Yeah, it wasn't this old, but it's still an accomplishment, I guess.
In the process of cleaning out my house, I stumbled upon my thirteen year-old Athlon X2 6000+ based system and thought "hey, what if I put this upstairs to serve as a retro gaming/music producing machine?" I'd just cleaned up my third floor and moved all my guitars up there, and I had an old Samsung CRT monitor that I was interested in using, mostly because older games like Quake look better at lower resolutions (CRTs have no native resolution). All the old system needed was a hard drive, so I purchased a 1 terabyte hard disk and naively proceeded, after receiving said hard disk, to install Windows 10. I didn't realize that Windows 10 requires at least 2 gigs of ram; that was all my old system had, and it predictably ran like molasses, especially after installing the Good Old Games client and Google Drive Sync. After scouring the internet, I found several tips and tricks which helped me eventually get my X2 based PC usable, at least in till I receive the extra 2 gigs DDR2 800 I ordered. Here's what I found.
The most useful
Uninstalling memory-taxing startup apps: GOG Galaxy and Google Sync ate up too much memory, so I disabled them by typing "startup" in the Windows search bar. When I upgrade to 4 gigs of ram, we'll see if the old X2 can handle Google Drive at least.
Turning off X Box Game Bar: I also noticed an immediate improvement because I guess the game bar runs in the background. Type "Settings" in the search bar, go to gaming, and turn off the game bar in the menu that comes up.
Disabling Cortana: This is a little tricky. It involves editing the registry, which can fuck up your system if you do something wrong. However, that's not going to happen. Type "regedit" in the search bar. Navigate to the following directory: HKEY_Local_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoft Windows. Right click the windows directory, make a new key and name it "Windows Search". In the new folder, right click new > DWORD and name it "AllowCortana". Click on This File > Modify and set it to 0. These instructions were shamefully copied from the following source-https://thinkmobiles.com/blog/how-to-uninstall-cortana/
Turning off Graphical Settings: Go to Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced System Settings. Click on the Settings tab under Advanced. Then Click on Adjust for Best Performance, although I'd probably leave "Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts" on because otherwise text looks pretty bad.
The I'm No Sure It Did Anything Category
Adjusting Memory Page File: Under that Settings tab we accessed by following the steps describe in the previous entry, there's a column called "Advanced." Click on that, and you'll be able to modify the virtual memory. In theory, this should help a low-ram system because Windows can access the hard drive and use it as memory. Of course, it doesn't help much because your hard drive is way slower than your ram, but it doesn't hurt to increase your page file. You can set the minimum 1.5 times as much as the total memory in your system, which in my 2 gig system, would be 3000 megs. For the max, it's 4 times total ram, so 8000 megs.
Uninstalling all that useless shit that pops up when you click on the Start Menu. I'm talking about the News app, and the Windows Store, and whatever else shows up that you don't use. Just simply right click on the app, and click uninstall. Might net a modest boost to performance.
Stopping background Windows Updates: Go to Settings > Network and Internet > and click on "Change Connection Properties." You can turn on "Metered Connection" which should in theory keep apps from downloading updates in the background.
That's all I got, folks. I can't fathom a system older than my X2 based PC running Windows 10, so if I can get the old hunk of junk running it, you can surely do the same with a similar system.
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