  When you open a 1MB word document, the file could actually exist in 100 different pieces all over your disk.  Each time you read a file, Windows has to read all the pieces before it opens the file for you.  Each time your disk jumps between the pieces which are all over a disk, it is wasted time. Defragmentation places all the pieces of files together so they are a single big piece, thereby eliminating the time it takes to find all the pieces and reducing the time it takes to read the file.  In most cases, this can make your system start up and react noticibly quicker.

To start the defragmenter follow any of the two below steps:

I) Get to the defragmenter using My Computer:

1. Click the ‘Show Desktop‘ icon on your task bar (or Launch Bar)
2. Double click the My Computer icon on your desktop
3. Right click on  the disk you want defragmented then select Properties
4. On the Properties panel select Defragment Now…
5. Click either Analyze to obtain a fragmentation report or Defragment to start the defragmenter

II) Get to the defragmenter using Windows Explorer:

1. Right click the Start button
2. Select either Explore or Explore All Users to open the Windows Explorer
3. Right click the drive letter for the drive that needs to be defragmented
4. On the panel that opens click Properties
5. On the Properties panel select Defragment Now…
6. Click either Analyze to obtain a fragmentation report or Defragment to start the defragmenter.

NOTE: You should carefully review any below actions recommended.  If you are not comfortable disabling anything to do with security, or have a sensitive system to protect, you may wish to skip this section and avoid using this recommendation.  This option also assumes you have a working and properly configured (software) firewall on the machine and possibly even a router firewall on your home network.

How helpfull will this be?

You can test this to assess the benefit to you.  Disconnect yourself from the network / internet by disabling the network NIC card you connect through or simply pulling out the network / USB cable responsible for connecting you.  You do this to be safe.  Then, disable the Antivirus software you have completely including any services it starts through the Windows Services panel.  Ensure you write down the state of all the optiosn prior to doing this.  Then restart Windows

Why is disabling this feature helpfull and is it safe?
While antivirus software is virtually a necessity today, most antivirus software will come preconfigured with on-access file scanning.  This option will scan files when they are opened and closed or one or the other.  This will have a very significant impact on how fast applications load on your system, particularly during startup.  In fact, the impact can be so much, that after installing many Antivirus applications, your system may be more than twice as slow if not more.  For this reason disabling this feature can be safe and at the same time have a significant impact on how quickly your system reacts. 

Is this safe?
Usually, when the above option is left enabled, it causes your system to scan the same file over and over again each time you do even simple actions in windows.  Moreover, it only scans the same 10% - 5% of your files over and over.  On a system that has an antivirus program, scanning files when they are opened or closed is highly unlikely to yield any viruses 99.9% of the time if the file has already been repeatedly scanned.  And even 0.1% chance of viruses would be a high rate of viruses on most computers and is indicitive of an unprotected network / workstation installation.  All good antivirus software will pick up viruses when they start to run and prevent them from doing damage anyway, provided it is an up to date version.  Moreover the weekly or daily total system file scan most antivirus applications have will catch viruses inside files cleaning them at the time.  Many viruses will reside in files you do not usually open or open very rarely anyway so this feature will not catch those until a full system scan occurs anyway.  Viruses are like any other programs and need CPU and memory to run.  As long as they are not running they are harmless.  When they do run, active memory is scanned by most if not all antivirus software which will pick up and eliminate the virus.

Disabling AVG Free Antivirus on access scan::

1. Double click the AVG icon to bring up the AVG Control Center
2. Double click the Resident Shield
3. Select any of the following three options (from lowest security impact to highest):

• Uncheck On-close scanning option
• Select Scan infectable files instead of Scan all files
• Uncheck Turn on AVG Free Resident Shileld protection to disable this feature alltogether.

Disabling Symantec / Norton Antivirus on access scan::

1. Click Start
2. Programs
3. Symantec Client Security
4. Symantec Antivirus Client
5. Select/Unselect any of the following combinations under the Configure menu File System Auto-Protect section (from lowest security impact to highest):

• Under Advanced menus Scan files when section select Modified (scan on create) instead of Accessed or modified (scan on create, open, move, copy, or run)
• Under Advanced menus Startup options section select Symantec AntiVirus start instead of System start.  (For faster boot up)
• Selected instead of All types and modify the file types
• Uncheck Enable Auto Protect (Enabled)

Disabling McAfee on access scan:

In the works!

