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Disclaimer: This is an older article and may contain outdated information or bad links.
Introduction
Operating systems, operating systems, operating systems... to use an old cliché, "You can't live with 'em, but you can't live without 'em," and that is certainly true of Windows - particularly the Win9x series. Until we can all move off to the blissful land of Win2k with its new technologies and high stability (hopefully), we have to live with the dead horse of an operating system based on DOS - something that was dreamed up way back in the late 70's. How can we live with such an unprolific beast? By tweaking it out, of course!
Luckily, Win98 and its derivatives (Win98 SE and the "Millennium Edition") are very easy to tweak out and make very fresh. Windows if nothing if it isn't chuck full of settings to play around with. Just remember to be careful and be sure to write down any settings that you have changed and their original value - just in case.
System Startup
Optimizing your system's startup routine is the first step in getting your system into fighting condition. Here are a few tweaks for you to play around with. Remember to make a backup of any files you change BEFORE you change any of them, though - just in case.
In the MSDOS.SYS file, add the following lines:
Doublebuffer=1
Dblspace=0
Drvspace=0
Logo=0
Bootdelay=0
You may need to remove the write-protect attribute of this file to save. To do so, simply go into the file's properties and remove it. Make sure you put it back on when you are done though.
In the CONFIG.SYS file, add the following line:
Stacks=0,0
Go through and remove all other lines in the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files as well (back up first!).
Removing Temporary Files
To remove temporary files from your Windows/Temp directory create a CLEAN.BAT file and put it in the root directory. Put the following lines in it:
@DelTree /Y C:\WINDOWS\Temp
@MD C:\WINDOWS\Temp
This file will clean up your temporary files without causing any windows errors. To use the program, either reboot into MS-DOS mode or start the computer in command prompt only mode (press F8 before the loading Windows 98 line comes up to get the startup menu). Then run the program from the command prompt.
For more system startup tweaks, check out our definitive System Startup Tweak Guide.
File System Optimization
FAT32 is probably the biggest performance booster in the entire Windows 98 upgrade. Use the Drive Converter to convert your partitions to FAT32 and gain performance. If you have very small partitions (512 MB. or less), the Drive Converter won't convert your drive. However, there is a way around this:
-Backup all the files on the drive.
-Restart the computer in MS-DOS mode.
-Type Fdisk /fprmt. This will start up the program with support for FAT32 for small hard drives.
-Use Fdisk to delete your drive partition (called a logical drive).
-Then use the program to create a logical DOS drive using the freed hard disk space. Make sure that the FAT32 file system is selected.
-Exit to the DOS prompt and type format /[drive:] /Z:512 to format the drive with a sector size of 512 bytes. If this is too small, any multiple of 512 should work.
It is important to be careful when performing this optimization - because you ARE reformatting your hard drive after all. Other hard drive optimizations can be found in the Hard Drive / Memory Tweak Guide.
Windows 98 System Tweaks
Installing new drivers for your hardware is imperative to top-notch performance. Check out Drivers Headquarters for links to the driver support pages for most (if not all) PC hardware distributors.
Most Win98 settings tweaks are covered in the CD-ROM Tweak Guide, the Hard Drive / Memory Tweak Guide, the Modem Tweak Guide, the System Startup Tweak Guide and the Windows Shell Tweak Guide. Here are some other ones for your tweaking pleasure.
First start by disabling system sounds. To do this, go to the control panel/sounds applet. Under the Schemes section, select "No Sounds" and click ok. This will speed up your system dramatically. Also, removing your desktop background and any unnecessary icons should free up a lot of system memory.
You might also want to check out the CPU and Motherboard Tweak Guide for information on some tweaking programs that will further increase your performance. Also, we have several tweak guides for video cards (including the Geforce 256 and Voodoo3 Tweak Guides) that will increase your overall game performance.
The Big One
Here's the tweak that drove me to re-write this tweak guide. It can improve operating system and application speed by up to 10% - so listen up. Windows has a little program that is included with it called walign.exe. Running it sets up the files (DLLs and EXEs specifically) in the walign.ini file to access memory in the same kind of 4 KB sectors that Windows does. This does two things - (1) it speeds up memory access, and (2) allows the program to run directly from the vcache (no longer do we have to have two copies of a program in memory!). However, it isn't a universal program (its big brother, WinAlign from the Windows Resource Kit, is a universal program, but it costs money) - or at least it's not supposed to be. Here's a way to trick the program into doing what you want it to.
There are two methods for tricking the program into optimizing a file that it's not intended to. One applies to files that are in the system subdirectory (where the program resides) and the other uses the command line.
System Directory:
For this particular hack, you will need to open up a dos prompt in the windows\system directory and the walign.ini file in notepad. At the command line, type dir *.dll /p and dir *.exe /p respectively (the first to list only DLL's and the second to list only EXE's). Each time the list stops, copy the far right hand column into the open walign.ini file using the box text select tool in the dos window (the dotted square). Once you've copied all of the file names from both dir listings into the INI file, save the file and run walign.exe. It will optimize all of the files within the directory.
Command Line:
This 'hack' allows you to optimize any file on your computer. Use the format walign [x:\directory\file.ext] in the command prompt to optimize any other file on the system. Because of this command line property, you can very easily use a batch file to optimize every file on your computer.
To create this batch file, I recommend using the dir /p *.exe and dir /p *.dll commands from the subdirectory in which you want to optimize. This will list, sorted by subdirectory, every EXE and DLL file on that drive. Then simply do the copy/paste deal into the text file. Then make each of the files in the following format:
walign [x:\directory\file.ext]
Save the file into the windows\system directory as a file with the .BAT extension and then run the file. You can do this for just about all of your applications and system files. Be careful though, because VERY occasionally the process won't work on a file and you'll have to replace it from a backup. This really isn't an issue for files residing within the System subdirectory but other files may not have been designed to work with that kind of optimization.
Conclusion
Well there you have it - if you are looking for more tweaking information, make sure you check out our other tweak guides. And as always, feel free to email me with comments and questions.
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