Steps to a happy XP experience

I just installed the full version of windows XP with SP2.

Initially, I was not happy with the performance. It changed drastically with the installation of SP3. Gosh, it makes a big difference. I turned off paging and boy, the RAMDisk is the best. I put the Firefox cache in RAM disk and now it is working perfect. I also turned the theme to classic, with the option for the best performance. That helps a lot as well.

Some drivers were identified and installed by windows except audio, wireless, lan and chipset.

Other software that I am using is Office 2003 the lightest version and portable office 2007. ACDSee 9, acrobat reader 9, VLC Player, Winamp, Winrar, NOD32 3.0, Google Talk, MSN Messenger Live, Firefox 3.01, an Ectaco dictionary and now I am installing Thunderbird. So far so good. With the Firefox open with 7 tabs, it is using 350 MB of RAM. 64 MB out of 350 are used from RAMDisk as HDD to put the cache of the Firefox. I have 512 but I am thinking to put 1 GB More to put the windows TEMP folder in the RamDisk. Putting Firefox in RAM disk speeds the browsing for at least 50%.

I installed XP from a bootable USB that I build which is pain in the ass because it takes time a lot.

Thanks to this forum and to everyone who put their experiences.
Valdrin

 

I tried that, unfortunately it can't find the drivers to automatically install the battery. it just recognizes it as an unknown device

 

hmmm..i have it in reverse. i see microsoft composite battery under system devices, but i don't have any microsoft AC adaptor OR microsoft ACPI-compliant control method batter. i don't have any hardware installed under batteries either.

 

So, for a happy experience in XP you need too do the following: (correct me if I missed anything)

Format SSD using FAT32
Install Windows XP SP3
Disabale D2D
Disable Disk Cache
Disable Prefetch
Disable indexing
Disable Paging
Disable Hiberation
Disable System Restore

Also what protection software is recommended for the Aspire One? I've tried AVG + Comodo Firewall + Windows Defender and it adds 3 minutes to the boot time, which is a lot.

 

any luck with this? I cant get the battery metter either?

 

the matter seems to have fixed itself. i think the key is to choose "multiprocessor ACPI computer" in the XP installation. hope this helps.

 

Could someone please write a step-by-step RAMDisk configuration that works well on the One? I googled, but there are several different drivers/tutorials, and I would like to hear it from someone who has tried it and can testify that it works well. Thanks.

 

Good to hear you got it working.

 

Follow these instructions from http://www.techsnack.net/gavotte-ramdis ... al-hardisk to install RAMDisk. Depending on what you plan to use Ramdisk for (IE, Firefox, Windows Temp, etc) set the amount of memory you plan to use with RAMDisk. I personally set it at 380mb as I do watch alot of online videos.

After installation, set IE to use RAMDisk by opening IE and go to Tools -> Internet Options. In the General Tab, click Setting for the Browsing History. Then click on Move Folder and change the directory to your RAMDrive. I chose not to install firefox so i cant help you with that.

If you want to store windows temp to ramdisk... do the following:
Go to Control Panel -> System -> Advance Tab and click on Environment Variables. On 'User variables' change TEMP and TMP to your RamDisk drive by selecting it and clicking on edit.

 

Hey there, can anyone explain to me what is the difference between running WinXP under NTFS format and running XP under FAT32?

When I installed the XP I chose NTFS format. I did all the modifications that I've read here, and it's ok, but I need to know if there will be any improvement if I reinstall XP and use FAT32...?

 

Greetings!

