Tweaking

Tweaking Tips Page...

Description:

Tweaking is using any means available to optimize your computer to make it the fastest possible machine you can. There are several different ways you can "tweak" your computer which I will discuss briefly below.

Types:

Software:

Drivers: These are most useful if for your video card. Keeping your video card using the most up-to-date drivers will ensure that it can handle all the newest software and games, while at the same time making it the fastest possible. Go to the website of your video card manufacturer for the latest drivers. Companies like Matrox are famous for putting out great driver enhancements.
Bus Mastering Drivers are drivers made by chipset manufacturers like Intel. They optimize control of your hard drives and other components to speed them up and lower CPU usage. If you can get them to work properly, they can make a big difference. You can get them from Intel's website if you look around hard enough.

Windows Enhancements: Things you can do to enhance your Windows^TM experience and speed are adjusting your swap file settings (virtual memory), virtual cache settings, defragmenting your hard drive, and checking the settings on the "Performance" tab of the "System" control panel. Also, make sure there are no device conflicts in your "Device Manager" portion of the "System" control panel. Check this by going to Start, Settings, Control Panel, System, Device Manager. If you see any yellow exclamation points or red Xs in front of the devices, there may be a conflict. Use the Windows hardware troubleshooter or contact the manufacturer of the part that is conflicting.

*NEW*: Most modern hard drives have great cache-management, and it is better than what Windows '98 will do. If you have a recent computer, go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, System, Performance, File System, and change the Read Ahead Optimization from Full to None! Restart and see what kind of difference it makes!

You can change your Virtual Memory settings by clicking Start, Settings, Control Panel, System, Performance, and Virtual Memory. Click "Let me specify my own settings" and change the minimum and maximum to the same setting (usually twice your available RAM is a good setting).

Using a good defragmenting program periodically (like Norton Utilities' Speed Disk) will also help speed up your computer.

The setting below applies mostly to Windows 95 computers and may not help much in Windows 98:
To change Virtual Cache settings, click Start, Run, and type in "sysedit" and enter. Then click on the system.ini file in the window. Search for "vcache," then make the lines after it look like they do below. If it isn't found, on any line, type all of the following values as well.
[vcache]
MinFileCache=4096
MaxFileCache=16355
chunksize=512
AllocPageFixed=Off
Make the max size about 1/4 of your total RAM and the min size about 1/4 of that (the above is good for 64 MB of RAM).

Hardware:

Configuration Enhancements: Some programs (like Dr. SCSI) help to enhance transfer rates on hard drives or optimize other settings to enhance performance. Be careful as a lot of these don't make much of a difference but charge you a lot of money. Dr. SCSI has helped many people, but it doesn't make a large difference on many (if not most) of the drives. I don't believe in most memory managers anymore as they also create an overhead that makes it not worth it (in my opinion).

BIOS Settings: Changing the settings in your BIOS (Basic Input and Output System) can have some effect on your computer's performance. Be careful when changing these settings though. A few things that can enhance performance are enabling CPU internal and external cache, enabling video BIOS caching and system BIOS caching, increasing the hard drive PIO mode to 4 if possible, and lowering all your memory settings as low as you can (test these one at a time and see if they work before trying to do them all at once).

BIOS Updates: Making sure your video card, motherboard, and SCSI card have the most up to date BIOS can also be helpful. This is similar to having the most current drivers. It can enable support for newer hardware or software and fix problems with earlier versions of the BIOS.