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v1.2<-- please note the version number. v1.00 was when I posted it and I have revised and added some more things in a few sections.
I have broken this guide into 6 parts. Networking, file system, memory performance, freeing up memory, startup/shutdown and then the other stuff. I've tried to pack as much performance related tweaking here as I can but there's always more to be uncovered. I will update this article as frequently as possible. I know there's a million tweaks that I'm missing here but I am trying to keep this guide dedicated to tweaks that directly affect your performance. I'll put together a second guide about the annoyances and other things but keep in mind this is ONLY performance stuff. If you know of something that affects the performance quite a bit and it's not listed here please post a thread in our Windows forum.
We of course have to spotlight Enemy_Of_Evil and http://www.mods4me.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45 for the basis of this article
There's a
What are the tools of the trade?
Notepad - With this baby you can get out of having to spend much time in regedit ;) What you will want to do is create a file call tweaks.reg on your desktop. After that files has been created right click on it and select edit. Next paste what I have in italics into that file. You will have to read what I have said about each tweak and you'll have to change some of them according to your system.
Regedit - Knowing how to use it to edit your registry is a MUST for this guide. It is the only tool that we're using here.
Basically browsing the registry is setup just like browsing folders in windows explorer. When I say something like "the key you need to edit can be found here HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft" you will click on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder and then look for the Software folder and then the Microsoft folder and the key you either have to add or edit will be in there. I will tell you very specific keys to add or edit. You will see the keys within that folder in the right side box. Right Click on them to see what all you can do with them.
To run it you will have to click on the start menu and select run. From there you type regedit. From there you can browse around and find all kinds of things to change/edit. If you're new to this make sure you look but NOT touch. Make sure that you make a backup before you touch anything. To do this you click on File and then export. Save the registry file someplace safe and if your screw something up you will have to return to regedit and either fix your changes or import the old file. I suggest you reboot after every line that you change since you'll have to restart windows in order for the changes to take affect. You don't want to do too many edits at a time. This will slowly help you safely tweak things out.
Alot of these tweaks can be done in Cache man and Tweak XP but what kind of a guide would this be if I only pointed you to software?
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Apart from that this is just the same old info. available on other sits months ago
While most is common knowledge or easily configured using Tweak XP your section on HDD and mem is new to me. Thanks for the great tips and I will use them
Anon can you post a link of the Microsoft Article?
QoS info - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q316666
L2 cache info - No link, but here's the quote from their guide on it;
SecondLevelDataCache. For those of you with older CPUs (Pre-Pentium 2 basically), this DWORD Value specifies the amount of L2 (Secondary) Cache on your CPU. Normally this amount will be determined via the HAL, although with older CPUs with off-die L2 Cache this may not be the case. Those with semi-modern CPUs (Pentium 2 or newer) should leave this set to 0 (As should those with Multiple CPUs). If you have greater than, or less than 256KB of L2 Cache on your (old) CPU then Right click on this entry & select Modify. Select the Decimal button & enter in the amount of L2 Cache available, e.g. If you have 512KB L2 Cache then enter in 512. Thanks Ojatex. Where Windows XP in unable to determine the L2 Cache available & this is set to 0 it will default to assuming 256KB L2 Cache is available.
http://www.tweak.cc/ goes to some "buy this domain" link.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dword:00000001
"NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001
this needs to be disable by changing it to
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dword:00000000
thus enabling NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation
Thought you all might need to know this... This crappy post wasted most of my week end...
WTF does that mean? Does it mean the swap file can be no less than 32 MB?
[link name=]http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q183/0/63.ASP&NoWebContent=1[/link]
Some of these reply posts are quite funny, to me. I guess if you are about to embark on these types of changes, perhaps you should actually *know* what it is your are doing to your system?
"Editing the registry directly can have serious, unexpected consequences that can prevent the system from starting and require that you reinstall..."
it needs to read
"SecondLevelDataCache"=dword:00000100 so you get a dword
instead of
"SecondLevelDataCache"="100" which gives you a string
now i must research all the other tweaks suggested by this dork before i reboot my system and make it unusable!!
THANKS
you may experience a severe and random decrease in performance. For example, this decrease in performance can include very slow system performance, stop errors, an inability to start the computer, devices or applications that do not load, and system instability.
see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895932