Why can this speed things up for me?
Your registry is a list of startup options, commands and what-not that windows reads and goes through on each startup or even during runtime for your applications.    When the registry has erronous entries or links to files that no longer exist etc, Windows will take time to look at each of the settings in the registry including any broken links and try to find the files each time.    Eliminating a broken link or broken registry keys allows windows to process process the correct ones instead of wasting time on erronous ones each time.

There are a number of tools out there that can be used for this:

1. Registry Mechanic from pctools.com
2. Windows Registry Repair from 3bsoftware.com
3. RegCure from regcure.com
4. RegistryFix from registryfix.com

NOTE: The effect of this option on your installation will depend on the number of partitions you have on your current drive and number of physical hard disks in your system.  Effectiveness of doing this is generalized in below table (Benefits are dependent on how much you use email and the size of your email box):

 Why can this speed things up for me?
If you have alot of email dating back, relocating your inbox to another physical drive or logical drive can reduce space usage on your main drive as well as contention with other running applications.  The lower your space usage on your main partition/drive the quicker applications will generally respond and the less wait time you will have.  The greatest benefit here is if you have another hard disk in the system.  Placing the Inbox emails on another drive can improve performance since accessing your email in anyway will not impact the main disk (ie C:\>) where Windows runs from nor other applications that share the same drive.

Another significant benefit here is that if you ever need to reinstall Windows on the main drive C:, your Outlook files would already be out of the way and not clobbered by the new installation.  In addition, new emails you receive will not go to using up space of your main Windows drive C: and thereby reducing your maintenance on it.

Microsoft Outlook Express:

1. Locate your existing Inbox file.
   • From the main menu, select Tools -> Options -> Maintenance tab -> Store Folder… button.  Panel with folder/filename settings should appear.
   • Note the path under the Your personal message store is located in the following folder column of the open panel.  The path may appear  C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{A8034645-C37F-4373-A1E5-594B8705A2A9}\Microsoft\Outlook Express  or similar.   This is the root path of your mailboxes in Outlook Express.  Your mailboxes should reside in the above path.  Optionally, copy and paste the folder into an Explorer window to find it’s contents.  Close Microsoft Outlook Express.
2. Create the same folder path on another partition or drive.  For example, instead of C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\ you might now create  D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path where D: would reside on either another partition or even better, a partition residing on a separate hard disk. Replace D: with your choice of drive or partition.  You could optionally also select something like D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path\<USER> for the individual accounts, if any.
3. Copy (NOT move) your inbox from your old path residing in C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\ to the new path you created under D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path.  For example if your old mailbox was named C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\Inbox.dbx it would now be D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path\Inbox.dbx or similar after being copied.
4. Change your Office Outlook settings to point to the new path.
   • Select Tools -> Options -> Maintenance tab -> Store Folder… from the main menu on the mailbox you would like to move.  Panel with folder/filename settings should appear.
   • Click Change… on the Store Location panel then select the new path you created above (Per above case D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path\).
   • You may receive "There appears to be an Outlook Express message store already in the folder you have chosen.  Do you want to switch to using that store?  If not, it will be deleted and replaced with your current store." or similar message.  Select Yes to use the store you copied. 
   • Save your new settings and restart Outlook Express.
5. Test your new mailbox location.  Send yourself a couple of emails as a test to ensure they arrive and you can reply to them fine.  DO NOT delete your old mailbox just yet.  Allow for about a week of testing your new inbox location before you do anything to the old mailbox and it’s location.
6. Repeat the steps for any other mailboxes you have.
7. After one week, if you do no notice any issues with your new setup, remove the old mailbox under C: to free space.  To remove your old inbox from C: simply delete the old inbox dbx files residing in C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\.

Microsoft Office Outlook:

