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In the Forums... |
Posted: September 21, 1999 Written by: Keith "Farrel" McClellan Originally Printed in PC Gamer's Ultimate Hardware Bible, an Imagine Media Publication. All rights reserved. Reprinted with Permission. 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. |
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