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Tweaks & Tips Part IISep 01 '00 (Updated Oct 03 '00) Write an essay on this topic.This is the second part of my tweaks and tips so please read part one if you haven't done so. Tips & Tweaks Part I http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-1F5A-395A4C8-39AEDD85-prod1 I am first to say that I'm no computer expert but I've found a few tips from the web that will help improve the performance of your computer. Some of them will require a bit of technical knowledge of the computer's registry so before you make any changes to it, please make sure you back it up and also make sure you have a start up disk handy in case you can't start up your computer. I will not take any responsibility for any problems that result of the tips I've given. Some of them are taken from other information on the web, and some are mine. As I am no computer expert, I can't help you with any problems that you may have. So be careful. And, please ensure that you have at least a startup disk or ERU disk or registry backup or any backup in case anything happens so that you can get your computer to boot. If you don't know how to do it, please read my part one on Tweaks. Thanks. In the following tips, I will be talking about various downloads that are for specific versions of Windows 95. Here is a breakdown of the versions and the official MS version numbers: Win 95-Original Windows 95 retail (version 4.00.950) Win 95 A-Windows 95 Service Pack 1 update (version 4.00.950 A) Win 95 B-OSR 2.0 and 2.1 (version 4.00.950 B) Win 95 C-OSR 2.5 (version 4.00.950 C) Win 98-retail (version 4.10.1998) Win 98-Second edition (version 4.10.2222A) To find out which version you have, just right click on My Computer and select Properties. It will be displayed at the top under "System". 6-Disable advertising portions of "free utility" programs such as PKzip, Go!Zilla, etc. from loading and taking up valuable windows resources. I don't recommend deleting the advertising programs. I usually first remove the shortcuts from the startup via the registry, startup menu, msconfig methods I mentioned before. Then, I search out the directory in which the program is located. I rename the ad fetching and launch program to "renamed..." so that I know what program I renamed. I delete all the ads (gifs, jpg, etc) that's in the directory and retrieve some disk space. PKzip's ad fetching program is called tsadbot.exe. It should be located in c:\program files\timesink\ad gateway\. Every time I use PKzip nowadays, I don't see any ads and there are no ads downloaded on my hard drive. I think that Go!Zilla's ad should be located in a directory called Aureate. I found that Go!Zilla took up a lot of RAM and bandwidth to run so I uninstalled it. It works. 7-Disable some hidden Windows programs from being loaded on startup. If you're not using the doublespace and compression utilities (and I don't recommend it), then you should at least disable the dblspace.bin and drvspace.bin files so that they don't get loaded on startup. Some people recommend deleting the doublespace.bin and drivespace.ini files but I like to just rename them just in case. I usually just add "renamed" to the files. Windows won't be able to find them and obviously can't load and run them. These files are usually located in the root directory c:\. 8-On almost the same thought, you can also disable them among other things by making changes in the msdos.sys files. First, you'll need to change the file attribute of msdos.sys so that you can edit it. Open Explorer. Find msdos.sys in the c:\ root directory. Right click on msdos.sys and select Properties. Uncheck the "read only" attribute. Click ok. Then double click on it. It will probably ask you which program to open it with. Select either notepad.exe or wordpad.exe. I prefer notepad for small files because I know it is text based and does not embed any formatting in it. In the [Options] section, add the following (if it's not already present): dblspace=0 drvspace=0 logo=n bootdelay=1 The 0 are zeros and by setting them to zero, it disables them. Logo is the Windows splash screen that you see when you start Windows. By having the it display the screen, it takes a few extra seconds off the start up time. So, if you like the splash screen, set it to y. Bootdelay is the time in seconds windows waits when you boot up your computer before it goes into booting. This is in case someone wants to press the F5, or F8 or whatever button it is to go to the DOS boot menu screen for specific booting methods. I set it to 1. The default is 2. If you don't want the delay, set it to 0. 9-Set virtual cache to a permanent setting. Setting these values will prevent VCache from filling up your RAM and causing your applications to be paged out to disk. VCache reduces the number of times the hard disk is accessed. Accessing information from VCache will be faster than if accessing from the hard disk. Open Explorer. Go to c:\windows. Double click on system.ini. Go to the [vcache] section and add the following: MinFileCache=2048 MaxFileCache=2048 You can change the minimum and maximum settings from to any setting between 0 and 4096 but most people don't recommend allocating more then 5 MB or 5192. I keep them both at the same so that Windows doesn't play around with it and take up valuable time, thus slowing things down. 10-While we're on the subject of VCache and memory, due to the way that Windows handles memory allocation, for those people who open and close browsers, programs a lot, you will notice a decrease in performance of Windows if you continue with your current Windows session. Until you reboot, it's quite possible to get "out of memory" messages, or even "crash" your computer if you open and close programs frequently. One tip is to simply close your programs and reboot so that you will start anew. Or, you could try to not close them only to reopen them up again later. If you're not using the program, you could just minimize it until the end of your windows session. If you're opening up multiple browser windows (like I do when I surf the net), rather than opening up more browser windows, you could copy the link you want to access as a shortcut, then paste it in an unused browser window and surf that browser window. That will at least decrease the clutter of having too many browser windows open and taking up too much of the system resources. Sure, it may take a bit more time, but think about having to reboot if you have a memory error or have a crash. You might save more time doing those extra steps. Okay, it looks like I will have to do a part 3 as I still have a few more tips. Sorry. http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-45DF-4004EF0-39AFEE96-prod1  |
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by texas-swede
