[Sourcer_2002]

Ok i wanna know what you guys think is the most important, best, gives the most performance gain etc. Im trying to compile a list, so tell me what tweaks you guys like to do, use, etc.

[Judas]

....uh...... i turn of System restore..... and get defrag sometimes once a day.... That pretty much sums it up for me tweaking anything....

[HsuGotaQ]

Extreme Gaming
- Defrag Every night
- Don't install sweet F*7&* all on your system. It's faster this way (no... i'm serious!)
Seriously thought, I suggest not installing the basics (Any office suites, anti-virus, etc)
- With the last information, I suggest you have a nice little backup of your system (in my case, a nice GHOST file done with GHOST 8.0 that has all the software I need except the latest drivers).

Normal Gaming
- Defrag Every week

Normal Tweaks
- Create a partition on a secondary driver (not the one with your windows installed on it) and only put the swapfile in it. I have seem to get a better result when the pagefile is under 1024 Megs and generally over 512 Megs (this seems due to Desert Combat that really eats up my pagefile... don't know why thought).

!!! NEW TWEAK !!!!
- Be like me, Hsu, and be retarded. Everything so bloody fast around you when you are slow. Jk

[Judas]

HSU, how big of a partition did you make for your pagefile partition... i made mine 1.5gb.... and then set windows XP Pro to that partition...only to get bloody well annoyed all the time by "YOU HAVE LOW MEMORY ON (D: )"

[HsuGotaQ]

Originally posted by Judas
HSU, how big of a partition did you make for your pagefile partition... i made mine 1.5gb.... and then set windows XP Pro to that partition...only to get bloody well annoyed all the time by "YOU HAVE LOW MEMORY ON (D: )"

The size of the partition is 1024 on the dot. Here is the info to fix the low memory error.

Turn Off the "Low Disk Space" Warning
August 19, 2003
By Jonathan Roubini

Windows XP will warn you when one of your hard drives has less than 200MB of free space. It will continue to warn you at predefined intervals, and the balloons will remain open for 30 seconds when you have less than 80MB of space.

If you're well aware that you're low on space and don't want to be repeatedly reminded, click on Start | Run, type Regedit, and click on OK. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT _USER\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. If there's no DWORD value there, create a new one called NoLowDiskSpaceChecks.

Once you are in the Explorer folder, select Edit from the menu, select New, and choose DWORD value. Now double-click on the new DWORD and assign it the value 1. Log off and log on once more, and you won't receive the warning again. Note that the warning will be turned off for all your hard drives.

Note: This was found thanks to an anoyance I had at work with one of our Oracle 9i database. We allocated a whole disk for the database to expand (in blocks of 2GB files). Therefore it by defaults (in our case) to talking to whole bloody drive (that's no problem), but the error msg was just to annoying.

[Judas]

damn.... didn't want to turn it off for all drives.... a well..... i'm planning on going raid with 4 driver.... page file on a seperate partition won't make a difference....

[Optimummind]

Some steps I took:

1. Turned off System Restore to all of my drives except for the System drive
2. Turned off the Indexing Service
3. Turned off unnecessary Windows Services under Administrative Tools
4. Turned off some visual effects
5. Relocated the Paging File to a dif partition and made the size into 1.5GB (since I have 1GB of system memory)
6. Minimize the number of desktop icons onscreen
7. Defrag my system drive (that contains all of my programs) whenever the screensaver function begins (using Diskeeper 8.0)

8. Individually change the size of my Recycle Bin to free up more space on the partitions
9. Changed Registry values for "MenuDelay" and "IoLockPageLimit" among other things

Hmm..can't think of anything more...

[Sourcer_2002]

cool really appricate guys! Pretty much what i do, im not really a hardcore tweaker. I would have to say though that anti virus and and office programs really do hammer a PC esspecialy during startup.

[Robert McClelland]

I do don't forget dust out your system ever 4 months if you want keep nice and cool. My paging file is at initial 768mb and max at 1536mb. Used norton system works to fix errors on the system works great

[Falstaff]

I have resisted the temptation to tweak much, but found a few sites.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/

[Driver 7]

The Elder Geek is the best site I have seen for tweeks. My fav for sure.

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

Has the most but it's ugly as all hell.

[Madgoat1979]

well, I need to figure out something with my system, Its starting to show its age...

And well I need all the tweaks I can get.....


I dont think My 1.5gb page file is doin to well on my second drive with the first partition...



MG

[Driver 7]

OK. Heres some from the top (most important) of mine.
WinXP does not utilize your CPU's L2 cache. To check type regedit in start menu/run
Then navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management
and find SecondLevelDataCache DWORD value. The number in parentheses in the data column should correspond to the size of your CPU's L2 cache.
If not, double click the Dwordvalue and change the number in decimal mode.




and



disable and stop the Indexing Service:

Head to Start Select Control Panel, Select Administrator Tools, Select Services, Select "Indexing Service", (Double Click) Select General Tab, In the Startup type: select "Disabled", Select the Ok button to close the panel

[Madgoat1979]

should it correspond in Kb .... (prolly stupid question... But I guess it could be bytes)


MG

[Driver 7]

Your L2 I believe is 256k. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. So double click SecondLevelDataCache. Change BASE to decimal and then change the VALUE DATA to 256. CLICK OK

[Madgoat1979]

cool yeah I donloaded the amd utill to make sure... I do have 256

Ok I did it...

How much proformance up do you get?

