A great way to get a little better performance on a sluggish computer is to tweak your display settings. By default, Windows enables a number of graphic enhancements that–while making the appearance more slick–slow your system down. I’ll go over a couple of the quick fixes here.

First, the menus that cascade from the Start button can easily display faster. To fix it, follow these steps:

1. Go to Start -> Run
2. Type regedit in the run box that appears, and click OK.
3. Click the plus next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER
4. Click the plus next to Control Panel
5. Click on Desktop
6. Once there, find MenuShowDelay and set its value to 100. (default is 400)
7. Close the Registry Editor window, and restart the computer.

Your menus will now pop out at a much quicker rate.

Secondly, let’s manipulate Windows advanced settings to disable most of the video enhancements.

1. Open Control Panel on the Start Menu.
2. Double-click System.
3. Open the Advanced tab and click Settings in the Performance pane.
4. Select the button next to Adjust for best performance.
5. Click OK and close back to the desktop.

This turns off many of the animations that make windows “explode,” add shadows to your windows as you move around, etc. All minor things, but which individually chip away at the speed your computer exhibits while you use it. If speed is your concern, this will give you a quick and noticeable burst because you’re asking the operating system to do a bit less as you move around the system.

Let us know your thoughts on these adjustments in the comments!

http://www.lancelhoff.com/adjusting-windows-xp-menu-show-delay/