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Last Updated: 15.11.2004, 1:00 AM

KEYPAD

As first my performance tips. I just can't resist posting them, as soon as possible. It's all about the customization, I always do after "fresh" OS installation. Here are listed few of the most crucial computer settings/configuration changes, that can be made (affecting performance), and note, most of them are somehow "low-level" ones. Because, in paragraphs below, we are talking about drivers, right ??

The bottom-line is, I HATE ALL THAT ADDITIONAL/OPTIONAL/EXTRA FEATURES (like additional extesnions, plugins, addons, or whatever you want to call them), so I DISABLE EVERYTHING, THAT IS NOT NEEDED AND REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM TO RUN and I have preety tight rules. I disable all not necessary GUI enhancements, on both Windows OSs, including things "down" (in "low-level" table, hehe) to devices, device-drivers, other drivers, fonts-used, software, services, and other "parts" of OS. This is the most important for performance.

For my graphic-card, nVidia GeForce4 MX 440 graphic processor/chipset, with 64MB DDR, built on ASUS V8170, the first thing after installing drivers is that I disable all graphic card's not required enchanements, including software packages, that usually comes with drivers on installation CD.

I mean all that additional stuff, ASUS/nVidia's additional features (nView thing and its additional options - "virtual" desktops and "ALTernative monitor", called "multi-display and multi desktop functionality"), and many other extra (but useless) enhancements, including QuickTweak process (related to nView "Desktop Manager"), all this running with up-to two additional processes, one service, bunch of additional dlls used (or drivers), etc.

For both Windows versions I am using and user applications in general, I disable all useless and resources consuming "windows-behaviour-related" features, like tooltips, ballon-tips, labels on buttons, all not-needed stuff in general, right after fresh OS-installation.

The common way is to disable those things through OS or app setting dialogs. For Windows XP configuration in particular, under Control Panel's applet, I disable various fancy Windows effects, like fading, smooth-scrolling, shadowing, which all only slow-down your system. I disable all, exept I was used to live checked (i.e., remains default ) only the radio-button for "Show windows content while dragging", but lately I also uncheck this one. This changes could be done under:

Control Panel

or in even more advanced mode, in Visual Effects, and also under Advanced (pagfile-size and process-quanta settings):

Control Panel

Then I also disable Logon/Logoff and Startup/Exit in-built Windows sounds (faster booting, shutdown), and set sounds for program execution and closing, to have good view on what's going on in background, all these can be set under:

Control Panel

Another thing for both Windows versions (cause they both "look" for boot.ini file on boot-ups), is to disable "XP Boot Logo", i.e., Windows XP's "GUI startup type". It is preety simple, just open any Text-Editor (Microsoft's Notepad for example), and do this below:

Open boot.ini, and edit it

Of course the actual syntax should be with intendation/s (space/s) and without characters for "quoting". But rather see Sysinternals for other boot.ini switches here:

For Windows XP in particular, and its "style", it is certainly set to Classic on my machine, and Windows Explorer's Start-Menu and Windows-Folders, under Folder Options -- General are also set Classic (well, they were before using Blackbox as default Windows shell, and Total Commander as file-manager), and I certainly do not use (nor need) themes, with Themes service disabled (beside many others NT-services, see below), here is a list of all the things I recommend to SET TO CLASSIC with Group Policy or gpedit.msc:

Local Computer Policy - Computer Configuration - Administrative Templates

Local Computer Policy - User Configuration - Administrative Templates

And here are also two important "tweaks", things that can be disabled from inside any Windows Explorer window's settings dialogs. Optionally, you can uncheck also many others radio-buttons. See what fits to your needs, and your machine. Open an instance of Windows Explorer, and then go to:

Menu -- Tools

uncheck these features:

For all other user's apps in general, I disable everything, that is possible to be disabled. For Blackbox for instance that means to use for example only required plugins, for Firefox preety similar (only "Sort Bookmarks" extesnion), and, as the most impotant, I additionally make few performance modifications in System.ini file, which means, settings like: Max/Min file-cache size, Conservative swap-file usage tweak, DMABufferSize, MaxBPs, PerVMFiles and PageBuffers tweaks, WindowUpdateTime, ComBoostTime, KeyBoostTime tweaks (this list could go just on and on), see below for the most important lines, on my Windows 98/SE setup, and I always first disable all not-needed and useless NT-services with services.msc, on my Windows XP setup.

On Windows XP, I set to MANUAL these services:

On Windows XP, I set to DISABLED these services:

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KEYPAD

For users, who still use Windows 9x (though I am not sure for Windows ME), here are the crucial lines from my System.ini file, that you can add to your own System-ini file, to improve operational speed of your 9x system. Usually, the file resides in Windows\ directory, on your primary/bot/system partition, where Windows 9x OS is installed (was installed into) ...

