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Hard drive / memory tweaks |
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Written by Dustin "TimmyC" Jones
Saturday, February 10, 2001
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Page 4 of 4 System.ini Tweaks
Now, open up system.ini (Start, Run, "system.ini" (hit OK)) and get ready to put a bunch of settings under the [386Enh] section.
 System.ini contains numerous system settings.
PageBuffers=32
Changing this setting from the 4k default up to 32k will boost your performance by increasing the page buffers used to store read and write information.
MinTimeSlice=40
This setting changes the time in milliseconds that Windows allows a Virtual Machine to run before another will begin to run. Originally 20.
MaxBPs=65530
This setting is used to adjust and set the size of 'break points' that Windows uses for its VMM (Virtual Memory Manager.) This setting is in bytes.
DMABufferSize=64
This setting assigns out the size of the 16bit DMA buffer for all DMA devices. The maximum size is 64 and the default size is 16.
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
This has to be one of the most valuable tweaks in the system.ini file, and it's another one of those give-it-away-in-the-name tweaks. :) This tweak disables the 'PageFile_Call_Async_Manager', which allows Windows to write out the swap during an idle in the Vfat. In other words, Windows will attempt to use your physical RAM as much as possible, and only write to the swapfile when the hard drive isn't busy. Those of you still running Windows 95 don't need to change this, because it is automatically disabled in '95.
Read Ahead
Windows supports a neat little feature called Read Ahead. Read Ahead tries to predict what files will be called next while loading a program. Now, this is a good idea on paper, but unfortunately, Windows sets this value to 64k, which makes it a tad useless, considering the massive size of files that most modern programs are using. However, you can change it by going through the registry.
Open up Regedit (Start, Run, "regedit" (hit OK)) and navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]. From there you should see a setting that says ReadAheadThreshold. If you don't have it, no worries; just download this small .reg file (unzip it, and then simply double click the readahead.reg file) and it will merge the correct value in for you.
To create it manually, right click in the key window and select new binary value. Type in ReadAheadThreshold (Case sensitive). Now, right click on that setting and select "modify". You should see a dialogue box similar to the below picture, except empty. Now just add 00 00 20 00 into it and click OK.
Also, keep in mind that one of the best ways to keep your system running smoothly is to limit the programs and device drivers upon bootup. I strongly recommend that you take a look at the system startup guide and other tweak guides here at T3D to learn how to maximize your free memory on startup. Every bit of memory saved in the beginning counts in the long run!
Free Up Some RAM!
If you have just run an intensive or specifically large application or game, you know about that groggy feeling your system can have. That's usually because of the leftovers taking up your valuable memory. You can free it, however, by clicking your heels together 3 times and saying: "Let my memory go." Er, I mean, using a program to free that trapped memory. There are many good programs to do this at Tweakfiles.
If you don't want to download a big fancy program, you can actually make one yourself very easily using Visual Basic runtimes (you don't even need VB to do this).
Here's what you do:
Open up Notepad (Start, Run, "notepad" (OK)). Depending on how much memory you have, put the appropriate values in...
Under 128mb Ram:
Mystring = (16000000)
128mb or More:
Mystring = (80000000)
Save it as "Memory.vbe" (including the quotes!). Close as many programs as you can, then run (double click) this handy little script to free your memory whenever your computer is feeling sluggish.
If you have trouble running it, you may need the Visual Basic Runtimes. You can get them here.
Conclusion
Whew, what a read, eh? With all those tweaks you should now feel like you have a brand new system. Ahh the wonders of tweaking....
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