I took some old threads, combined them all together to get a nice clear overall view of the various windows tweaks. Thanks to the guys who made this happen.
For questions and concerns drop me a PM.
Windows XP tweaks:
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Want to know everything about your system?
Instead of typing systeminfo in a dos box, your can simply do it in windows too.
1. Start
2. Select Run
3. type winmsd
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Remove shortcut arrow from desktop icons :
1. Open regedit
2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile
3. Rename IsShortcut in AriochIsShortcut
4. Reboot xp
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Remove MSN Messenger from your system :
If you'd like Windows Messenger to show up in the list of programs you can add and remove from Windows, navigate to C:WINDOWSinf (substituting the correct drive letter for your version of Windows) and open sysoc.inf (if you cannot see this folder, click on Tools, folder options,view then check "Show hidden files or folders).
Open the sysoc.inf file, you'll see a line that reads:
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7
Change this to the following:
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,,7
You only remove the word hide, nothing else. Save the file. Windows Messenger will appear in Add or Remove Programs, then Add/Remove Windows Components, then , and you can remove it for good.
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Getting rid of unwanted items in "open with..." shell extension
When rightclicking any file you´re likely to see an option called "open with", which lists any available program on you computer to open the file with. To simply clear up this list of unwanted items, or to remove useless associations, like opening an mp3 file with a paint program, follow these steps:
- Click on the start button, click on Run... and type the word "regedit" (without the quotes) in the box that appears to open the registry editor, Navigate to " HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre
ntVersion\Explorer\FileExts"
- Find the extention you wish to edit and click on the "+"-sign to locate the key that says "OpenWithList"
- In the right pane of the registry editor you´ll see a list with the programs in the list, like "paint.exe" or "notepad.exe"
- Simple click on the one you wish to delete and press the delete button on your keyboard
Don´t worry if you´ve removed an entry you rather hadn´t removed. When rightclicking a file there will be another option in the "open with" extension where you can choose any program on your computer. Once used, it will reappear in the list of associated programs.
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Q. How can I enable autologon for Windows XP?
A. To enable autologon and bypass XP's prompt to enter a username and password, perform the following steps:
1. Select Run from the Start menu.
2. Enter control userpasswords2 and click OK.
3. Select the Users tab.
4. Clear the "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer" check box.
5. Click OK.
6. When the system prompts you, enter a username and password for users who automatically log on, and click OK.
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Q. How can I perform a bulk file rename in Windows XP?
A. XP lets you rename files in bulk by simply selecting multiple files within Windows Explorer and pressing the F2 key. When you use this feature, the OS applies the name you enter to the first file and applies the same name with a number in parentheses to the other files you selected (the file extensions remain unchanged).
For example, if you select the following files,
* notes.doc
* figures.xls
* disney.jpg
* holiday.gif
and rename the first file (notes.doc) to file.doc, XP renames the remaining files as follows:
* file (1).xls
* file (2).jpg
* file (3).gif
You can easily create an icon on your desktop that allows you to compose and send a mail by double clicking on it without opening Outlook Express.
1- Find a free space on your desktop and right click on it on -> New -> Shortcut
2- Enter in the space 'mailto:' (w/out quotes)
3- Press 'Next' button.
4- Enter in the space a name for the icon (i use 'Q-Mail')
5- Click 'finish'.
This Tweak will prevent Messenger from loading when you access your account via the Hotmail web page, it will also prevent the delay when Messenger has been removed or disabled.
Go to Start --> Run and type regedit Navigate to the Registry Key below.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Messenger.MsgrObject.
Right click on the Messenger.MsgrObject key and select rename. Rename it to Messenger.MsgrObjectold
1 Click start, click run, type regedit, then click ok!
2 In The registry editor, drill down to the following key:
hklm\software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current version\Winlogon
3 Right click LegalNoticeCaption, click modify, Type: My windows XP Machine,
and then click ok!
4 Right click legalNoticeText, click modify, and then Close your message!
5 The message will appear every time you logon!
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Windows XP Services
Here is a way to figure out which services to set as Automatic and which to set as manual or disabled.
