Make Windows XP UI Run Faster

There have been numerous posts on the web I have seen on how to speed up Windows XP. Many of these suggest disabling services, etc to make it run faster. One thing I have found that makes XP at least seem faster is turning off some of the UI eye candy.

Many of the machines I run XP on don't have the processor power, or video card to handle the default XP UI. The first think I do when re-imaging is to turn these features off. It makes the whole windows experience seem to run so much faster and smooth.

What I do is turn off most of the XP animation. These are the animations that happen when you expand the Start Menu, minimize/maximize windows etc. To make this change, right click on My Computer and choose Properties. Click the Advanced Tab, and then click Settings under the Performance section. Depending on your system it will probably be set to Let Windows choose what's best for my computer. I'm not sure what they use to choose what's best, but even on my older PIII 450Mhz machines, it has everything turned on. I typically unselect the options to Animate, Fade, and Slide objects. Once these settings are configured as they are pictured to the left, Windows seems to run so much faster.