Nlite windows XP for ASUS EEEPC doesn't work well with the Acer Aspire One! It is SLOW!! I tried installing it in NTFS and FAT32 formats and spent countless hours changing registry settings to make it a little faster but with no luck. (3+ minutes boot time- w/o virus scan) It seems that the program only recognizes your Aspire One a as i486 computer and I believe this is what makes it run REALLY SLOW... Besides, I think this XP version is really configured exclusively for EEEPC, and nothing else.
SOLUTION: Install the Tiny XP revision 09 in FAT32 as suggested by previous posters, and install all the drivers provided by ACER.. You don't even need to install extra RAM unless you really need to max out your Aspire One.
I recommend you choose Options 1-4 cause If you work with MIDI files like I do (for programs like Sibelius, Guitar Pro, Band in a Box, etc) options 5-8 probably won't work. I think those versions cancelled out the the MIDI functions of Windows XP. My Midi programs won't play midi files under option 8. Furthermore, Options 1-4 look WAY BETTER because it has the Vista look to it. There's not a lot of speed difference between options 1-4 and 5-8, as far as my opinion goes...
In comparing FAT32 and NTFS- FAT32 is REALLY FASTER! Maybe 150% to 200% faster than NTFS by my rough estimate. So reformatting to FAT32 with TinyXP rev 09 is all worth the effort!
For safety, use ACRONIS to back up your computer AFTER you put all the necessary programs and drivers for your daily computer use. You can also do this before you start fooling around with registry tweaks.. In case your system crashes, ACRONIS enables you to reformat and restore your PC back in its original functional form in 15 minutes or less!


Hope that helps and enjoy!

rainiert.

 

I made a clean install using winxp sp2 and then I updated the system to sp3, it became soooooooo slow. I would only recommend to install sp3 if it's a clean install and not an update.

Another thing that you can add to your list is using windows disk defragmenter.

For security I use AVG 8 Free edition and nothing else. :mrgreen:

 

is this on a ssd or hdd?

and was it a stock linux machine??

 

windows disk defragmenter? Isn't that just for computers with hdd and not ssd? If it does improve the speed, how much does it increase by?

Also what is your boot time and does it write a lot to the ssd?

and yes, this is a Linux 8GB Intel SSD version.

 

I've just reinstalled my AA1 using FAT32 format, and it really works faster than with NTFS, so I want to point that out: Use FAT32 format instead of NTFS, XP really works faster!

 

Since the SSD has negligible (virtually none) access times, I don't see the point of defragmenting either.

 

you should check and compare the ssd read/write times..

theres an article in tom's hardware talking about how theyre not quite all theyre hyped up to be

 

Well, i finally bought the one, and followed the points for a happy xp experience, but im not fully agree with a pair of them. Btw i have the slow ssd, Winxp with fat 32 and it works really smooth. (I'm doubting if i'll use Fwbf or Ewf)

Format SSD using FAT32 -- Done
Install Windows XP SP3 -- Done
seeing how craptastically windows xp works with ntfs -- Done
ReFormat SSD using FAT32 -- Done
Install Windows XP SP3 -- Done
Disaable D2D -- Done
Disable Disk Cache --Why? that should reduce disk perfomance (as windows sez)
Disable Prefetch -- Why it's not like it's constantly writing the disk and it kinda speeds up things.
Disable indexing -- Where? i don't get any indexing option anywhere (service is disabled just in case)
Disable Paging -- Paging eats a lot of drive time, but instead of that we can put the page file into the SD drive.
Disable Hiberation -- i thought that used to write on the drive when hibernation was in use, not always.
Disable System Restore -- Done

 

well i think Indexing is just for the people that have NTFS , as I couldn't find that option when I re-installed XP with FAT32. Since you have FAT32 you can ignore that line.

I found that prefetch extends the boot time by a bit, as it "prefetches" the data that it thinks you use most commonly.

as for disk cache... isn't that just for hard drives that have a cache? (correct me if I'm wrong on this)

yes paging can be put on the SD card, but if you have enough RAM like 1GB or above, it is pretty much a space waster.

Hibernation reserves a portion of your SSD for hibernation, for example if you have 1GB of RAM, it will reserve 1GB of the SSD for hibernation. Disabling hibernation will release more space on your SSD for your appplications.

 

Disabled prefetch with X-setup, but only on startup (it had 2 options, Prefetch applications that are launched and Prefetch applications that are executed during Start-up), seems to boot a bit faster.

About disk cache i think what i think it does is to make some kind of cache instead writing everything realtime.