Step1: Set ALL your services to *manual* setting.
Step2: Reboot computer and wait for windows XP to load. XP will boot pretty slowly, since it has to turn on each service
separately. Use your computer for a bit, doing what you normally do during a computing session. This will allow any
other services to activate (such as DHCP or other services that didn't load during the boot process).
Step3: Go back to the list of services, and see which ones are Started. Change the services that are marked as Started, to
*Automatic*. This way windows will automatically load all of the services that you normally use, and the ones that
you don't use will stay unloaded.
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Unsigned Drivers - Use Sigverif.exe:
1. Click Start, click Run, type "sigverif" (without the quotation marks), and then click OK.
2. Click Advanced, click "Look for other files that are not digitally signed", navigate to the Winnt\System32\Drivers folder,
and then click OK.
3. Click Start.
After Sigverif.exe is finished, a list of all unsigned drivers installed on your computer are displayed.
The list of all signed and unsigned drivers found by Sigverif.exe can be found in the Sigverif.txt file in the %Windir% folder, typically the Winnt or Windows folder. All unsigned drivers are noted as "Unsigned".
File signature verification is something I hate in Win XP. I like testing beta drivers. I disabled those annoying popups that says the file is not Microsoft Digital Signe........etc. If you want to disable signature verification, goto control panel, System icon, hardaware tab, Driving signing and click on ignore.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Session Manager > MemoryManagment > PrefetchParameters
There you'll see a DWORD called "EnablePrefetcher" double click it and set the value between 5 to 7, which ever works better, I recommend 5.
Also after time it gets filled with unneeded stuff, navigate to C:\Windows\Prefetch and delete unnecesary files, if unsure, delete all files and restart twice, all needed files will be automatically created
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To make Windows XP use L2 cache
by default windows doesn't recognise your L2 cache on processor and doesn't make use of it, to enable it run regedit and navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Session Manager > MemoryManagment
there is a DWORD called "SecondLevelDataCache" double click it, select Decimal and set the amount of L2 cache you have (e.g. if you have 256KB, then just type 256, and make sure you enter it in Decimal, not Hexadecimal)
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theres a quick way to restart/exit windows without going throught the start menue
first of all create a shortcut with the following paths:
C:\windows\rundll.exe user.exe,exitwindowsexec
This Shortcut on clicking will restart Windows immediately without any Warning. To create a Shortcut to Restarting Windows, type the following in the Command Line box:
c:\windows\rundll.exe user.exe,exitwindows
This Shortcut on clicking will shut down Windows immediately without any Warning.
however i havent tried this on xp, but im sure it will work
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Increasing System Performance
If you have 512 megs or more of memory, you can
increase system performance
by having the core system kept in memory.
Start Regedit
Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro
l\Session
Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive
Set the value to be 1
Reboot the computer
Increasing File System Caching
To increase the amount of memory Windows will locked
for I/O operations:
Start Regedit
Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro
l\Session
Manager\Memory Management
Edit the key IoPageLockLimit
4096 - 32megs of memory or less
8192 - 32+ megs of memory
16384 - 64+ megs of memory
32768 - 128+ megs of memory
65536 - 256+ megs of memory
There is no reason to disable services. If a service is not being used it will remain idle and fully paged out. It will only use up recourses if the service is in direct use and if the service is in direct use you surely do not want to disable it.
Your way of determining what to disable it the worst I have ever heard too.
Also about the "EnablePrefetcher" setting. Setting it to anything over 3 will do nothing. The values are as follows
As for "SecondLevelDataCache" the description is completely wrong. If you do not set this value Windows will use HAL to determine the L2 cache size automatically. If this fails, a default value of 256KB is used, but this entry is means as a secondary source of cache size information for PC where the HAL is not capable of deteting the L2 cache. The HAL is capable of retrieving the L2 cache size of any CPU that is a Pentium II or newer.
It is only a few older CPU's with direct-mapped L2 caches where the HAl is not able to recognize it. If used on an old PC it maye increase performance, but it would not be noticable. I also highly doubt anyone her eis using a P1 or older on there main rig where the HAL is not able to recognize it.
