Ausatco
17th Feb 2000, 04:47
While reading the thread about poor Bovingdon's woes, these tweaks came to mind....
If your Windows machine slows down there are a few things you can do to help tweak it back up again:-
1 Defrag (already mentioned)
2 If your system drive or partition is filling up, Windows may thrash about trying to run the swap file. Moving the swap file to another partition or physical drive may help. Do that through Control Panel | System | Performance | Virtual Memory. Put the dot in "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings", select a suitable drive and set the max and min amounts to the same figure, which should be about 2.5 times your amount of RAM. OK your way out and re-boot.
If you're going to try this, it's a good idea to defrag the drive you intend to use before you make this change. Setting the max and min amounts to the same figure makes the swapfile remain defragmented.
3 To get best performance anyway try Control Panel | System | Performance | File System. In Typical Role of this Computer, select Network Server if it is available from the drop-down list and move the slider to Full read-ahead optimisation. Now check the Graphics performance - same as last step, but select Graphics instead of File System. Move the slider to full hardware acceleration. OK your way out and re-boot. If you have any problems after these two adjustments you may have to consider less read-ahead and/or hardware acceleration on the sliders.
4 This one's not for the faint-hearted!
DISCLAIMER: The following involves manipulating the Windows Registry and should not be attempted by persons without reasonable knowledge and expertise. Registry errors can be fatal. Before you do anything, BACK UP the registry (see below). Proceed with caution and realise that you do so at your own risk.
A Little Registry Housework.
As you install and remove programs and tweak and fiddle, the registry can be left with corrupted, unused and unnecessary keys. There is a utility called Regclean which can help fix a dirty registry. Suggest you go the MS Support site and download article Q147769 http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q147/7/69.asp . Then, if you havent already got it, download and install Regclean 4.1a (link is in the article). Regclean is best placed in the C:\Windows folder.
BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER, BACK UP YOUR REGISTRY!
The registry consists of two files, SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT, both of which are in the C:\Windows folder. These are normally hidden files, so in order to be able to see them to back them up, open My Computer | View | Folder Options | View. Near the top of the list is Hidden Files. Click a dot next to "Show All Files" and OK your way out.
Now you'll be able to see the two files in the Windows folder. Copy them to another location (I'm paranoid, I make two copies, one in the C: drive root directory and one somewhere on another physical disk.)
Read the caveats and recovery strategies in the downloaded article. You'll also get some more as RegClean runs.
Run RegClean and follow its prompts.
I found a noticeable improvement in my system after I did this.
Some More Advanced Registry Housework
Compacting the Registry.
This was of benefit to me while I was running Win95. Not sure about Win98 - there are improvements over Win95 in the way it handles and maintains the registry that may make this unnecessary, but here it is if you want to try it. I did it in Win98 and I think I noticed a small improvement in performance, though I didn't notice a change in the size of the two registry files.
Compaction is a slow process. When I had a small registry - about 1.6Mb in Win95 - it took over an hour. My 7Mb Win98 registry takes overnight on my PII-233 clunker, so leave yourself plenty of time!
Back up your registry files as above!
Using Start | Run, run regedit.exe. Select the root (usually called "My Computer"). In the Registry menu, click Export Registry File. When prompted for a file name navigate to the root (usually C:\) and provide a filename with the extension .reg - eg COMPACT.REG and click OK.
Re-start your computer in MS-DOS mode (or exit Windows to a DOS prompt). DO NOT just open a DOS window - you have to get out of the Windows environment.
Change to the Windows directory (CD C:\windows)
Make the registry file accessible in DOS by typing the following commands:-
ATTRIB -R -A -S -H SYSTEM.DAT
ATTRIB -R -A -S -H USER.DAT
Now to the actual compaction:-
Type REGEDIT /C C:\COMPACT.REG (or whatever filename you used)
and go to bed, or to the movies, or flying or whatever.
The first 20 or 30% of the job happens quite quickly. After that it's as slow as a wet week-end.
If there's a problem
Firstly, don't panic - well, not too much. If you have backed up the registry, recovery is pretty easy.
If an error happened really early in the compaction you may be able to re-start Windows, but perhaps with some forgotten settings. If this happens, use Windows Explorer to locate the COMPACT.REG file you created and double-click on it. When you see a message "Information in C:\COMPACT.REG has been successfully entered into the registry", restart Windows immediately.
