Hard Drive Tweaks

The swap file is one of the most important files on your hard drive because programs are constantly accessing it. Windows doesn't handle this file very efficiently, so taking control of it out of the OS's hands is to the users' benefit. To do this, go to the Control Panel (Start, Settings, Control Panel) and start the System applet. Click on the Performance tab and then click on the Virtual Memory button. Click on the "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings" button, select a hard disk, and enter a minimum and maximum value. I recommend values between 128 and 256 Mb, as long as both settings (minimum and maximum) are the same to keep Windows from resizing it. It is generally recommended that you defragment your hard drive before creating a permanent swap file, particularly in Windows 95.

Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter are two of the most important utilities in Windows. Scandisk corrects most data errors that it finds on the hard disk, and Disk Defragmenter rewrites the information on the hard drive so that it is contiguous. When you copy a file to the hard disk, the hard drive fills up the first available it can find. If the file is too large for that chunk of space, it will break up the file and place some of the information in another location. Reassembling they program files for execution can slow the system down by as much as 20%. If you are using Windows 98, Disk Defragmenter can also rearrange the program files so that that the ones that are used most (the swap file followed by program executables) are on the outside (the faster portion) of the drive.

Begin by running a standard Scandisk of all of the systems hard drives - to correct any errors - and then start up Disk Defragmenter. Select the "All Hard Drives" and run the program. This process may take several hours but should immensely increase disk performance. If you are using Windows 98, before starting click on the Settings button and make sure to check the Rearrange Program Files box. 

RAM Tweaks

Windows splits your RAM into two sections, the cache and the executable section. The cache stores information on programs that you have already loaded so that if you restart them, they execute faster. This is a great concept, but Windows doesn't manage the cache well, so I recommend manually setting the Cache setting. Go to Start Menu/Run and type sysedit and go to the system.ini file. Find the [VCache] header and insert these three lines:

Chunksize=512
MinFileCache=8192
MaxFileCache=8192

These settings stop the cache from growing too large and slowing down the system, freeing up system resources for other things. Chunksize allocates the smallest amount of space that a program can take up in the cache. If a program takes up too many chunks, the speed of the system will degrade; but if the chunks are too large, a lot of RAM is wasted. 512 is a good setting for most users, the only people that might consider changing it would be people with a large amount of RAM (256 Mb's or more) or people who are dealing solely with very small files. Users with 32 Mb's or less may want to use a setting that is slightly lower (4096). Power users (those with 128 Mb's of RAM or more) may get better results out of the settings 12288 or 16384.

I also recommend loading system settings into the upper memory area because it can give a slight boost in performance. To do that, add the line LocalLoadHigh=1 under the [386enh] heading. 

TweakUI

The Control Panel is one of the safe-havens for tweakers. Infinitesimal tweaks reside in this little folder on a Windows system. We will begin with the king of all OS Tweak applets, TweakUI. If you have Windows 98, you can install the program off of the CD but otherwise you'll have to go to Microsoft's web site (www.microsoft.com) and download Powertoys. TweakUI can be downloaded from our server here. Windows 98 users: To install TweakUI, browse to the \tools\reskit\powertoy subdirectory on your Windows 98 CD, right click on the tweakui.inf file, and select install.

The different versions of Tweak UI work slightly differently, so if you can't find some of the tweaks I mention, it is because they don't exist in your version. Go to the Control Panel and double-click on the Tweak UI icon. Under the General tab, turn off Window Animation, Smooth Scrolling, Menu Animation, Combo Box Animation, and List Box Animation. Under the Explorer tab uncheck Tip of the Day and Animated "Click here to start". Skip to the Boot Tab and disable the Display Splash Screen while Booting setting. This will get rid of the Windows 9x splash screen that pops up while the computer is loading Windows.

Several tweaks can also be performed within the Display applet. Setting the Desktop background to a color rather than an image will save a lot of RAM. To do this, click on the Background tab, and select none under Wallpaper. To change the color of the background, click on the Appearance tab, click on the part of the image representing the background, and use the Color drop-box to select a preset color or determine your own. In the Effects tab (Win95 Plus pack or Win98), disable all of the visual effects except "Show icons using all possible colors". In the Web tab, make sure that Active Desktop is disabled, if you haven't done so already. Under Settings, your color depth should be set to High (16-bit) color. Under Advanced there should be more settings that will improve your video card's speed and picture quality.

Those cute little sounds that your computer makes when you open the start menu, etc, chew up a lot of system resources. To disable those sounds, double click on the Sounds icon. In the Schemes section, select No Sounds, click on the Apply button, and then ok. 

The System Applet

If TweakUI is the king of OS optimization, then the System applet is definitely the queen - it hides the true power of the operating system within its grasp. This power comes with a price, however. Some mistakes, particularly when dealing with the Device Manager, can render a computer useless. At the very least, before continuing, go to the Hardware Profiles tab and backup your configuration. If your hard drive is more than two years old, you should back up the contents of your entire hard drive because these tweaks are particularly dangerous for you, as they might corrupt data on some older hard disks that do not support direct memory access.

Under the Device Manager tab you should see a list of headings for all the different types of components that are in your computer (CD-ROM, Hard Disk Controllers, etc.). In the CD-ROM section, double click on the icon representing your CD-ROM drive. Go to the settings tab and enable the following items to speed up your CD-ROM drive:

1). Disconnect
2). Sync Data Transfer
3). Auto-Insert Notification
4). DMA

If your hard drive is more than two years old, back up the entire drive before proceeding. Under Disk Drives, select the icon representing your hard drive (It will have either IDE or SCSI in the title) and enable DMA.

In the Ports section, double click on both of the COM ports and set theses settings to speed them up:

1). Bits per second: 115200 or 921600
2). Data bits: 8
3). Parity: None
4). Stop bits: 1
5). Flow Control: Hardware


Also, click on the Advanced button and make sure the FIFO buffers are enabled and both the receive and transmit buffers are set to high. If you have a problem connecting to your ISP afterwards, try lowering these settings to correct the problem. Next click on the Performance tab. Click on the File System tab and set the Typical role of this computer to Network server, and put the read-ahead optimization to full. Next go to the Floppy Disk tab and disable Search for new Floppy Drives on startup. This will increase boot speed. Under the CD-ROM tab, set the Supplemental Cache size to large and optimize the access pattern for quad-speed or higher. This will speed up your CD-ROM drive substantially. Under the Removable Disk tab, enable write-behind caching, this will speed up your floppy drive and any other removable drive you own (Zip Disk, Superdisk, etc.). Under the Graphics button, make sure Hardware acceleration is set to full. This can dramatically increase 3D performance in D3D and OpenGL games.