As for "DisablePagingExecutive." Yet another tweak that does nothing. This entry only applies to ntoskrnl.exe which is only a few MB in size. Since this will always be used and is such a small size it would rarely be paged out anyway unless under an extremely heavy load. If you do come under such a heavy load where those few MBs need to be paged out then you are most likely on your way to a crash anyway.
"IoPageLockLimit" has been completely ignored by Windows since W2K SP1. So this is yet another tweak that does nothing.
There is no reason to disable services. If a service is not being used it will remain idle and fully paged out. It will only use up recourses if the service is in direct use and if the service is in direct use you surely do not want to disable it.
If this is true, then why is there a manual setting for services? What would be the difference to windows resources between the manual and automatic?
Also, even if there isn't any difference in system performance with services on or off there is still a reason to turn them off. Certain services have vulnerabilities, whcih can be elminated by turning them off...
There is no reason to disable services. If a service is not being used it will remain idle and fully paged out. It will only use up recourses if the service is in direct use and if the service is in direct use you surely do not want to disable it.
Not true! On my WinxXP benchmarking rig, I have only 7 services set to Automatic and all of them are Started. Plus there are 2 services set to Manual that are also Started. Altogether - 9 services... I can go to as low as 5 started services but that would mean no network and no file-sharing with my other rigs on the network.
Now on regular WinXP installation, there is a LOAD of services that are Stated (both Autoatic and Manual).
Difference between both - 55-60MB of freed RAM on benchmarking rig (confirmed by Task Manager on both) And better scores in benchmarks...
If this is true, then why is there a manual setting for services? What would be the difference to windows resources between the manual and automatic?
IS set to automatic it will attempt to start at startup. If set to manual it can only be started if something else asks for it to be started. So a very small amount of recources will be used at bootup for services set to automatic. If RAM is needed for other things the amount of RAM being used by the service will be shrunk to practically nothing. However, if the RAM is not needed for other things it will not be shrunk. So if the RAm is available who really cares? It is not hurting performance at all by having the service running.
Quote:
Also, even if there isn't any difference in system performance with services on or off there is still a reason to turn them off. Certain services have vulnerabilities, whcih can be elminated by turning them off...
Basically your system would of have been already owned to use any service as an attack point.
Quote:
Difference between both - 55-60MB of freed RAM on benchmarking rig (confirmed by Task Manager on both) And better scores in benchmarks...
The amount of freed RAM is because of how Windows manages memory. Windows will always try to use all of your RAM. It will retain code of previously opened filea. Any RAM that is left over will be used for cache. Anytime another use comes along where RAM is needed anything that is not being used will be paged to disk. So those services that are not in use will instantly be paged to disk if another use for the space comes along.
Also I would like to see what benchmarks you actually did score higher in and what the before and after score was.
I am just curious but the you ever been doing benchmarking on a more serious state than just starting the program? But here´s a small task if not.
Download the no patch/ no cheat super pi edition. Run it like you´re probably use too. Then disable all windows services and run it again.
And then come back and correct your comment cause in my eyes I am having a hard time figuring what it is your exactly doing on a overclocking forum.
I am just curious but the you ever been doing benchmarking on a more serious state than just starting the program? But here´s a small task if not.
Download the no patch/ no cheat super pi edition. Run it like you´re probably use too. Then disable all windows services and run it again.
And then come back and correct your comment cause in my eyes I am having a hard time figuring what it is your exactly doing on a overclocking forum.
I am only 16 (just turned 16) so I am stuck witha Dell Dimension 2300. I am still saving up for my first rig. Since I have a Dell Dimension 2300 I never bothered with benchmarking except when overclocking my video card.
I will wait until bachus_anonym posts his bench scores instead of doing it myself. I would just like to know if the services that were disabled were only Windows default ones or if there were other ones disabled.
Certain benchmarks may see an improvemnt, but because of the way Windows manages memory there will be NO real world performance gain by disabling services. Especially the default services in Windows. I think we can all agree on this.
I came to this forum to learn about overclocking and other things. Since I plan on overclocking my new rig and this seems like the place to go for that stuff.
