Originally Posted by Sakor

Note: There is of course an inherant danger when changing or adding registry entries that something could go awry. The registry is basically what runs windows and thus the wrong changes can have serious effects. I would not recommend any changes that I have not done myself and tested, and that I do not think is safe... but the thing is that you never know. So just to be safe, it pays to first back-up the registry.

Click Start-> run-> type 'regedit' (without quotes) and press OK. Now select Export from the File menu, and save it in a place you will recall. Simply by double-clicking this it will restore the registry to what it was at the point you exported it in case something does happen. The chances are low, but just in case

Click Start; Run; Type "regedit" (without quotes) and press OK. Now you can navigate to the appropriate areas.

1. Speed-up Shutdown:
Well obviously, these few things just make shut-down a little more snappy.
-> Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\
(i) Change "HungAppTimeout" value to 5000 (should be default)
(ii) Change "WaitToKillAppTimeout" value to 4000 (default is 20000)
-> Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\
(i) Change "WaitToKillServiceTimeout" value to 4000 (default is 20000)

2. Stop the 'last access update' stamp:
Every time a directory is accessed by Windows XP, it updates that directory and every subdirectory with a time stamp to indicate the date of access. In folders with a heap of subdirectories, this obviously adds unecessary overhead to whatever your PC happens to be doing. So disable it.
-> Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem.
(i) Create new DWORD “NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate” and set to '1'

3. Keep Windows operating data in main memory:
Instead of paging uneccesarily to the hard drive this forces data to be held longer in manin memory to improve performance (recommended with 384MB memory + only)
-> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management.
(i) Set “DisablePagingExecutive” value to '1'