MG

[Driver 7]

Speedup boot up sequence by defragmenting all key boot files
Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftDfrgBootOptimiz eFunction. In right hand panel look for Enable. Right click on it and set it 'Y' for enable. This is the way I have it set on my computer. This will help speedup boot time.
---------------------------------------------
Improve system performance by disabling DOS 8.3 naming convention In the last tip , I briefly mentioned MFT fragmentation. So what is the cause of fragmentation. Well most common cause is too much use. As with anything excessive use causes fragmentation. Activities of add/update/delete to a section of disk would invariable cause it to fragment. So there is no permanent solution as we can not avoid these acts. As such it is a good idea to use disk defragmenter regularly. Contiguous data which results from defragmenting disk, improves system performance considerably. But what I am suggesting you here would prolong intervals between defragmentations resulting in more time for your own productive work. OK! This tip is for those folks would never be using a DOS based program or don't care for connection from DOS based operating systems (example: old games and all things before windows 95). In Windows XP, two file names are created for each file one is the actual name and another one is 8.3 version of that file name for compatibility with DOS based programs. Now this work name in the name of compatibility takes quite a lot of system resources specifically CPU time and disk space.But this is not it, it also increases your MFT utilization and fragmentation. So the solution is to disable it. How to do this ? Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlFi leSystem. In right pane, look for key by the name "NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation" and sets its value to 1. Thats it. You would see improvement in system performance for sure.

----------------------------------------------------
Group Policy Editor: Extremely powerful tool in Microsoft XP Operating System.
Have you heard of group policy editor ? This is one of the most powerful tool that Microsoft XP comes bundled with that most of us don't even know about. I recently discovered it by accident. Learn more about it at Group Policy Editor section of this site but in brief it can be used to carry out powerful customizations and performance tuning of your system. Go to START-RUN and enter gpedit.msc



I did not write these. they are just ones I use and am mentioning them because I very rarely ever see them hit a tweek thread.

[Warpy]

Here are my favourite tools for XP....


Winxp Manager v4.8.02:






Perfect disk 6:






Advanced Registry Opimizer:

[Driver 7]

AWWW. You Monkey Funker. You went out and bought an FX-51. You were suppost to wait for me and we were gonna do it at the same time. So far all I have gotten is Regestered ram. How are ya liking it?

[Warpy]

[SIZE=x-large]Well Mr 7.... "Frame rate is oxygen!" [/SIZE]

[Chaos]

What is the best method to disable the Windows File Protection using Win XP Pro

[Driver 7]

Originally posted by Chaos
What is the best method to disable the Windows File ProtecTo disable WFP in Windows 2000/XP, just follow these 2 steps:


First you need to manually "patch" (hex-edit) BOTH SFC.DLL (Win2000 with SP2) or SFC_OS.DLL (WinXP with or without SP1) files from the %\systemroot%\System32 folder (default is C:\Windows\System32) AND from %\systemroot%\System32\Dllcache to effectively disable WFP.
Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1).
Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 (SP2).
Here we go:


Load SFC.DLL (or SFC_OS.DLL) into your favorite hex editor.
I recommend the excellent XVI32 (freeware).

SFC.DLL from Win2000 SP2: go to physical offset 00006211 (6211 hex) and change the 8BC6 bytes to read 9090.

SFC_OS.DLL from WinXP retail: go to physical offset 0000E2B8 (E2B8 hex) and change the 8BC6 bytes to read 9090.

SFC_OS.DLL from WinXP SP1: go to physical offset 0000E3BB (E3BB hex) and change the 8BC6 bytes to read 9090.
WARNING: If the actual bytes found in your DLL file DO NOT MATCH these values EXACTLY DO NOT make ANY changes!


Save your work and exit the hex editor.

See "MS IE 5.5 SP2 + 6.0 FIX" step 6. SOLUTION, also in MYTIPS95.TXT [part of W95-11D.EXE], to learn how to replace Windows 2000/XP system files already in use.

Reboot when done.

Modify the "SFCDisable" Registry Value: this step is MANDATORY for BOTH Windows XP (with or without SP1) AND Windows 2000 (with or without SP2):

Manual FIX [courtesy of Franklin (email@lat1.com)]:
"To disable WFP, start Regedit or Regedt32 and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Add/modify the "SFCDisable" DWORD [REG_DWORD] Binary entry to read FFFFFF9D.
Reboot when done.
To (re)enable WFP modify "SFCDisable" to read 0."

These are all allowed "SFCDisable" values:

0 = enable WFP/SFC.
1 = disable WFP/SFC with nag prompt at (re)boot to reenable it.
2 = disable WFP/SFC without nag prompt at (re)boot to reenable it.
4 = enable WFP/SFC but disable all popups.
FFFFFF9D = disable WFP/SFC completely.

Automatic FIX: get WfpAdmin for Windows 2000/XP (shareware).
tion using Win XP Pro

[Chaos]

Thx

[Driver 7]

NP

[-={420}=-]

Do you know the offset of these values for Windows XP SP2 (1213) ?

[-={420}=-]

Never mind. Found it myself.
In case anyone's interested, it's 0000ed10h
Same rules apply "change the 8BC6 bytes to read 9090"
I tested it and it works!

[Optimummind]

Originally posted by Driver 7
OK. Heres some from the top (most important) of mine.
WinXP does not utilize your CPU's L2 cache. To check type regedit in start menu/run
Then navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management
and find SecondLevelDataCache DWORD value. The number in parentheses in the data column should correspond to the size of your CPU's L2 cache.
If not, double click the Dwordvalue and change the number in decimal mode.

This tip is a very controversial one. Microsoft claims that changing this Registry value will do nothing as the OS can already detect the correct amount of L2 cache. Then, there are people who believe the setting must be set manually to gain whatever benefit.

I'm leaning toward Microsoft's side as they are the ones who built and created WinXP and other OS's.

[Shadow Lady]

mmm, they may have created WinXP but remember they put a lot of shit on it too =P

[Madgoat1979]

Originally posted by Shadow Lady
mmm, they may have created WinXP but remember they put a lot of shit on it too =P

I agree with you here....

MG