Certain benchmarks may see an improvemnt, but because of the way Windows manages memory there will be NO real world performance gain by disabling services. Especially the default services in Windows. I think we can all agree on this.
Who cares about real world performance. I dont think thats why this community excists.
And yes almost any benchmark shows a slightly gain and this is number uno in order to keep up with the big guys.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KoolDrew
I came to this forum to learn about overclocking and other things. Since I plan on overclocking my new rig and this seems like the place to go for that stuff.
Sounds good and please stick around -
This IS the place all overclocking stuff happens
But judging things like these tweaks, before you even have tried them out yourself is kinda suicidal if you´re hopeing to reach big numbers in the future.
Very nice guide. Lots of stuff I'll have to remember.
There were 2 small things though:
Quote:
Originally Posted by bias_hjorth
2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile
I was searching for 'lnkfile' and I couldn't find it because I thought the 'l' was a capital 'i'. I know it's stupid but it might save time for some people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bias_hjorth
set WaitToKillServiceTimeOut to the time (ms) you want to wait for the kill service to timeout
Are you sure this is in ms? Mine says 20000; my guess would be in 0.1ms. Or am I understanding this wrong?
20000 = 20 seconds so yes it is milliseconds in decimal.
Quote:
But judging things like these tweaks, before you even have tried them out yourself is kinda suicidal if you´re hopeing to reach big numbers in the future.
I have tried these tweaks out. When I first got interested in computers a couple years back that was what got me interested in computers. I read plenty of guides and tweaked my system to the max. Then I started reading more about certain tweaks and realized some were not what they were described to be and some didn't even exist in Windows XP. Then I picked up a copy of "Inside Windows 2000" and now have a very well understanding of many of these tweaks and how Windows manages memory etc.
I learned that there is no real world performance gain from the mojority of tweaks on the net even though they claim to. However benchmarking may be a totally different story. In benchmarks I have used in the past there were no performance gains, but then again I have never heard of SuperPI until I joined this forum.
EDIT: Also you may want to mention that with the Help and Support service disabled "winmsd" will not work. You could also mention some tweaking programs. I only really recommend ones where you do everything manually such as TweakUI. The tweaking programs that claim to increase performance are crap.
I can definitely recommend Tune Up Utilities 2004. I find this program the best of the best, has usefull features, and a backup in case something goes wrong.
__________________
"Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it." - Sir Henry Royce
I downloaded the program just to test it out. Now it is nice that you can change a lot of visual effects which do in fact help performance. I do not like how it has the DisablePaging Executive tweak though. The description is sort of wrong too. It only applys to ntoskrnl.exe which is only a few MB in size. Since this will always be used and is such a small size it would rarely be paged out anyway unless under an extremely heavy load. If you do come under such a heavy load where those few MBs need to be paged out then you are most likely on your way to a crash anyway.
The program also claims to clear RAM. This is complete BS. There is no reason to clear memory because of how Windows manage memory. Using this feuture will only degrade performance as the program allocates a lot of memory for itself forcing other things out of physicaly memory. This will also increase the size of pagefile since the Private data has to be paged somehwere. Definitely don't use this feuture.
There is also no reason at all to clean the registry. The registry is mapped and if a key is needed it will go directly to this key. Also before I cleaned my registry it was 55.2MB. After cleaning it came down to 54.6MB. You really think that little amount taken away is going to make any notiable impact on performance? No it won't.
On Windows XP, there is no point in using the Memory thingy - yes, that is true. On the other hand, I do think that diasabling some of the Windows "flashy" things will give you faster response.
And I will show you a tweak where you will DEFINITELY (unless you happen to own a super computer with a massive 100+ drive RAID 0 array) see an increase in performance:
Go to Tune Up system control, choose file types, then New Menu, and uncheck everything. Now, whenever you right click and select new, the menu will appear faster than before.
Also, keep in mind that performance is not the only thing we're looking at here - it's no use having a really powerfull computer, if it can't easily handle the task's you require. What would you prefer - loading a menu, which you endlessly have to go through to find what you are looking for, or the same menu, without all the unnecessary entries?
