* Performance Tuning and Services *

[Indestructable]

it's ok ROM, I tweaked my teachers laptop (just the performance settings though) to best performance, but kept the bottom bar (the XP style) and the icon shadows, and now the right-click is instantaneous!! SO YAY!!  Thanks again man! 

[raptors892004]

it's ok ROM, I tweaked my teachers laptop (just the performance settings though) to best performance, but kept the bottom bar (the XP style) and the icon shadows, and now the right-click is instantaneous!! SO YAY!!  Thanks again man! 

that should be worth some bonus marks

[Indestructable]

haha, well, yeah, considering I got a C first quarter, that should help. 

[zavitz87]

  Thanks ROM-DOS ,very useful for new person

[Indestructable]

Everyone: NOTE--After doing all the recommended things that ROM has listed here, I restarted my computer and it crashed, taking all my pictures, email, documents, and Windows down with it..  These are complete crap people, don't do them..

HAHA!!! I had you all goin for a second there! 

Ok, seriously:

NOTE--I did everything he has said here, and I even added in some registry values that were not there (probably about 5 or 6 of them). I am happy to report that I restarted and everything worked great, and I started Free Ram XP Pro..whcih is a big no-no...well, not really, but it DRASTICALLY slowed things down. If you are running such a program (Optimize Memory, F.R.XP.P, etc.) please report to me/ROM on this thread and let us know if you get the same results...please. This is actually pretty interesting, if you do all the stuff recommended.

Oh yea, and I haven't even done the Services again yet (had to re-install OS), and Firefox (Beta RC3) starts up in 2.3 seconds flat. With a google homepage. So, I can yet again vouch for this guy...ROM-DOS knows what he's doin'! 

Thanks again man...   Sorry about the beginning of that post..

[ROM-DOS]

HAHA!!! I had you all goin for a second there!

[Indestructable]

haha, why that tweak? it's not one...lol 

[Indestructable]

hey ROM, could you please clarify what they are saying to do here:

http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/sgp-tweaks.ars/2

I'm talking about the first tweak on that page...please clarify. Thanks

lol, now you got me hooked on tweaking!  lol

[ROM-DOS]

Indestructable ~ right click My Computer > Properties > under Hardware Tab

open Device Manager > click on View and Resourses by type

click on Interrupt request (IRQ)

I have 22 IRQ's.

In [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE System CurrentControlSet Control PriorityControl]

the only Priority (1) setting I have is set to IRQ17Priority

IRQ 17 is my Modem.

Also Win32PrioritySeperation is set to 26 (hexadecimal), there.

I feel comfortable with this.

As Ars Technica says, "You can give several IRQs priority, but I am not entirely certain how the system interacts when several IRQs are given priority

[Indestructable]

HAHAHA!!! you know that PM I sent you? That's my problem...I did that...too many things at once...hmm...

[ROM-DOS]

HAHAHA!!! you know that PM I sent you? That's my problem...I did that...too many things at once...hmm...

That's OK Indestructable ~ I've added a Tweaking Precautions:

to show tweaks like you how to use the Windows XP system restore feature.

[for those who might miss a step accidentally, make a typo

            . . .or do too many things at once]

[Khronic]

[glow=red,2,300]Solid Article!!!!![/glow]

[Indestructable]

haha, thanks, I hope others don't go through all the crap I went throungh! 

[boywonder]

Hey Rom, was wondering how I can change my priority level on my modem as well as yours, also what setting it should be on

Thanks

[ROM-DOS]

boywonder ~ right click My Computer > Properties > under Hardware Tab

open Device Manager > click on View and Resourses by type

click on Interrupt request (IRQ)

find which IRQ## is assigned to your modem

goto Start > Run type regedit and goto the PriorityControl

branch of  local_machine and what ever IRQ## is given to your modem ~

create a new value name dword  Irq##Priority

and modify the value data = 1 hexadecimal base

It should end up looking like this with the ## being

the number of your modems IRQ

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControl

PriorityControl

Irq##Priority      REG_DWORD      0x00000001 (1)

you mize well create and add;

Win32PrioritySeparation    REG_DWORD    26 (hexadecimal) (38)

while your there, too. ~ close registry

and re-boot

[boywonder]

Found this site out today has over 380 Registry Edits for Windows XP

Tweaks and Tips

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

[boywonder]

Easy Way to Adjust LargeSystemCache

Normally, the tweak I've seen asks you to go into HKLMSystemCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management and change the value to either O or 1 to the adjustment the

LargeSystemCache.

However, in Windows XP, all you have to do is:

1. Right click My Computer

2. Select Properties

3. Click Advanced

4. Choose Performance

5. Click Advanced again

6. Select either Programs or System Cache under Memory Usage.

Programs = 0 for the registry tweak equilavent

System Cache = 1 for the registry tweak equilavent

From arstechnica.com:

On NT Server (in this case XP), the Large System Cache option is enabled, but disabled on Workstation. The two different settings effect how the cache manager allocates free memory. If the Large Cache option is on, the manager marks all the free memory, which isn't being used by the system and/or applications, as freely available for disk caching. On the flip-side (with a small cache), the manager instead only sets aside 4MB of memory for disk caching in an attempt to accelerate the launch of applications. Or in a more technical approach, if enabled the system will favor system-cache working sets over process working sets (with a working set basically being the memory used by components of a process).

[ROM-DOS]

Memory Management: Kernel Paging and Cache Tuning

The "DisablePagingExecutive" entry in the registry prevents the kernel (the core of the XP OS) from being rolled out to the page file. The effect of this part of the tweak is to cause the OS to cache the OS Kernel and its entourage to RAM instead of to disk, which makes XP far more responsive.

