In general Windows 2000 has a smaller Memory footprint to begin with. Disable everything in MSCONFIG--->STARTUP.
If your going to game on windows 2000 with only 128Mb of ram here is some pointers. Right Click "My Computer" ----> Performance ----> Disable all the "pretty stuff" and just check the bottom 3 things. (Maxes XP feel more responsive, and uses less ram). Have your Video Card set to 32Mb or 16Mb.
And to disable some services:
Click the start button.
Select run from the bottom of the right column.
Then type services.msc in the box and click ok.
Once the services window has loaded we are ready to turn off unneeded services.
For instructional purposes we are going to turn off the Portable Media Serial Number service.
Find this service in the list and select it with the mouse.
Right click and select Properties.
Once the properties windows has loaded locate the Start up type drop down box and select disable.
Then just click ok and the next time the computer starts the service will not be loaded.
Do this with Care !
and some other tweaks to minimise XP's memory Usage:
Removing thumbnail Caches:
To make folders with thumbnail images start up faster
Go to control panel and then folder options
Click on the view tab and Uncheck "Do not cache thumbnails"
Some registry performance tweaks:
(To Open regedit goto Start/run and type "regedit")
DiskCache Tweak:
Open Regedit
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/ControlSession/ Manager/MemoryManagement/IoPageLockLimit];
Modify the value in Hex depending on the size of your RAM
RAM: modified value(Hex)
64M: 1000;
128M: 4000;
256M: 10000;
512M or more: 40000.
Reboot.
And make sure your HDD is set to DMA. (Google it)
XP Prefetcher:
With Windows XP comes a service called the Prefetcher. This service monitors which programs initialize when Windows boots, then in future, fetches them quickly. The Prefetcher is enabled by default, but you can improve its performance. Simply navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory ManagementPrefetchParameters
the registry and find the value EnablePrefetcher. Most likely, it will be set to 3. The recommended setting for the prefetcher is 5, and that's what works best for me. Feel free to play around with it a bit, though, and find out what works best for you. Dont set it to 0.
L2 Cache Tweakage:
The L2, or second-level, cache, is an integral part of your CPU. However, XP is very shoddy at detecting it, so setting it manually is sometimes necessary. It's easy to do, though, you simply have to navigate to RUN>Regedit>
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management
in the registry and find the value SecondLevelDataCache. You must then adjust it to the value (in kilobytes) of the L2 Cache of your processor.
Make sure you select "decimal" when changing the value. to find out how much L2 cache you have, just donwload CPU-Z (Google it).
And if your going to be playing around with large and small files here is the best File systems to use:
Fat 32: High performance with lots of small files, Slow performance with large files. (Max file size possible is 4gb).
NTFS: High performance with large files, Slow performance with small files.
(Max File size is the max volume of the storage media).
If you require any help or assistance or require any advice, feel free to PM me.