__________________
"Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it." - Sir Henry Royce
I learned that there is no real world performance gain from the mojority of tweaks on the net even though they claim to. However benchmarking may be a totally different story. In benchmarks I have used in the past there were no performance gains, but then again I have never heard of SuperPI until I joined this forum.
I am very curious to find out which benchmarks you have used that didnt show any type of gain.
I do think that diasabling some of the Windows "flashy" things will give you faster response.
If you mean Visual effects then yes it will give you faster response. I already said this.
Quote:
Go to Tune Up system control, choose file types, then New Menu, and uncheck everything. Now, whenever you right click and select new, the menu will appear faster than before.
This is sort of common sense. If there is less for Windows to display in the menu of course it will be more responsive. I never said it wouldn't.
Quote:
I am very curious to find out which benchmarks you have used that didnt show any type of gain.
3D Mark is about it when I was overclocking my video card. I was never really into synthetic benchmarks. With many syntehtic benchmarks i have even seen some XP's beat A64's.
thanks bias these tweaks work great for my gaming partition, i did a few on my w2k bench partitions and is a teeny bit faster in 2001, mainly just faster startup times
my question is how impotant is virtual memmory in xp? i have set it to the same size i have in physical memory and also set it to my secondary drive at the "front" of the drive with diskkeeper. Is this better or worse?
Last edited by WiZaRI7; 07-14-2005 at 09:53 PM.
Reason: spelling
my question is how impotant is virtual memmory in xp? i have set it to the same size i have in physical memory and also set it to my secondary drive at the "front" of the drive with diskkeeper. Is this better or worse?
Without Virtual Memory Windows would not function You are referring to the pagefile which is not the same thing. Setting the PF size to the same amount of RAM you have is not a good idea. For the majority of the users it is best to leave the PF system managed, but to find the optimal size you need to run your most intensive applications like you would in a normal day or w/e. Then measure PF usage using perfmon. This is the only way to measure Pf usage using built-in tools. If you want something else this will work.
Once you have figured your PF usage multiply this number by 4. That number should be set as your initial size. For the max multiply the number you just calculated by at least 2.
Many people will recommend setting a "fixed" pagefile, and the reason they do this is because they want to prevent fragmentation. With my recommendation the PF will never have to resize anyway because the initial size is high enough for your needs. However if it does come a time where it needs to resize it can. Setting a fixed size removes this "safety net."
Also you should never disable the pagefile. Many people will also recommend this to improve performance, but all this will do is hurt you. First of all you have to realize the pagefile is NOT the only file involved with paging. All exe's and dl''s are also. So when you do disable the pagefile you have to keep all "private" data in RAM and only code and mapped files can be paged. So even if the "private" stuff has not been touched in hours. So this will cause more paging of code. It also means that paging cannot be correctly balanced. It will also cripple the file cache and slow down code execution. Also not to mention some applications will fail without a pagefile.
Also in theory moving any file to the outer cylinders of the drive will help, but in real-world performance it will not. This only makes a difference in sustained transfer rate and the PF IO is never in buffers of more than 64KB at any given time. This is basically the same reason why fragmentation is taken way too seriously by a lot of people. When a executable is read so are all the libraries it needs. Of course loading all of it in RAM would be a waste of memory so it only loads the immediately necessary parts. This is called demand paging. So regardless if the file is fragmented or not the head will have to move anyway, paging a bit here and there. Seek time is everything when it comes to HDD performance so you want your most frequently-accessed stuff together. So the pagefile should be on the most-used partition and the least-used HDD. This will give you best performance. However whether you will benefit from it not will depend on the amount of RAM you have and your usage patterns.
I`d like to add one tweak. I always use it since it came up to me - SuperPrefetch.
To enable it run regedit -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControl/SetControl /Session/Manager/MemoryManagement/PrefetchParameters. And make new DWORD called EnableSuperfetch. Change it`s value to 1. Reboot and enjoy
Remember to back-up your register before making any changes to it. I`m not responsible for any damage this tweak could do to yr system.
However I never experienced any
But thank you for that friendly comment.
Linear Mode
