Windows, by default turns a lot of graphic and display effects on (shadows, fades, slides, menu items), which slows down the system and in the most cases – display performance. You can speed up your system and increase graphic performance by turning off some of these effects. To turn these off selectively:

1. Right click on the My Computer icon.
2. Select Properties.
3. Click on the Advanced tab.
4. Under Performance, click on the Settings button.
5. To turn them all of, select Adjust for best performance.
6. My preference is to leave them all off except for Show shadows under mouse pointer and Show window contents while dragging.

Tags | Howto, Look and Feel, Speed Up, Windows, Windows XP