Stop the 'last access update' stamp

Every time a directory on an NTFS drive is accessed by Windows XP, it updates that directory and every subdirectory with a time stamp to indicate the date of access. In folders with a lot of subdirectories, this can add considerable overhead to whatever your PC happens to be doing.

This process can be disabled through the registry:

Open REGEDIT and Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ FileSystem.
Create a new DWORD value called 'NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate' and set the value to '1'

-- 99 Performance Tips --