SystemBoosterXP

This utility speeds program access for select systems, but it offers negligible improvement to other systems, especially for novice users.

There is little to SpeedBoosterXP's Options Screen but a few selection items. The basic, but informative, Help file explains each setting well enough for novice users. SpeedBoosterXP prefetches files into memory to speed their access. The utility offers a default option set that may help some users, but many will notice little or no system improvement. The key is knowing which files to load into memory, and that is best accomplished by experienced users.

Creating a custom option set can result in a greater performance boost, and takes little time to set. You merely choose which drive, folders, or files to offer up for prefetching; then pick a priority and refresh rate. Oddly, editing the default profile offers a slightly different set of options. It will take you some time to find the options that work for your system. However, the seven-day demo provides far too little time to accurately gauge this program's benefit.

Some settings used by SpeedBoosterXP are available through normal Windows commands, provided you have the experience to know the proper settings. While we found little to no improvement in our test machines, we feel select users could benefit from this app. For that reason, we recommend testing it on your system. At worst, you'll uninstall it after a few days. At best, you'll discover enough improvement to warrant registration.