Windows 98 Optimization Tips and Tweaks

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Microsoft Windows 98
Optimizing...

Put Defrag on Your To Do List

Workstation disks get fragmented under heavy use. Defragging regularly-at least once a week-with a third-party tool such as Executive Software's Diskeeper can boost performance considerably.

Turn Over a New Page

If your workstation gets powered on and off at least once a day, clearing the page file allows NT's disk-swap space to be re-created fresh each time. This might speed things up a bit. Edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control
\Session Manager\Memory Management, changing the ClearPageFileAtShutdown value to 1 to enable page-file clearing.

Put Swap File on a Speedy Drive

If you have more than one hard disk, you should put your page file either at the start or end of the fastest disk-preferably in its own partition.

Boot an Old Video BIOS

An older video BIOS can cause problems with Windows 98. Check to make sure you're using the most recent 98 drivers, as well as the most recent flash BIOS for your video card.

Run ScanDisk Once a Week

Data fragments, bad sectors and other disk anomalies accumulate with surprising speed. Run ScanDisk's Standard Inspection once a week to correct these deficiencies before they become major problems. You'll find it in Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools. Occasionally run the Thorough Inspection to look for physical defects on the surface of the drive. ScanDisk will be able to repair many problems.

Keeping Desktop & Start Menu Clean

We have seen this too often. A user places all his 'stuff' on to his desktop or start menu. As a result, it is too messy and becomes so cluttered that even the user has trouble finding what he/she is looking for.

A Clean Desktop
Place only your most frequently used programs on to the desktop. Always place shortcuts and not the program itself onto the desktop. You can however, place folders which is a convenience on the desktop. Try not to fill up more than 3/4 of the desktop. If you place too many items onto the desktop, windows will place them beyond the screen and you will have to use the desktop folder itself instead. You will also have trouble using desktop components as they are all covered with icons. If you have a set of utilities you will like to have access to, use toolbars as a quick alternative. Set them to auto-hide to free up the desktop.
A Clean Start Menu
Dump your start menu shortcuts into manageable folders. Put all you games into one folder. Place all your stand-alone system utilities under System Tools. Group all your MS Office applications under another folder. You get what we mean. It will clear up the start menu and you won't have to scroll to the bottom just to launch a program. If you have a lot of first-level items on your start menu, use small icons instead by right-clicking the Taskbar|Properties.

Windows Running Slow

Is your system not quite as snappy as it once was? Go figure. You've undoubtedly tweaked some settings since getting it. Do your Start Menu components take a while to pop up? There may be a few reasons for this crawl. What font are you using? If it's anything but MS Sans Serif, chances are: it's TrueType. Why should this matter? Well, examine the 'Effects' tab in your Desktop properties; if you have 'font smoothing' turned on and are using TrueType fonts in your windows dialogs (see 'Appearance' tab), you may be taking a performance hit. Use 'MS Sans Serif' (size 8) instead; see if that speeds things up. Why is this so? Because bitmap fonts (like MS Sans Serif) can't be smoothed. TrueType font smoothing is wonderful; it'll make certain fonts look cleaner on your screen. But you don't really want to use TTFs in your dialogs... I don't care how pretty they are.

Preventive Maintenance

Maintain your hard drive by performing these steps at least monthly, in this order:

1.) Delete all files and folders with dates older than one week from C:\WINDOWS\TEMP.

2.) Purge your browser's history and Internet cache files.

3.) Run ScanDisk. Select the Standard radio button and enable Automatically Fix Errors. Click on Advanced and, under Log File, pick Replace Log; for Cross-Linked Files, select Delete; click Free under Lost File Fragments; under Check Files For, check "Invalid dates and times;" and disable "Check host drive first, " unless you've compressed your hard drive.

4.) Empty the Recycle Bin.

Speed Up Program Launching

Your PC's processor, while important, isn't always given the time it needs to execute tasks. Power users might consider maximizing the CPU's priority. Open the system Registry editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ VxD \ BIOS. In the rightmost pane, create a new DWORD value and label it: "CPUPriority" (without quotes.) Double-click the newly created setting, switch its format to Decimal, then enter "1" (without quotes) as a value. Upon reboot, this tweak should speed up the launching of programs. NOTE: your mileage may vary.

Win 9x VCACHE Settings

VCACHE (Virtual Caching Protocol) is the dynamic disk cache system in Windows 9x. 32-bit VCACHE replaces the 16-bit Smartdrive system driver. VCACHE is a hard disk Disk Cache system that is dynamically sized by Windows. The cache size is based on the current available memory. Unfortunately, Windows can misallocate memory for the disk cache and the dynamic sizing can result in extra overhead computations for the microprocessor, waste available memory and cause disk thrashing. By being dynamic, it can use all available RAM and page the running apps to disk instead of flushing the cache!

Using a static or fixed disk cache setting based on your computer usage and memory would prevent frequent swapping of the data to disk resulting in improved performance.

To override the dynamic cache configuration, you specify a fixed minimum and maximum size for the cache. The 2 parameters MinFileCache and MaxFileCache, (measured in kilobytes) found in the [vcache] section of the SYSTEM.INI control the size of the VCACHE.

STEPS:

Open SYSTEM.INI
Look for a [vcache] section
If you are sure there is not one, add it
Add the following two lines to the [vcache] section

MinFileCache=x
MaxFileCache=x

Set the above x values (both of them) to about 25% of the amount of installed RAM
Close Windows
Reboot

There are more options. Try setting the maximum cache size to 1/8 of you system memory, and set the minimum cache size to 1/2 the maximum. For example, if you have 128 meg of memory installed set the maximum cache size to 16 meg and the minimum to 8 meg.

VCACHE also adjusts the set aside so that when burning a CD you don't have to wait on the I/O bus for the next block of data causing a buffer under run. If you have a CD Burner, set the MinFileCache equal to the MaxFileCache value as in the above example.

Modifying Key MSDOS.SYS Values

BootDelay=n
This is the number of seconds in which you can press F8 to bring up the Startup Options screen. The default is 2.
Try 1, mine is set to 0.

If you are not using Double Space on your drives (and do NOT unless you have to, it really slows down your system), and they are not compressed set:
DBLSPACE=0
DRVSPACE=0.

Network=n
If your machine is running on a network, then n=1, otherwise set n=0. Default is n=0, but make sure.

Logo=n
This controls the startup logo. Default, n=1 and you get the animated Windows Startup Screen. Set n=0 and it will bypass the logo and slightly decrease the load time.
This change offers the least improvement, but try on your machine.

Graphics by: w@r10ck

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