Windows XP Tweaks

[chrisflyer]

Team,

I came across a few of these Windows XP tweaks that have proved a real treat.

I am sure most of you are aware of them, but for the not so savvy, I hope they help.

Windows XP is a vastly superior operating system to its predecessors – Windows 95, 98 & ME. It is overall faster in terms of boot time and program loading and it’s also much more stable than its predecessors.

You may already be running Windows XP and experiencing its improved performance but do you have it finely tuned for performance greater than you could have even expected?

Here are 5 tweaks to get Windows XP operating at close to optimum performance without spending a dime. As a flight simmer, you'll benefit from these tweaks.

Firstly, however, we’ll assume your hard disk is operating NTFS. If your system came bundled with XP then it most likely is. If you upgraded your previous version of Windows to Windows XP, then your file system may still be using the FAT32 file system. If it is then you need to convert it to NTFS. While this will convert your hard disk to NTFS however your cluster size will not be optimised. Converting your hard disk from FAT32 to NTFS gives you 512 byte cluster sizes which is not the optimum and will give you less than optimum hard disk performance since 512 byte clusters result in higher hard drive overhead. The recommended cluster size is 4096 bytes. If your hard disk is not using this cluster size then you should re-format your system using this cluster size which is the Windows Format default cluster size. Alternatively Partition Magic V8 will let you change your cluster size for an already formatted hard drive without requiring a re-format.

If you do not want to go through a complete re-format but do want to convert to NTFS if you are running FAT32 then go to the Command Prompt – START => All Programs => Accessories => Command Prompt.

To confirm which file system you are running at the C: prompt type CHKDSK.

The first line will tell you which file system you are running. If you are running FAT32 then to convert to NTFS enter the following:

CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS

The conversion will take about 30 minutes. Repeat this for other hard disk volumes you may have e.g. D: drive or E: drive.

When complete, re-boot your system and prepare for the 5 Windows XP Tweaks That Will Boost Your System Performance…. Out Of Site!

Note: Before you perform these steps, please ensure that you are familiar with REGEDIT. Incorrectly using Regedit could damage your Windows registry and leave your system unbootable and unrecoverable. If you are not confident using Regedit, have a friend who is perform these tweaks for you.

Tweak #1 – Disable Last File Access Stamping
By default, every time Windows XP reads a file, its stamps the file with the date and time of last access. Whilst it can serve a purpose, it is generally not required for everyday computer use. It hogs resources by writing to a file each time it is accessed. So every read operation is also accompanied by a write operation of a few bytes.

To turn this off go to the command prompt:

At the command prompt enter the following:

FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 1

If you ever want to turn it back on again enter: FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 0

Re-boot your computer.

Tweak #2 – Turn Off Windows Indexing
While it’s great for finding files faster when you are doing a search, Windows file indexing is always working in the background indexing files and thus contributing to hard disk overhead.

To turn it off go to Control Panel => Add/Remove Programs => Windows Components. Then de-select Indexing Service.

Tweak #3 – Increase Your File System Cache
On a typical high-end system such as a 2.4 MHz Pentium a hard disk will transfer data at around 30-40 megabyte’s per Second. That’s pretty fast! How would you like hard disk transfer bursts of around 1 Giga-Byte per second? You can achieve this easily using any version of Windows as it’s already part of the file system… that is file caching where data that has been read from the hard disk remains in memory so that if it is required again before it is flushed from the cache it reads directly from the cache for these super fast data access rates. That’s right it is already part of the file system but the recommended default setting (the setting you might already be using) is not necessarily the best. The default setting in Windows is to allocate more memory to programs and less to the file cache but this is wasting precious memory that could be used for file caching instead of not being used at all. If, for example, you are running a 512 Mb RAM, and you have a program or two loaded, you have around 300 MB that isn’t being used AT ALL. It’s being reserved partly for file caching and partly for any programs you might load with the priority being for any programs you might load. It will not allocate all of that memory to the file cache and it is VERY RARE that you would use all of that memory for programs.

So you could either waste that memory and have degraded system performance or you could use that memory for file caching. USE IT FOR FILE CACHING! After you make the change below, you will notice after you re-boot and start using your system greatly reduced hard disk access for both read and write operations which is where the biggest bottleneck in computing is.

Performance benefits of this tweak are see no matter how little RAM you have but are more pronounced with the more RAM you have. We suggest no less than 256 Mb and more is better.

Perform the following:

CONTROL PANEL => SYSTEM => ADVANCED => PERFORMANCE => SETTINGS => ADVANCED => MEMORY USAGE. Change the option from Programs to System Cache.

Re-boot your computer.

Now to see this tweak in action do this:

1. Load Microsoft Flight Simulator. It will take the normal amount of time to load depending upon your system..... Anywhere from 45 seconds to 2.5 minutes.

2. Once FS2002 has loaded and you are sitting on the runway, exit the program and go back to your desktop..

3. Just wait a moment or two for all hard disk activity to stop and then re-launch FS2002. What you'll see is that the program will load in just seconds!

Why? Because it is all being loaded out of RAM and not having to read from the hard disk at all. You should be loaded and sitting on the runway anywhere between 10 and 40 seconds depending upon your RAM and processor speed. All up about 300 or more percent improvement in loading time because it is being loaded out or File Cache. With Windows XP being fairly disk intensive in general, all of your computer operations will benefit from this increased allocation of free RAM to disk caching.

Tweak #4 – Clean Your Windows Registry
A great Trialware program called Ace Utilities that will clean out your Windows registry from old, obsolete, and incorrect Windows registry settings is. You can get this at:

http://www.acelogix.com/downloads/aceutils.exe

Ace Utilities will also find and clean out all old unused temporary files from your system that other methods might miss.

Download this FREE by clicking here and run it on your system. After you have cleaned your Windows registry then re-boot your system.

Tweak #5 – Increase CPU Priority
This will increase the CPU priority for programs running in the foreground. E.g. Your Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002.

Run Regedit

Find This Key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro
l\PriorityControl\

Set the Win32PrioritySeparation to 38

The last adjustment is to set the "Launch folder windows in separate process" setting by opening the "My Computer\Tools\Folder Options\View -and tick the "Launch folder windows in separate process" box.

Window XP will open any new window (including program) in its own memory and in separate process priority. (increase stability and speed but use much more RAM than before)

Take care.

Andrew

[MNguyen281]

Thanks for the tips Just one clarification though. In tip#5 is that 38 in hex or dec?

[ComputerGeek737]

Very nice set of tips!! Thanks for sharing!!

[sakor1]

Where have I read this before? Thanks for sharing.
stu

[Dusan]

Guys,
Be careful with #3: Tweak #3 – Increase Your File System Cache

I did this one and my computer went bezerk after the reboot: ran slow; stuff wasn't loading correctly; display options went bezerk; etc..

I had to reboot in safemood to undo the changes and now i'm back to normal.

xp pro w/sp2

[ComputerGeek737]

maybe it was SP2 that affected it becuase I had no problems whatsoever

[lightbulb]

I had the same problems with xp prom sp 1. Nothing would load and there would be write error failures to the harddrive after using number 3.

[johnparjr]

Hmm I did the cache tweak on my 700m with sp2 and have had no prblems but I also have 2gb ram though :-)

[Tummypony86]

XP Tweaks
http://www.tweakxp.com/

[the nitz]

i did everything but the reg clean cause i reformattted and i have sp2 and everythign runs great i got an increase in my scores on marks