Speed up your PC in a few simple Steps (Dual & Quad Core Rigs with WIN XP only)

[DjfunkmasterG]

Speed up your PC in a few simple steps (Dual and Quad Core PC's only with WIN XP)

1. Click Start
2. Select Run
3. in box type MSCONFIG
4. When box opens select BOOT.INI tab
5. Click Advanced Options
6. Check Box "/NUMPROC="
7. In drop down box beside /NUMPROC= Click 2 for dual core 4 for Quad core
8. Hit Ok
9. Click Apply, then click close
10. Restart PC

At reboot put check mark in box that pops up and click Ok or close and you're done. Your PC will now boot on all Processors the core can handle

[EvilNed]

Thanks a bunch! Hope it works.

[MinionZombie]

Damn Deej, where did you get this tip from?

There's no untoward effects from it is there?

I have a Quad Core, but it does take longer than you would have expected to load up and get to the desktop screen.

[3pidemiC]

You can always re-edit the Boot.ini file if you need to.

I'll check it out.

[Tricky]

Is there a way of doing this on Vista too then? :) my PC's quick but i'll still try any trick to get extra juice out of it (apart from playing with the bios which I leave alone)

[krakenslayer]

Excellent tip DJ!

Did a bit of research into this and there is one drawback to doing it this way. Editing options the System Configuration utility doesn't actually reconfigure your default settings, instead it boots the system in a "custom/diagnostic mode" from a special secondary "boot.ini" file which contains your edits. Because the default boot.ini remains untouched, this can cause some issues - you might get the system configuration tool loading up every time you start Windows, and it can cause compatibility and startup issues further down the line.

A better way to do the same thing, by editing your REAL default boot.ini file, is to do the following (at your own risk, obviously):

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
3. Under System Startup, click Edit. This opens the boot.ini file in Notepad ready for editing.
4. In the boot.ini file, do not move or delete anything, but you will see a line that reads something like this (yours may look a little different but will be similar):

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

5. WITHOUT MOVING OR DELETING ANYTHING ELSE simply add the following to the end of the above line in the boot.ini file (without quotes): "/numproc=2" (or "/numproc=4" if you have a quad core). It's VERY IMPORTANT that you enter the correct number of cores, as I have no idea what the consequences for getting that value wrong would be.

So the line should now look something like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer /numproc=2

6. Reboot :)

[3pidemiC]

I timed it and only noticed a 5 or so second difference with my Quad Core setup.