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CHAPTER 3
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MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP
MSCONFIG’s other tabs go into detail on legacy startup files, services,
and boot configurations. It is best to leave these alone unless you have some
experience with legacy applications, hacking boot files, and working with
startup diagnostics. Services are covered in more detail in Chapter 11, and
it’s better to use the Services management panel (services.msc) to control
how services are launched.
Windows, applications, and performance
There are other ways to tune Windows XP for optimal performance, ones
that do not require diving deeply into the registry or hacking away at appli-
cations. Surprisingly for Windows some of these settings are accessible and
understandable.
The first two settings are usually set for you, but depending on your
needs you can change them around. They tell Windows, on a macro scale,
how to allocate its cycles: best performance for applications, or best perfor-
mance for services.
Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties. (You can
also right-click the My Computer icon if it is on your desktop, click Start,
Run, and then type sysdm.cpl, or access the dialog box through Control
Panel  System.) The System Properties dialog box appears; click the
Advanced tab and then in the Performance section click Settings. The
Performance Option dialog box appears. Click the Advanced tab. This tab
contains two primary settings: one for processor scheduling and one for
memory usage (see Figure 3.33).
By default, on a Windows XP desktop, both are set to optimize for
Programs, so you should not have to change these options. If you are doing
development or testing Web server programs, you can change these settings
so that background services and the system cache receive the majority of the
available computer cycles.
Hack
Want a fast way to bypass loading all those applets at boot time? Hold down the Shift
key when your computer is booting.
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