Colins Weekly Tech Tips 2002 Roundup

First click the Start menu then select the “Run” option. Inside the box type “sysedit” and press enter. Press enter and you will see quite a few windows open in the System Configuration Editor.

Select the “SYSTEM.INI” window and from there scroll down to the [386enh] section and add this line under that header; “ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1”. Save the changes and then reboot the computer.

What this little tweak does is force Windows 98/ME to use up all the physical RAM first before accessing the swapfile on the hard drive. With this small tweak done you should notice that all your programs have a little more zip in them! =)

For Win9x/ME users, setting a dedicated physical swap file size can dramatically improve performance of your system. Right click on the "My Computer" icon and go to properties. From there go to "Advanced Tab". You should see a Virtual Memory button, click that and specify your own virtual memory settings. The general rule is twice your physical memory size so if you have 128MB RAM set the minimum to 256MB. After reboot the computer and defrag your HDD.

What this does is it forces your computer to have a dedicated swap file which improve system efficiency since Windows no longer has to worry about the size of the virtual memory (constant shrinking and enlarging of the swapfile can severely slow a computer down) and defragging the HDD moves the swapfile to the front of the drive for quick access.

Speed Up Win9x Boot Times:

For users of Win9x you can decrease the boot time of your system a bit with a few simple tweaks to the MSDOS.SYS file in the root directory of your hard drive. The first thing you want to do is remove the write protection on the file.

Load up your Windows Explorer and go to the "Tools" menu. Inside select "Folder Options...", a window should pop up. Click the "View" tab and in the lower 2/3rd of the pop up menu you should see "Advanced settings:". From there scroll down and find the radio button "Show hidden files and folders". Make sure it's selected then press the "OK" button. Now all the hidden files and folders on your hard drive will be shown. Now use Notepad to open up your MSDOS.SYS file and add/edit the lines to look like this.

Logo=0
Bootdelay=0
Doublebuffer=1
Dblspace=0
Drvspace=0

Windows Improvements:

I know that there are a lot of Win9x users till out there and you can optimize your system memory usage a bit more. Click the "Start" button then go to "Run". There type "Sysedit" and press the "Ok" button. Once in there, go to the "System.ini" window and scroll down to "[386enh]". Under that header, modify or add these few lines.MinTimeSlice=40 (This allows for Windows Virtual Machine to run a bit longer)
PageBuffers=32 (This changes the default buffer size from 4k to 32k and should boost your HDD Thoroughput.)
DMABufferSize=64 (This basically gives more buffer room to DMA devices to operate.)
MaxBPs=65530

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Contents of Article: PCSTATS

Pg 1. Colins Weekly Tech Tips 2002 Roundup
Pg 2. — Win9x/ME Tweaks
Pg 3. Win2k/XP Tweaks Page 1
Pg 4. Win2k/XP Tweaks Page 2
Pg 5. Win2k/XP Tweaks Page 3
Pg 6. Hardware Tweaks