1. Locate your existing Inbox file.
   • Select Tools -> Options -> Mail Setup tab -> Data Files from the main menu on the mailbox you would like to move.  Panel with folder/filename settings should appear.
   • Note the path under the Filename column of the open panel.  The path may be similar to  C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst.  This is the root path of your mailboxes.  Your mailboxes should reside in the above path.  Optionally, click Open Folder… to open an Explorer window to that folder.  Close Microsoft Office Outlook.
2. Create the same folder path on another partition or drive/partition combination.  For example, instead of C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\ you might now create  D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path where D: would reside on either another partition or a partition residing on a separate hard disk. Replace D: with your choice of partition or partition/drive and path.
3. Copy (NOT move) your inbox from your old path residing in C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\ to the new path you created under D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path.  For example if your old mailbox was named C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst it would now be D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path\Outlook.pst or similar after being copied.
4. Change your Office Outlook settings to point to the new path.
   • Select Tools -> Options -> Mail Setup tab -> Data Files from the main menu on the mailbox you would like to move.  Panel with folder/filename settings should appear.
   • Click Add… on the Data Files panel and the first listed selection Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst).
   • Browse to and select your copied Outlook PST file in D:\Your\Choice\Of\Path. You should now see your new PST file listed in the windows along the old one.
   • Notice that the old PST file you had on C: is marked Mail delivery location and will need to change.  After you added the new PST file, close the panels.
   • To set your default delivery, select Tools -> E-mail Accounts… -> View or change existing email accounts -> Deliver new e-mail to the following location: then select the newly added PST data file from above step or select New Outlook Data File… to add a new PST data file directly.
5. Test your new mailbox location.  Send yourself a couple of emails as a test to ensure they arrive and you can reply to them fine.  DO NOT delete your old mailbox just yet.  Allow for about a week of testing your new inbox location before you do anything to the old mailbox and it’s location.
6. Repeat the steps for any other mailboxes you have.
7. After one week, if you do no notice any issues with your new setup, remove the old mailbox under C: to free space.  To remove your old inbox select Tools -> Options -> Mail Setup tab -> Data Files and click Remove on the old mailbox to disassociate the old Outlook.pst.  Follow this by deleting the old outlook mailbox PST file residing in C:\…\…\Microsoft\Outlook\.

Mozilla Thunderbird:

1. Locate your existing Inbox file.
   • Select Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings on the mailbox you would like to move.  Panel with server settings should open up.
   • Note the path under Local directory: at the bottom of the open panel.  The path may be similar to C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail.  This is the root path of your mailboxes.  Your mailboxes should reside in the above path.
2. Create the same folder path on another partition or drive/partition combination.  For example, instead of C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\ you might now create  D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail where D: would reside on either another partition or a partition residing on a separate hard disk. Replace D: with your choice of partition or partition/drive and path.
3. Copy (NOT move) your inbox from your old path residing in C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\ to the new path you created under D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\.  For example if your old mailbox was named C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\mymailbox.connectiontype.myISP it would now be D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\mymailbox.connectiontype.myISP or similar after being copied.
4. Change your Thunderbird settings to point to your new mailbox location:
   • Select Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings on the mailbox you would like to change.  Panel with server settings should open up.
   • Change the path under Local directory: at the bottom of the open panel.  The path may be similar to C:\…\…\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\mymailbox.connectiontype.myISP.  This is the root path of your mailboxes.  Change this to your new path D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\default.5ce\Mail\mymailbox.connectiontype.myISP .
5. Test your new mailbox location.  Send yourself a couple of emails as a test to ensure they arrive and you can reply to them fine.  DO NOT delete your old mailbox just yet.  Allow for about a week of testing your new inbox location before you do anything to the old mailbox and it’s location.
6. Repeat the steps for any other mailboxes you have.
7. After one week, if you do no notice any issues with your new setup, remove the old mailbox under C: to free space.

Why can this speed things up for me? 
temp (temporary) folders can constitute a large portion of your drive space.  (See further down on how to locate temporary folders on your windows installation)  These folders, as the name implies, only store temporary files when a program runs.  Once the program exits the temporary files are no longer used but still take up space impacting the overall performance.  Even if the program is restarted again, it will not use the same temporary files it created the last time it ran, and will create new ones.  Smart applications will clean up after themselves but many won’t, such as installation programs.  So such old files can be removed.  How do you know which files can be removed from the temp folder?  Because the applications don’t generally use the same files in the temp folder again when windows or an application is restarted, a general rule of thumb I use is to remove anything older then one day. (NOTE: You will get a warning if you try to delete a file that is currently being used by an application)  You can optionally click the date column in Explorer, to list files by date, then select the ones older then one day for deletion.  For starters, you can remove files older then five days and potentially zip (compress) them out of the way if you are really not sure if you should be removing anything.