If you can't get back into Windows at all, then you'll have to restore the two backed-up registry files to C:\WINDOWS and restart. You may have to do the ATTRIB routine above to the two back-up files so you can move them, but I'm not sure about that - never had to do it :)
If your Windows machine slows down there are a few things you can do to help tweak it back up again:-
1 Defrag (already mentioned)
2 If your system drive or partition is filling up, Windows may thrash about trying to run the swap file. Moving the swap file to another partition or physical drive may help. Do that through Control Panel | System | Performance | Virtual Memory. Put the dot in "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings", select a suitable drive and set the max and min amounts to the same figure, which should be about 2.5 times your amount of RAM. OK your way out and re-boot.
If you're going to try this, it's a good idea to defrag the drive you intend to use before you make this change. Setting the max and min amounts to the same figure makes the swapfile remain defragmented.
3 To get best performance anyway try Control Panel | System | Performance | File System. In Typical Role of this Computer, select Network Server if it is available from the drop-down list and move the slider to Full read-ahead optimisation. Now check the Graphics performance - same as last step, but select Graphics instead of File System. Move the slider to full hardware acceleration. OK your way out and re-boot. If you have any problems after these two adjustments you may have to consider less read-ahead and/or hardware acceleration on the sliders.
4 This one's not for the faint-hearted!
DISCLAIMER: The following involves manipulating the Windows Registry and should not be attempted by persons without reasonable knowledge and expertise. Registry errors can be fatal. Before you do anything, BACK UP the registry (see below). Proceed with caution and realise that you do so at your own risk.
A Little Registry Housework.
As you install and remove programs and tweak and fiddle, the registry can be left with corrupted, unused and unnecessary keys. There is a utility called Regclean which can help fix a dirty registry. Suggest you go the MS Support site and download article Q147769 http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q147/7/69.asp . Then, if you havent already got it, download and install Regclean 4.1a (link is in the article). Regclean is best placed in the C:\Windows folder.
BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER, BACK UP YOUR REGISTRY!
The registry consists of two files, SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT, both of which are in the C:\Windows folder. These are normally hidden files, so in order to be able to see them to back them up, open My Computer | View | Folder Options | View. Near the top of the list is Hidden Files. Click a dot next to "Show All Files" and OK your way out.
Now you'll be able to see the two files in the Windows folder. Copy them to another location (I'm paranoid, I make two copies, one in the C: drive root directory and one somewhere on another physical disk.)
Read the caveats and recovery strategies in the downloaded article. You'll also get some more as RegClean runs.
Run RegClean and follow its prompts.
I found a noticeable improvement in my system after I did this.
Some More Advanced Registry Housework
Compacting the Registry.
This was of benefit to me while I was running Win95. Not sure about Win98 - there are improvements over Win95 in the way it handles and maintains the registry that may make this unnecessary, but here it is if you want to try it. I did it in Win98 and I think I noticed a small improvement in performance, though I didn't notice a change in the size of the two registry files.
Compaction is a slow process. When I had a small registry - about 1.6Mb in Win95 - it took over an hour. My 7Mb Win98 registry takes overnight on my PII-233 clunker, so leave yourself plenty of time!
Back up your registry files as above!
Using Start | Run, run regedit.exe. Select the root (usually called "My Computer"). In the Registry menu, click Export Registry File. When prompted for a file name navigate to the root (usually C:\) and provide a filename with the extension .reg - eg COMPACT.REG and click OK.
Re-start your computer in MS-DOS mode (or exit Windows to a DOS prompt). DO NOT just open a DOS window - you have to get out of the Windows environment.
Change to the Windows directory (CD C:\windows)
Make the registry file accessible in DOS by typing the following commands:-
ATTRIB -R -A -S -H SYSTEM.DAT
ATTRIB -R -A -S -H USER.DAT
Now to the actual compaction:-
Type REGEDIT /C C:\COMPACT.REG (or whatever filename you used)
and go to bed, or to the movies, or flying or whatever.
The first 20 or 30% of the job happens quite quickly. After that it's as slow as a wet week-end.
If there's a problem
Firstly, don't panic - well, not too much. If you have backed up the registry, recovery is pretty easy.
If an error happened really early in the compaction you may be able to re-start Windows, but perhaps with some forgotten settings. If this happens, use Windows Explorer to locate the COMPACT.REG file you created and double-click on it. When you see a message "Information in C:\COMPACT.REG has been successfully entered into the registry", restart Windows immediately.
If you can't get back into Windows at all, then you'll have to restore the two backed-up registry files to C:\WINDOWS and restart. You may have to do the ATTRIB routine above to the two back-up files so you can move them, but I'm not sure about that - never had to do it :)