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A little trick to speed up WindowsJun 22 '00 (Updated Jun 25 '00) Write an essay on this topic.This is a little trick many techies use to speed up the performance of Windows 95, 98 and NT based computers. The Windows family of operating systems use virtual memory for many system related tasks. Virtual memory is basically a portion of the hard drive the computer uses for memory and this type of memory is much slower than the regular system memory but Windows relies on it for many things. The best way to speed up Windows is to create a SWAP partition for Windows to use solely for this virtual memory. Windows creates a .SWP file on your hard drive and this is the virtual memory. The .SWP file is constantly changing in size and content so the useable size of your hard drive is constantly changing size also, maybe not noticeably but it is changing never-the-less. By giving the .SWP file it's own partition on the hard drive, it speeds up the system because... 1) Windows does not have to search the drive for the .swp file when needed. 2) Since the .SWP file is on it's own partition, it will not become fragmented among the other files and programs on your hard drive. 3) The free space on the useable area of the disk will not fluxuate when the .SWP file does, although it will fluxuate from other programs it still makes a difference. Before changing anything on your hard drive it is essential to back up your data on either CDROM or with a backup program like ghost, so after creating the new partitions you can restore your personal files, programs and data. Partitioning your hard drive will erase everything on it so do not try this if you can't back up your files or if you feel that you are uncomfortable doing this. I will not go through the process of partitioning since I have already written a complete and detailed step by step opinion with these instructions in it. For that information see my opinion in "How to Add an Extra Hard Drive". I will simply tell you what you need to do different. When you shutdown to DOS mode and run FDISK, the first thing you need to do is remove your existing partition (Delete Primary DOS Partition). Note: This will erase everything on your hard drive! You must have means to boot to a floppy or CDROM before attempting this! After removing the partition, you will have to shut down and reboot the computer or the disk will become unstable and a new partition would be corrupted if created before rebooting. Now you must have either a bootable CDROM or a bootable floppy disk to boot to with the FDISK.EXE file on it and your CDROM drivers.Your Windows installation floppy is a good boot disk to use or if you have a bootable Windows 98 CD, this is good also. After booting to your floppy or CDROM, run FDISK again and this time we will be creating 2 partitions. The first partition is going to be the useable area and the ACTIVE PARTITION. This is the partition you will be restoring your files and programs to as well as Windows. The second partition will be the Extended DOS Partition. This is the partition you will assign the Windows .SWP file to. You will have access to this partition as a logical drive and it will show up in Windows as a second hard drive. Remember though, the reason your doing this is to speed Windows up so if you put files and programs on this logical drive you are defeating the purpose of creating it. The SWAP partition should be about 1GB or 10% of your total hard drive capacity if you have a small hard drive. When you create the first partition and FDISK asks if you want the entire capacity of the drive in one partition choose no and allocate the correct amount of space in either MB or percentage of the drive. Remember to leave enough for the second(SWAP) partition. After creating the first partition you must shut down and reboot or the first partition may be unstable and become unusable. Then you run FDISK again and this time choose to create an Extended DOS Partition. After creating this partition you must shut down and reboot again before continuing. Now that you have rebooted you must run FDISK one last time from your floppy or CDROM. This time you will Create logical drives in the exteneded DOS partition. You will only create one logical drive and allocate all remaining disk space to the logical drive. This is your SWAP partition. After creating the logical drive you must shut down and reboot one last time. Now you must format both partitions before you can use them. Once formatted you can restore your data files and programs to your hard drive or you can start with a fresh installation of Windows and reinstall your programs. Once Windows is back on the hard drive you need to tell Windows to use the new logical drive for the .SWP file and this is how you do that. Right click on "My Computer" on the desktop and you will get a drop down menu. Choose "Properties" from this menu. You now have a windows that says "System Properties" in the title bar. There are four tabs across the top of the window labled "General, Device Manager, Hardware Profiles, and Performance". Click on the "Performance" tab. Now you have three buttons at the bottom of the window labled "File System..., Graphics..., and Virtual Memory..." Click on "Virtual Memory". Now you have a new window and in this window are two choices... 1) Let Windows manage my virtual memory settings. (Recommended) 2) Let me specify my own virtual memory settings. Choose Let me specify my own virtual memory settings and then underneath that change the Hard disk from C: to D: and then change the minimum to 0 and the maximum as high as it will go. Underneath these is a checkbox that says... "Disable virtual memory. (Not Recommended)". DO NOT CHECK THIS BOX or Windows will run extremely slow or may freeze and crash. Click "OK" at the bottom of the window and close all other windows. Now restart the computer and you're done. You should notice about a 7-13% increase in Windows applications after doing this depending on your computer speed and the amount of RAM you have. One last warning, you can destroy all your data attempting to do this procedure. If you are not comfortable trying this you can have it done by any mom & pop computer repair shop for fairly low cost. Just ask them to create a SWAP partition for Windows on the computer for you and to save and restore your data. Good luck and happy computing.  |
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