USB Polling Anyone who has made the unfortunate move of buying an USB modem will know how many CPU cycles those things crunch. The same goes for most USB devices – and, by extension, the mere act of searching for any attached USB devices. By default, XP searches for newly connected USB devices every 1ms. You can change this to every 5ms (provided you can wait the extra 4ms) by altering (or adding) the following registry value. Navigate to [“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}”] and then create a REG_SZ key (select string value) called “IdleEnable” before setting its value to “1”. You’ll get a minor (perhaps not easily noticeable) improvement – but an improvement all the same!