Disclaimer: This is an older article and may contain outdated information and bad links. 

Originally Printed in PC Gamer's Ultimate Hardware Bible, an Imagine Media Publication. All rights reserved. Reprinted with Permission.

Preface

Well guys, I know you've been waiting a while, but finally, here is the article I wrote for PC Gamer. I have chosen to split it up into four separate articles...once you read it, you will understand. This article is not verbatim to the article that was published - so don't expect this to be a replacement for the printed edition.

Also, I am not going to include any of the pictures that went along with the original article - it would mess up the formatting. And one last note - some things in this article do not necessarily agree with the information found in some of the tweak guides. Compare dates (this article was originally written in late April) and take the newer information. Enjoy!

Introduction

Warning! Contents are fast and may cause severe whiplash! No, not fast when high (although it really wouldn't mind), not fast while electrically charged (umm... isn't a computer powered by electricity?), and definitely not fast when thrown out of the rear of a speeding car (technicalities, I swear), it's just fast! Get the picture? Good, I'm glad.

It feels like it was only yesterday that you shelled out a fat chunk of money for that state-of-the-art computer system, and now it's having trouble running your favorite games and applications. Well, not anymore! Computer tweaking is the process of optimizing your hardware and operating system to run at peak efficiency, effectively giving that state-of-the-art computer system a drink from the stream of eternal youth. While the average lifespan of a computer system is about a year and a half (the time in which it is capable of running everything on the market), using these tweaks on your system can extend its lifespan by six months or more.

BIOS Tweaking

The BIOS has a huge effect on your overall system performance. It can be a helping hand, raising a system up to a near heavenly speed; but other times it can turn your speed-daemon into a snail. Tweaking the BIOS is the most important step towards a more responsive system.

Begin by checking your motherboard manufacturer's web site for an update to your BIOS. If you're not sure of the make and model of your board, open your case and take a look at it. Most name brand motherboards are clearly marked. If the system is a pre-built system (such as Dell or Gateway), check their corporate web site for BIOS updates.

To make these changes, you will need to enter your computer's BIOS/CMOS setup program. In most cases, hit the DEL key right after power up to start the setup program. Watch closely for a prompt that reads something like, "Press <key> to enter setup."

Speeding up boot time is one of the easiest tweaks that can be done in the BIOS. It's a good idea to make note of any settings before you change them, though, so that if you run into problems, you can change them back. If all else fails, most CMOS programs have a "restore defaults" option.

Begin by finding the QuickBoot setting in the CMOS setup program (sometimes it's called QuickPOST or Quick Power-on Self Test). Enabling this setting should speed up boot times up to a minute on some older systems. Also, disable Boot up Disk to shave off a few seconds.

Some other tweaks that can be performed within the BIOS will change the overall speed of the computer. If the BIOS has a Turbo frequency setting, enabling it should give the system a performance boost of up to 5%. Also, any setting that refers to the computers L1 (internal) or L2 (external) cache should be enabled. It is also recommended to enable Video BIOS and System BIOS shadowing. Shadowing refers to copying BIOS information from the slower BIOS chip to faster system RAM. If the computer's BIOS has the option, caching the Video RAM should also give a performance increase. Make sure to read the manual that was included with your video card because this can cause problems with certain systems.

The AGP aperture setting is very important for AGP graphics cards because it determines how the video card accesses system RAM. These settings depend heavily on your system configuration and, in particular, the video card's BIOS and drivers. A video card BIOS, much like a computer's BIOS, translates instructions for the video processor, and each revision will translate the information differently for a specific system configuration. Try setting the AGP aperture to 25%, 50%, and 75% of the system's total RAM (ex: if the system has 64 Mb of RAM, try 16 Mb, 32 Mb, and 48 Mb). Also, trying one of the default settings (usually 64 Mb or 256 Mb) may also produce a speed increase. Many BIOS's also have other settings that may increase performance. Experiment with the settings and see which ones give the best results.