For lines under [386Enh] header. You should only use "universal" entries/lines (anyway, I post only these), like LocalLoadHigh, DMABufferSize, ComBoostTime and especially ConservativeSwapfileUsage, and MinPagingFileSize, the most important ones (which can be also set under Control Panel's System applet)

For lines under [vcache] header (contain File Cache setings, and other memory management-related parameters), you can specify any reasonable value. It is generally recommended for better performance, to set Max and Min File Cache values, to be IDENTICAL, and for chunksize line, try to keep/set it to the number, which is MULTIPLE of integer 2 (1x2, 2x2, ...)

The list of the most useful multipliers of number 2, I made for myself for similar situatons:

The System.ini file is "hacked" for better/best OS performance. Note, it is not the whole file (Ididn't post the whole file), because System.ini files contain mostly OS's particular/specific lines (various paths, devices, driver's file-image-names, and similar stuff), and these lines are in general "unique" to each system. For example OS-specific lines under headers like - [keyboard], [mci], [drivers32], [Password Lists] and so on, so I put/paste here only lines under two headers.

Here is the optimized System.ini file for Windows 9x (i.e., 95/98/98SE/ME):

[386Enh]
LocalLoadHigh=1
32BitDiskAccess=on
32BitFileAccess=on
DMABufferSize=64
MinTimeSlice=40
MaxBPs=65530
PageBuffers=32
WindowUpdateTime=200
PerVMFiles=150
ComBoostTime=4
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
MinSPs=8
KeyBoostTime=.005
PagingDrive=C:
MinPagingFileSize=262144
MaxPagingFileSize=262144

[vcache]
MinFileCache=32768
MaxFileCache=32768
chunksize=2048

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KEYPAD

And of course, I also use few "optional", "user's" applications. I can say, than in all that time, I tried so many applications, and that I've already chosen the most reliable/stable ones. And it was like the process of developing my minimalistic approach (during geting knowledge and skills). Like there was this Iolo software, "all.-in-one", 2-3 MB in lenght program, called System Mechanic. And guess what ??

In case of "shredding":

Cookies and Temporary files:

I used this System Mechanic program for quite some time, especially because of its "shredder" function (to overwrite files - they call it "Incinerator"), and Cookies and Temporary files deletion feature. But as you can see, I sucessfully replaced it with more efficient and smaller applicaiton, and above all - one huge, "deep-integrated" application less, and 3 megs of disk-space freed.

And there are many, many similar cases. Another example was the Boot Switcher application. Well, there was this Boot Switcher application, from Pantaray software Systems, and I used it to set boot from my Windows 98/SE to Windows XP and reverse. I mean, if you have two Windows OSs installed, on booting, this "List of operating systems" is displayed for number of seconds, choosen in Control Panel's System applet (see below), and this application enabled this feature, to not display this list, but to boot directly to pre-choosen OS (I actually see now, this also can be set under Control Panel's System applet). But the "problem" is/was, it was the kind of software, that was needed to run all the time (i.e., running as process, being a so-called "resident" application), and again, guess what happened ??

I discovered lately this 9 KB in-lenght application, called Rebooter, and replaced Boot Switcher with it. Because if I compare Rebooter to Boot Switcher in general - Rebooter is a "non-setup" program, and again, much less disk-space consuming, it doesn't need to run as resident at all. And well again - one resident (and beeing resident completely unnecessarily), more or less "deep-integrated" application less, and 1 megs of disk-space freed.

I actually discovered afterwards, that all this OS-boot options could be all set identically, under:

Control Panel

But it is somehow too much time-consuming, etc., to go to this Control Panel applet each time, when you want to set boot-options. You just execute it (when you need to set boot options), click on OS, you which to boot to next time booting, and that's it.

One another nice example of my "minimalism-principle" is, on the beggining, when I still used "tweaking" apps (before I discovered the magic of .reg files), I carefully try to not install two apps with same, or too similar usages (twaks applied, or whatever in cases of other "non-tweaking" apps), then later I actually replaced most of apps, I thought they are "unique" and "essential", with simple, straightforward, "non-setup" progams.

So, the bottom-line is:

With "more "things" I simply mean, each additional process, plugin, extension, driver, virtual-machine, control, or whatever additional feature, thing ("down" to number of registry keys and values), consuming additional resources in all meanings and "forms" - CPU, disk, memory, handles, windows opened, number of NT-Objects, etc.

Though it is ture, I use many "features" of my PC, so for those things, I just need some additional software to be installed. Like codecs, players - for video/audio, file-sharing app - to dl music all the time being connected (56K dialup user - so I need to take 100 % advantage of the phone bill), interpreter and libraries - for programming, and so on), but as mentioned, I developed strict approach when choosing which one to finally use on long-terms.

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