Checking other paths, files can also be found in places such as:

C:\Documents and Settings\<USER>\Local Settings\Application Data\

that were perhaps part of some old installations.  You can optionally do a search for some old unused files such as old downloaded temporary installation files left around by the previous installer.  An example below will search for files with dates in the range of years 2000 - 2004 and the words ‘msi’ (Microsoft Installer files) on drive C:

Generally it is a good idea keep the main drive your Windows is installed to no more then 75% capacity of your disk or partition.  In fact the lower the capacity the quicker file retrieval can be and less fragmentation the disk will experience.  For fragmentation, see first item above.  To this end here are a few locations you can check for starters:

Unless you are also saving large files to your C: drive one of the largest folders you will probably see are the below three:

C:\Documents and Settings and C:\Documents and Settings\<USER>\

C:\Program Files

C:\WINNT\Installer

C:\WINNT

or

C:\Windows

temp or tmp folders within the above listed paths.

To get the size of folders in Windows, right click on a folder in Explorer (To start Explorer right click Start button in Windows and select Explore All Users or Open All Users) and select properties.  A tally from that folder upwards will show up in a pie chart.

 You could potentially also search for other files such as ones with word temp or tmp in them then decide if any are worth removing.  The search is usefull in this regard especially in locating temporary old and stale folders no longer being used by anything, though you still need to use your judgement what to keep and what to delete.

Why can this speed things up for me?

Swap files on a system can be large and relocating them to another drive can be a good idea especially if you have a separate hard disk.  This option will only free space on your windows root partition if you do not have a separate hard disk.   It will have little to no impact on speed of your workstation unless your windows root partition (C:) is full and space is what you need to free in order to increase performance.

To move your swap file to another physical disk (and separate partition) do the following:

• Right click My Computer in either Windows Explorer or the Desktop.
• Select the Advanced tab.
• Click Performance Options… button.
• Click Change… on Performance options panel.
• Select the drive letter (partition) where you want to create a swap file on.
• Select the Initial Size (MB) and Maximum Size (MB).  This should be the same as the one you have on the main (C:) drive / partition.
• Unset the swap file from the main windows drive (C:) by clearing above boxes.
• Save your settings.

Virtual Memory Allocation Screen sample:

Naturally, the less applications you have installed, the less space you use.  In itself, the additional space freed by uninstalling some can help tramendously in the performance of your PC.  In other ways, the less applications windows has installed, the quicker Windows can start up since Windows will then have a smaller registry to work through.  In addition, and this being a major benefit to performance, any background services those applications needed would be removed as well further speeding up your Windows response time and start up time.

This is very common and your’e probably even familiar with it but here it goes:

Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add / Remove Programs.

One of the things I do here is to use the Sort by Size option then go down the list of largest space users to lowest space users in determening what should stay and what should be uninstalled.  It is, however, noteworthy to mention that many installed programs may have your personal files within the paths that are being summarized for space usage.  So for example, if a Canon application has a path D:\Program Files\Canon Files\ and is reported to be 4GB it may have your personal data under the path.  This is important since though even if the application is removed, the space freed might be only a few megabytes because the actual data under the folder is really YOUR DATA.  In such cases you would need manual intervention and visit the path to move or remove the files you do not need.  Something to keep in mind when uninstalling.

Why can this speed things up for me?

Simply that the applications won’t take so long to start during boot up time will be the major benefit here.  Some installed applications will auto-configure themselves to constantly start up at boot time.  However, if you find yourself only rarely using Startup list applications, these could be good candidates for removal from the start list, and load them from Start -> Programs instead.  The Startup list is something you need to weigh carefully.  Some people like to use them to quickly start up applications they use daily, such as at work.  If you really need something started up automatically when windows starts, you should probably leave it in the Startup list.  

To do a check with regards to what is started on your system:

Start -> Programs -> Startup

Alternately, you can use explorer to access this path:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

or

C:\Documents and Settings\<YOUR USER>\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Applications listed there will be started up during boot time.  Some applications get configured to start up automatically after installations but may not be needed everyday.  You’ll need to weigh your options here what you can remove from the start list and what you can leave.  It’s important to note, that removing the applications from the Startup folder / list won’t actually delete the application just keep it from starting next time windows starts up.

Why can this speed things up for me?

The main benefit is that startup time will be reduced significantly.  It’s not all that practical to start up a service hundreds of times when in all that time it might be used only once. 