Many systems come with a less customizable BIOS. A program called TweakBIOS does a good job of solving this problem for most users. This program gives the user access to settings that the BIOS doesn't normally allow the user to change. The only downfall of this program is that it is very difficult to use, so it is only for the most serious of tweakers.

System Startup Tweaking

System startup tweaking, luckily, is a great deal simpler than BIOS tweaking. Begin by creating a file called MSDOS.BAT in your root directory. Then, open up your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, located in the root directory, with Notepad and cut and paste the information from those files into the MSDOS.BAT file. Both of these files should be empty after this step. If you are using the registered version of TweakBIOS, you should leave its autoexec entry within the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

Within the CONFIG.SYS file, insert this entry:

Stacks=0,0

This will speed up the underlying kernel of Windows. To delete any temporary files that Windows missed during shutdown, you need to add these two lines to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

@DelTree /Y C:\WINDOWS\Temp
@MD C:\WINDOWS\Temp

These entries will delete and recreate the Windows temporary files directory, removing any files that are left over from the previous session. Also, to accelerate boot time, avoid placing files in the root directory.

Since you preserved the original AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS lines in your new MSDOS.BAT file, you can replace any lines necessary should any of your installed programs or hardware cease functioning.

Windows 95 Operating System Tweaks

If you are still using Windows 95, it is recommended that you upgrade to Windows 98. Windows 98 is generally much faster than Windows 95, and it supports more features than its older brother does. If you can't afford to upgrade to Windows 98, make sure that, if you're running Internet Explorer 4, you do not have Active Desktop or the IE shell extensions loaded. These features gobble up tons of system resources and slow the system down.

Disabling active desktop can be one of two ways: by right-clicking on the desktop and disabling it, or by going into the Display applet in the Control Panel and disabling it from there (explained later). Disabling the IE shell extensions is more difficult, however. To do this, you will need to totally uninstall Active Desktop from the system. This can be done through the Add/Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel.

Windows 98 Operating System Tweaks

The first, and most important, step to tweaking Windows 98 is to download Internet Explorer 5.0. The original Windows 98 shell is notoriously unstable, but IE 5.0 patches almost all of the problems with it. As you may very well already know, IE is integrated into Windows 98, so updating it is useful even for devout Netscape users, because Windows 98 uses it as its file browser.

After installing IE 5.0, start up Windows Update and download any necessary patches. This ought to stabilize and speed up the system. Just like with earlier versions of IE, make sure that Active Desktop is disabled.

If your computer didn't come with Windows 98 installed, you will need to convert your hard drive to the FAT32 file system. This file system is much faster than the old FAT file system, and also uses hard drives' resources better. Windows 98 comes with the Drive Converter, an automated program to upgrade to the FAT32 file system. The Drive Converter can be found in the Start Menu under the Accessories/System Tools folder.

One of the problems with the Drive Converter is that it won't update partitions of less than 512 Mb. However, I have found a way around this problem. This procedure requires the user to delete the partition on the hard drive, so only advanced users should perform it.

1). Back up all the files on the partition.
2). Restart the Computer in MS-DOS mode.
3). Type Fdisk /fprmt. This will start up fdisk with support for FAT32 for small hard drives.
4). Use Fdisk to delete your small partition.
5). Return to the main menu and create a logical Dos drive using the freed hard disk space. Make sure that the FAT32 file system is selected.
6). Exit to the DOS prompt and type format /[drive:] /Z:512.

This will format the new partition with the FAT32 file system using clusters of 512 bytes (very small clusters). If that setting is not successful, the program will accept any multiple of 512, such as 1024 or 2048.

The Microsoft System Information (Start, Run, msinfo32, "OK") program that comes with Windows 98 is an absolute gem. This program is a must-have for serious tweakers. It allows the user to configure most parts of the Windows 98 boot process, and also contains information and sub-programs that allow the user to tech several serious PC problems.

Begin by running the Registry checker to make sure the registry doesn't contain any errors, then run the System Configuration Utility. Go to the Startup tab and disable everything except Systray, TweakUI, Powertweak (mentioned later), any system utilities you are using (ex: Powerstrip), and possibly your virus scanner (although this will slow the system down considerably).