The "LargeSystemCache" registry entry forces XP to allocate all but 4MB of system memory, that is system memory, not avaliable RAM, to the file system cache. The remaining 4MB of system memory is used for disk caching, though XP will allocate more memory if it is needed.

A modern hard disk will transfer sequential data to and from disk at up to 40MB per second, or even faster on some drives, but the LargeSystemCache tweak means that effective transfer speeds of 1GB per second or more can be obtained, depending on the amount of RAM in your system and its operating speed. This is achieved because the LargeSystemCache modification causes the OS to store data read from disk in RAM. It means that the OS is always using the optimum amount of RAM instead of leaving it untouched for future use that may or may not occur. Without this part of the tweak, 200MB or more of RAM in a typical 512MB machine goes completely unused.

Some I/O intensive applications may take a hit in performance from changing the LargeSystemCache, so this particular component of the tweak should not be applied to a system that is running either SQL Server or Internet Information Server (IIS) because both of those applications perform their own caching.

Start regedit and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management

Add these two lines, save the changes and reboot;

DisablePagingExecutive = dword:00000001

LargeSystemCache = dword:00000001

_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _

The Win32PrioritySeparation has to do with processor scheduling.

This part of the tweak is impossible to explain without getting into the technical ins and outs of binary values, bit pairs and bit masks. Suffice it to say, this part of the tweak forces short, variable length processor timeslices to be allocated to foreground processes three times more often than those timeslices given to background processes.

There are 2 settings you can choose:

Adjust for best performance of Programs

  or

Adjust for best performance of Background Services.

All this does is change the DWORD value of Win32PrioritySeparation under this registry hive:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPriorityControl

Set Win32PrioritySeparation to 0x26 (decimal 38) for Programs.

Set Win32PrioritySeparation to 0x18 (decimal 24) for  Background Services.

set the base value to hexadecimal.

[918-hatch]

Well I did about 96% of these tweak's on this snowy boring night. Will report back if my computer starts

[918-hatch]

Well its FASTER thats forsure. Thanks ROM-DOS

[Indestructable]

Yea, ROM is a great guy...i gotta say

[ArcticWolf]

Great work Rom-Dos ... although one of these tweaks do not work and are a myth... which is the (EnableSuperfetch) to load programs 15% faster,etc. I got this from another site.

EnableSuperfetch Tweak

Myth - "Enabling this improves performance in Windows XP as it does in Windows Vista."

Reality - "This myth was started when the Inquirer irresponsibly ran a bogus letter without doing any fact checking. Windows internals guru Mark Russinovich said this won't work, the "Superfetch" string isn't even in the Windows XP kernel. You can confirm this yourself by checking with the strings.exe utility. This makes it impossible for it to do anything since no "Superfetch" command exists. Windows cannot execute a nonexistent command and will simply ignore it. Anyone who says this works is not only lying but a fool." - Source

Which you can find the page at http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html#Optimization

[ROM-DOS]

Great work Rom-Dos ... although one of these tweaks do not work and are a myth... which is the (EnableSuperfetch) to load programs 15% faster,etc. I got this from another site.

EnableSuperfetch Tweak

Myth - "Enabling this improves performance in Windows XP as it does in Windows Vista."

Reality - "This myth was started when the Inquirer irresponsibly ran a bogus letter without doing any fact checking. Windows internals guru Mark Russinovich said this won't work, the "Superfetch" string isn't even in the Windows XP kernel. You can confirm this yourself by checking with the strings.exe utility. This makes it impossible for it to do anything since no "Superfetch" command exists. Windows cannot execute a nonexistent command and will simply ignore it. Anyone who says this works is not only lying but a fool." - Source

Which you can find the page at http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html#Optimization

ArcticWolf  ~ the couple of articles ( http://bink.nu/Article4556.bink and

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000863.html ) are pointing out and referencing the same un-quotible and basically un-substantiated remark that Mark Russinovich may have said, . . .but do you think he or microsoft would really admit to it? ~ I don't think so.

. . .as Rick Says: [on Ed Bott's blog] ~ August 8th, 2005 at 5:31 pm

"I agree that not finding the string in the kernel is damning, but does that absolutely guarantee that the technology does not lay dormant in XP in some other way? I wish Mark had gone that extra step. At the very least, MS should weigh in on this. I

[ROM-DOS]

WOW ~ I would like to take this opportunity ~ at the 5000th hit mark! ~ to thank everyone for their interest and support in ~ * Performance Tuning and Services *, especially CA3LE, tdawnaz, and cholla.

I remember,back in the day (when I went from Comcast HS to Dial-Up), petitioning TMN for a Dial-Up Forum section and trying to figure out why I had "the fastest Dial-Up speeds on the net", which eventually ~ lead me to gather up all the "tweaks" I've used, thinkin' it might help others (and maybe, justify my speeds ~ lol).

I've recently created a new site w/ Google's Page Creator called ~ Link & Park & Ride ~ w/my ~ XP Performance Tuning Guide ~ which I would also like to credit TMN with it's inspiration (what else would I've done w/GPC? ~ without having something to share ~ lol).

. . .anyway, THANKS again ~ everyone ~ and happy tweaking

                  <img src="http://imagehouze.com/uploader/files/126/applause.gif" alt="applause.gif" />

edit: typo...

[cholla]

Hi to everyone:I moved the anti the tweaks in this sticky & the response to them to General Discussion.I thought they were cluttering up the sticky.If you want to post to them or read them they are here:

http://www.testmy.net/forum/index.php?topic=15247.msg160790;boardseen#new