COMPUTER PERFORMANCE TIPS

Performance Tips

While these are likely not all the performance tips, they are the ones that have made significant differences on my system.I've seen a lot out there that have not made much difference. These are a few I've seen actually help. Increasing Memory If you have Windows95 with only 16-32 megs of memory, you will see a significant increase in performance if you go to at least 64 megs. Prices have gone down dramatically in the past few years. Your computer won't be swapping to the hard drive nearly as much. The maximum useful memory for Windows95 is 64 megs. It doesn't do well with memory over that and may actually reduce your performance. Windows98 has removed that bottleneck. Currently I have 128 megs and am quite satisfied with how much better it performs. Get a Faster Hard Drive If you can, there are newer hard drives that spin at 7200 RPMs rather than the more common 5400 RPMs. This means that you will get to your data reasonably faster. If you can afford it, I would recommend this as well. These first two might cost you some money.On the other hand they will usually provide the most noticeable difference Here are some things you can do for free Defrag the Hard Drive I do this fairly frequently. Once a month or so. There are a few things I do first to make sure I don't waste time defragging unnecessary files. First is to delete the Internet Explorer Temporary Files and History. Second is to delete TMP and BAK files. Third is delete any files and directories in the \TEMP and \WINDOWS\TEMP directories Defragment without the swapfile. The instructions for this can be found at Defragmenting the Swap File Windows98 has a built-in utility called Disk Cleanup. You can run it from either the Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Disk Cleanup or directly run CLEANMGR.EXE File System Settings If you have 64 megs or more of memory you increase the performance of your system. Go to Control Panel / System Properties / Performance / File System. Change the typical role of this computer to Network Server. If you have Win95 SR1, and you do not see a performance increase, occasionally the NameCache and PathCache values are written to the registry incorrectly for the Network Server. To fix the problem: Start Regedit Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\FS Templates\Server Make sure the following values are being used: PathCache=40 00 00 00 NameCache=a9 0a 00 00 No New Floppy Detect While you are in that section, click on the Floppy Disk tab and uncheck Search for new floppy disks...This will speed up your boot time. Increasing Disk Performance Go to Start \ Settings \ Control Panel \ System \ Performance \ File System \ Troubleshooting Check the box Disable synchronous buffer commits. DMA In the Device Manager, go to the settings your Hard Drives and CD ROMs. If any of them will allow a DMA box to be checked, you can try it. I've seen it decrease my CPU utilization. Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files Make sure you don't have any unnecessary device drivers or programs here. Windows95 has most you will need already built into the OS.