Those of you who are still hanging onto Windows XP should be relieved that M$‘s aging operating system still has life left for routine computing purposes. After all, the termination date for all hotfixes that M$ has set for WinXP is April 8, 2014. That should be plenty of time to maintain your beast of a desktop or laptop in commission until the next generation hardware is released.

I’ve collected a bit of tweaks throughout the years to help keep my copy of XP competitive on older hardware. I’ve decided to post a list of optimization techniques for Windows XP, mainly for myself and those of you who still may be using this operating system. Refer to my previous guide on netbook optimization, as some of these suggestions overlap.

Firstly, these tips are not specific to any hardware, although some systems may not be amenable to these tweaks. Laptops, in particular, have specific drivers that may be required to function properly. Be warned.  Secondly, I expect a minimum baseline in your system (ie Pentium 2 is unlikely to respond as well as a Pentium 4).

1. Memory. No matter what type of computer you have, you need memory. From my experience in ECE110 (operating systems) in college, the memory will give a higher end-user speed improvement over clock speed (although clock speed is what drives the electric current to the memory). You should have at least 1gb in your system. If your computer is too old to warrant a memory upgrade and has too little (256mb), then any sort of optimization will be limited.
2. Stop indexing. My Computer->Right Click hard disk->uncheck “Allow indexing Service to index this disk for fast searching”. You don’t need this.
3. Stop unnecessary services. There are specific services that are required for your system. Check to make sure which ones you need, and cut out the ones you don’t. Go to Start->Run->”services.msc”. There is a list of services that you can uncheck. A few that I have found to be useless for the average home user include:
   1. Error Reporting Service
   2. Help and Support (Who ever uses this?)
   3. Fast User Switching (If you had enough power to support multi-user logins, you needn’t be using this article)
   4. Telephony
   5. Anything with “Remote Desktop”. Security hole.
   6. Messenger. No way.
4. Cut some of those special effects. You probably don’t need most of them: Control Panel->System->Advanced->Performance->Settings. Uncheck the drop shadows and visual styles.
5. Optimize startup. Cut out Office Launcher and Acrobat startup. Let them load on first run of opening Word/PDF files. If your taskbar is over a fifth of your desktop width, then you might have too many startup programs.
6. Ditch Symantec Antivirus. This program has memory leaks. I don’t understand why some universities still purchase a site license for this useless software. If you need antivirus, use something like Comodo Internet Security.
7. Try Bootvis. It can optimize startup order. It sped up my startup by 10 seconds!
8. Ditch some unnecessary fonts. Excess fonts that you never use can bog down word processing and any graphics editors that you use. Control Panel->Fonts. Choose some to remove. Just don’t forget to keep the basics.
9. Use a tweaking application. I used to use TweakUI, which eventually became encompassed by PowerToys. X-Setup is an extreme tweaking app that I found pretty helpful. You can enable “fast updates”, disable tooltips, and other optimization hacks. I obtained a noticeable speed increase after using this tool.
10. Remove unnecessary programs. Some of the programs that you installed and used once can have startup functions that slow down the boot process.

That’s it! These basic tweaks can bring life to any aging Windows XP system.

computing tech

Obtaining a concise and accurate medical history is an art, and it often takes a lifetime to master. For the majority of us, we train for it daily in our clinical practice. On most occasions that we successfully arrive at a diagnosis through the history, the feeling is bliss. Rarely, however, it elicits anger.

Several weeks ago while I was on primary call, I was called by the emergency room (ER) attending physician about a woman who had left eye pain. The ER doc had dutifully checked the vision in her eye and found it to be 20/200 while the unaffected eye was 20/20. He added that she complained a sudden loss of vision in that eye as well.

I had just stepped into my apartment right before getting called, around 12:02am. Painful loss of vision is concerning by all means, and I rushed back to the ED while glancing through my Will’s Eye Manual for help.

My patient was a 40-yr old woman comfortably sitting in the exam chair. Her eyes were white, and on first glance, I could not determine which eye was in question. On brief exam, her vision in the left eye was indeed poor, although she did not have an afferent defect or a shallow anterior chamber. The fundus on the left eye was clearly severly myopic compared to that of the other eye. I suspected that she had poor vision in the left eye all along. Read more…

misc medicine, rant

Interesting use. Could someone elaborate?

medicine medicine, tech