This option has significant impact during start up time but is generally technical and involves good knowledge of background services and applications to do:

To change Service settings navigate to

Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services

Once you do this click the Startup Type column to order the services startup time by their startup state.  Look into the services that are started up Automatically then right click the services to change it’s startup state at boot up time and to Start or Stop the service.  Before you change any services, careful consideration will need to be payed to what is needed and what is not.    If you are unsure about a service, it’s best to leave the option unchanged unless you are willing to test disabling a service.  In any case, it is highly recommended to save all your settings prior to making any changes, whether you do so in a file or simply write the settings down elsewhere.

 When installing applications, virtually all will give you the location where you can install the application.  There is a clear advantage here on a two drive system.  Normally you would be presented with a path such as C:\Program Files\ where over time it can lead to space and consequently performance issues.

Instead of using the C: drive to install applications on, select D: or E: or any other drive as an alternative.  The application will work just as well if not faster.  Even if the directory Program Files\ doesn’t exist on the target partition, it will be created.  On a two drive system where C: is on one and D: is on another, having applications staggered over the two partitions and consequently using two separate hard drives could potentially decrease start up time of two applications kicked off at the same by as much as half the time it normally takes to start both up.

The main benefit here is that the same application will not have to wait and compete for disk reads / writes.  If one drive reads files at 100MB / s, two drives will, in theory, read at 200MB / s and is really where the benefit lies.  It’s in some ways similar to filling a bucket with water using a standard garden hose.  Two hoses will fill the bucket at twice the rate of a single one.

Disk cleanup is one of the easier things to do but not necessarily the most thorough one.  Start disk cleanup in the following way:

• Right click on Start button.
• Select Open All Users or Explore All Users
• In Explorer, right click on a partition such as C:, D:, E: etc. and click Properties… .  Panel will appear.
• Click Disk Cleanup… on the General tab.

These are small applications that attach and download themselves into your PC and linger on drastically slowing down your PC.  There are a number of ways to prevent these:

1. Use Firefox browser instead of Internet Explorer.
2. Install and periodically run the free Ad-Aware application to remove malware.
3. Use the Windows Defender application from Microsoft.
4. HijackThis, Bugoff and CWShredder from merijin.org (WARNING: Use extreme caution when using these.)
5. Visit Wikipedia’s Spyware Removal page for more utilities.

Also visit the SECURITY section of this site for more details on blocking common entry points Viruses and Malware / Spyware applications use.

This is a Windows XP key.  This value in the registry controls whether certain commonly used applications are loaded before they are actually started.  This speeds up application startup performance since the data would then already be loaded in memory when a certain application is started.

However, there is a big downside to this.  This feature works like the Startup option earlier in many ways.  It starts up a chunk of some commonly used applications in the hope that they will be used on each windows startup.  If you have a system with plenty of memory and CPU power, this feature can speed up application start up time considerably but perhaps at a cost of a longer boot up time.  Alternately, leaving this option off, can speed up boot time considerably at a cost of slower application start up once windows is booted.  The choice is yours as to which one you prefer more.

Here are the steps to do this:

1. Click Start then Run…
2. Type regedit.exe and click Ok to run
3. Locate the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
4. Locate the Name called EnablePrefetcher
5. If the value is anything other then the four values below, change it to one of the below:

• 0 = Disabled

• 1 = Application launch prefetching enabled

• 2 = Boot prefetching enabled

• 3 = Application launch and boot enabled

From here you can experiment setting this value.  The typical value to use is 3 however, again, you may get better performance using 0 instead.  In either case, ensure you always write down the values you used in case you have to revert.

NOTE: This option is an advanced feature.  Please use caution when running it and make bacups where changes need to be made.  These instructions are also for Microsoft Windows XP.

Defragment the boot files which are typically skipped in a traditional defragmentation.

1. Navigate to Start -> Run…. In the open text box type cmd.exe then click Ok.
2. Run rundll32 advapi32 ProcessIdleTasks

to defragment the boot files.

To enable windows to do this automatically, run regedit.exe by going to Start then Run… again and look for the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction

Ensure a string called Enable is set to Y.  If not, set it to Y.

For most porpuses and unless you know what you are doing, selecting default settings in BIOS can give you peace of mind.  It is also recommended to use automatic settings whenever possible to let BIOS autodetect it’s environment. 

There is another benefit here.  In case your system resets, BIOS settings will automatically default to the default settings and you won’t need to adjust anything.  In most cases, BIOS will autoconfigure for best possible settings.  There are also optimized settings for maximum performance as an option in most BIOS applications.