More with Less: 50 ways to speed up xp and vista

Face it: your computer isn't as fast as when you first installed Windows. For a host of reasons, PC performance tends to degrade over time. But there are proven methods that will help you regain some of that lost speed.

This is the first in a 50 part series of tips and tweaks to help improve performance of the world's most popular operating system. Most of the tips that follow over the rest of 2009 will apply for both XP and Vista, some will be specific to just a single operating system.

And almost all of the tips will be brief. There's no sense in performing a tweak if it's going to eat up half of your weekend. Computers should help you be more productive, not less.

So stay tuned, and remember to hit the 'subscribe' thingy in the upper right hand corner to have the latest tips delivered right to your Inbox or RSS reader.


Tweak One: Update your BIOS.

OK, so this tip isn't technically a Windows tweak. It is a great place to start nonetheless.

You can usually find improvement in Windows performance by looking not at the operating system, but rather at the software the operating system uses to communicate with your computer's hardware - the BIOS.

So before you spend too much time tweaking the OS, make sure you have the latest and fastest BIOS for your motherboard. On modern computers, updating the BIOS means locating a small executable file from the manufacturer website, running it, then rebooting your computer. If you're using a Dell, go here. If running an HP, go here.

It's really that simple. The biggest challenge, in fact can be locating the BIOS update in the first place...it's not something that is searched for when performing a Windows Update (probably because it's not Windows).

If you need help finding this information, drop me an email. Otherwise, you can find the current version of the motherboard (along with the mobo manufacturer) from the Power On Self Test (POST) screen.

Look for new speed tips and tricks about every Wednesday throughout the year, with tweaks on Windows 7 as the product moves closer to launch.