Unfortunately, most of the laptops are Dell C610s – in other words, 1GHz, 256MB RAM and they’re running Windows XP. You can probably tell that it’s very fun to optimize each system. (I’m proud of myself, they run pretty nicely for the low specs they’re sporting…)

With this in mind, I decided to code a .NET 3.5 application (free, of course) that does the job for me and also manages to be fully extensible through the use of a text-based hack database.

If you’re interested in downloading it, give it a go here. Read more if you’re interested in some of the example hacks, as well as the database specification.

The app itself has many, many hacks, but here are some of them just to get your attention:

• StartUpDelay (Speeds up startup)
• MenuShowDelay (Faster start menu)
• WaitToKillAppTimeout, HungAppTimeout (Speeds up shutdown)
• SuperFetch
• UDMA66 Mode
• Large system cache
• …and many more

The format, per se, is the following:

Name
Description
Root value (Depends on type of hack: Registry, Command or Profile)
Argument
Value
; (End of entry)

Here’s an example of 3 different entries in the regs.dat file, with comments in square brackets:

Registry entry:

Registry: Modify StartUpDelay [Name]
It just removes the unnecessary wait time after a system startup before Indexing Service. (40000ms) [Description]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlContentIndex [In the case of a registry entry, the full tree]
StartupDelay [Registry key]
40000 [Registry value. If it's numerical, it's a DWORD - else, it'll get written as a String]
;

Command entry:

Services: Disable alerter service [Name]
‘Nuff said. [Description]
Command [Root value, leave as "Command" for command]
sc.exe [Actual command]
config “alerter” start= disabled [Parameters]
;

Profile entry: (aka, .ini files)

Profile: Set LocalLoadHigh [Name]
Speeds up Windows XP boot times. Load all info needed for your programs into upper memory by default, and it will free up the maximum amount of conventional memory possible. (the first 640K) [Description]
Profilesystem.ini386Enh [In the case of a Profile, it has to be like this: Profile<.ini file [in Windows dir]><section>]
LocalLoadHigh [Argument]
1 [Value]
;

If you add anything to the regs.dat file, please post it as a comment so everyone can benefit. Thanks, and enjoy!