While these are likely not all the performance tips, they are the ones that have made significant differences on system.
as seen a lot out there that have not made much difference. These are a few I’ve seen actually help.
Increasing Memory

If you have Windows95 with only 16-32 megs of memory, you will see a significant increase in performance if you go to at least 64 megs.
Prices have gone down dramatically in the past few years. Your computer won’t be swapping to the hard drive nearly as much.

You also need to be aware of the memory requirements of the applications you are using. Office2000 requires a lot more memory than Office97 to get similar performance.

Also, the maximum useful memory for Windows95 is 64 megs. It doesn’t do well with memory over that and may actually reduce your performance. Windows98 has removed that bottleneck. .

For Windows2000 I recommend at least 256 megs of memory. I tried it with only 128 megs and noticed quite a difference between Win98 and Windows2000. I currently have 384 megs and am quite pleased with the performance.
Get a Faster Hard Drive

There are hard drives that spin at 7200 RPMs rather than the more common 5400 RPMs.
This means that you will get to your data reasonably faster. They are not that much more expensive and well worth the money.
Defrag the Hard Drive

I do this fairly frequently. Once a month or so. There are a few things I do first to make sure I don’t waste time defragging unnecessary files.

First is to delete the Internet Explorer Temporary Files and History.

Second is to delete TMP and BAK files.

Third is delete any files and directories in the TEMP and WINDOWSTEMP directories

Defragment without the swapfile. The instructions for this can be found at Defragmenting the Swap File

Windows98 has a built-in utility called Disk Cleanup. You can run it from either the Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Disk Cleanup or directly run CLEANMGR.EXE
File System Settings

If you have 64 megs or more of memory you increase the performance of your system.

Go to Control Panel / System Properties / Performance / File System.

Change the typical role of this computer to Network Server.

If you have Win95 SR1, and you do not see a performance increase, occasionally the NameCache and PathCache values are written to the registry incorrectly for the Network Server. To fix the problem:

Start Regedit

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionFS TemplatesServer

Make sure the following values are being used:

PathCache=40 00 00 00

NameCache=a9 0a 00 00
No New Floppy Detect

While you are in that section, click on the Floppy Disk tab and uncheck Search for new floppy disks…
This will speed up your boot time.
Increasing Disk Performance

Go to Start Settings Control Panel System Performance File System Troubleshooting

Check the box Disable synchronous buffer commits.
DMA

In the Device Manager, go to the settings your Hard Drives and CD ROMs. If any of them will allow a DMA box to be checked, you can try it. I’ve seen it decrease my CPU utilization.
CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT Files

Make sure you don’t have any unnecessary device drivers or programs here. Windows95 has most you will need already built into the OS.
Removing Unnecessary Programs from Starting Automatically

Many programs add portions of themselves starting automatically on every login.
This can be either in the Startup Folder or the Registry.

One easy way to tell is by looking at how many icons are in your system tray. If you have a large number, perhaps unnecessary resources are being allocated them as well as increasing your boot time.

Typical examples are Microsoft Office, Office FindFast, Real Player, ATI Video setting etc.

You can remove them in one of three main ways:

In the Start / Programs / Startup Folder

In the Registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Run

If you have Win98, WinME ,Windows2000 or Win Xp you can use MSCONFIG to easily remove programs. This is my preference since it allows you to toggle them back on again in case you make a mistake .