| Tutorials2u.com |
| Tutorials on various topics |
Optimize Display Settings
Windows XP is a looker. But it costs you system resources that are used to display all the visual items and effects. Windows looks fine if you disable most of the settings and leave the following:
* Show shadows under menus
* Show shadows under mouse pointer
* Show translucent selection rectangle
* Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
* Use visual styles on windows and buttons
Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea.
* Download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List(http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/exctrlst-o.asp)
* Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom button below
There’s a simple way to speed up XP startup: make your system do a boot defragment, which will put all the boot files next to one another on your hard disk. When boot files are in close proximity to one another, your system will start faster.
On most systems, boot defragment should be enabled by default, but it might not be on yours, or it might have been changed inadvertently. To make sure that boot defragment is enabled:
* Run the Registry Editor
* Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
* Set the Enable string value to Y if it is not already set to Y.
* Exit the Registry
* Reboot
Firstly, a FLAC is an abbreviation for “Free Lossless Audio Codec,” which means that the audio is compressed and the size of the file is smaller, but the quality is still the same. On the other hand, an MP3, an abbreviation for MPEG-3, is a lossy audio format that looses a bit of the original audio data. Converting a file from .flac to .mp3 can be an annoying task, but it can be done quite easily in any operating system with the right program.
Converting FLAC to MP3 in Microsoft Windows
Converting any of your audio files from FLAC format to the MP3 format can be done with various free softwares available in the market today. For example, the combination of two free softwares, Winamp and Apple’s iTunes, can be used to convert FLAC files very efficiently.
1. As we first need to decode the .flac files, open Winamp and click on Options and then Preferences (Shortcut: Control + P)
2. At the left window, under Plug-ins, select Output. Then choose Nullsoft Disk Writer and click Configure at the bottom.
3. Then, click the button beside Directory and navigate to a folder where Winamp should output the converted files. Just to make everything all that easier, choose the directory as the same folder as where your .flac files are at.
4. After your directory is chosen, click Ok and Close without changing any other settings and to exit the Preferences.
5. Back at Winamps, make sure that you have the Shuffle and the Repeat feature off (or else you will experience an endless loop of conversions) and click File and Open (this can be done by right clicking on any part of the player and selecting Open).
6. Browse to the folder with your .flac files and select all (Shortcut: Ctrl + A) and click Open.
7. Now, Winamp will look as if it is playing the selected .flac files (if not, click Play) in mute mode, but it actually is not; it is decoding the .flac files into the .wav files. Usually the process takes a couple tens of seconds with a five minute song, although this is purely dependent on your system’s hardware.
8. When Winamp is done, make sure that you put your output settings back to DirectSound output.
9. Now, to encode the .wav files into .mp3 files, you need to first configure iTunes to do it by opening up iTunes and going to Edit and Preferences.
10. Then, click Advanced and in the Importing tab, among the Import Using options, select MP3 Encoder. Now click Ok.
11. Now, add the .wav containing folders by clicking File and Add Folder to Library. Find the appropriate folder and click Ok.
12. When the .wav files are in the iTunes, select them all, right click, and select Convert Select to MP3.
13. When it is finished, iTunes will make a little “beep.” You should remove the .wav files from you playlist to avoid any confusion.
14. You can find your newly converted .mp3 files in the iTunes folder in My Documents, My Music.
Note that there are many free programs in the market today that can convert FLAC files to MP3 files directly, if the above steps are slightly hard.
Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.
* Open Control Panel
* Open Fonts folder
* Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.
