Windows 2000 definitely isn't the Calista Flockhart of the OS world. It takes up a lot of hard disk space and uses up more RAM than previous Windows incarnations. Although Microsoft maintains that it requires a minimum of 32MB of RAM to run, it actually needs a lot more RAM to perform satisfactory.

Now, although most Windows 2000 users have a lot more than 32MB, it pays to trim off the fat here and there. But how do we trim off Windows 2000's memory usage? Well, Windows 2000 runs lots of services, some of which we may not need. So, turning them off would naturally free up RAM for other uses.

Here's how you can do it :-

1. Go to Control Panel and select Administrative Tools.

2. In the Administrative Tools folder, select Services.

3. The following screen will pop up and you will see a whole list of services.

4. Now, you have to choose which service is of no use to you.
    
5. As an example, we will select the DHCP Client service.
    
6. Double-click on DHCP Client and this screen will appear.

7. As you can see, DHCP Client is started automatically, which means it is loaded during Windows 2000 startup.
    
8. To disable DHCP, you can either change the startup type to Manual or Disabled.
    
   - Manual means that Windows 2000 won't automatically start the DHCP service on startup but it can be started by a Windows 2000 user or a service depending on DHCP.
    
   - Disabled prevents DHCP from being started by any Windows 2000 user, Windows 2000 itself and any other service depending on DHCP.
    
9. If you are sure you won't be using DHCP, set it to Disabled. Otherwise, set it as Manual, just in case something in your system actually needs DHCP.
    
10. You can also immediately stop the service by clicking Stop.
     
11. This screen pops up and disappears on shutting down the service.

12. After setting the startup type you want for the service, click OK and you are on your way! :D

• Other services that you might want to consider disabling (according to your needs) are :-

Print Spooler

TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service

• Here are the before and after results of disabling just DHCP Client, Print Spooler and TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service :-

Before

After

• That's a saving of just over 3MB! That's 3MB more of RAM to allocate to programs and the system cache.

If you have a comment or question about this tip, please post them here.

Thanks for your time and I hope this tip has helped you some! :)

Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/