Speed tweaks

Faster disk drives means a faster PC. It's time to oil the cogs.


Windows rarely optimises disk settings by default, so there are plenty of speed gains to be had just by setting up Device Manager properly. In Windows 98 right-click My Computer, choose Properties and select the Device Manager tab.

DMA (Direct Memory Access) enables your disk drives to transfer data quicker. It should be enabled by default on compatible drives, but if it?s not you first need to verify that your drive is capable of handling DMA ? check its instruction manual or the manufacturer?s Web site. Note that if you enable DMA on a drive that doesn?t support it you may render Windows unbootable. If it is compatible, right-click My Computer, select Properties and switch to the Device Manager tab. Open Disk Drives and double-click the drive in question, then from its Settings tab make sure DMA is ticked ? if it?s greyed out check your BIOS settings.

Do the same thing for CD and DVD drives, but also check that Sync Data Transfer has been turned on.

If you use Windows 98, it?s worth checking to see if your drive is running in 32-bit mode. Right-click My Computer and choose Properties, Performance. If the file system and virtual memory are reported as 32-bit all well and good, but if they are 16-bit, you can improve things a little.

To upgrade 16-bit drive settings to 32-bit click File system button on the same tab of System Properties. Switch to the troubleshooting tab and clear the box marked Disable all 32-bit protected mode drivers. Click OK.

In Windows 98 you can set the size of supplemental hard drive cache for your CD-ROM. Right-click My Computer and select Properties, Performance, File system, CD-ROM, and make the supplemental cache size as large as you can afford.

You can flash the BIOS of a CD or DVD drive in a similar manner to your motherboard BIOS. Check the drive manufacturer?s Web site or run a Web search for the Firmware Page, whose URL changes from time to time. Download and apply updates with the same caution reserved for your main BIOS.

Data fragmentation is the main cause of hard drive inefficiency. You can?t stop fragmentation occurring, but you can beat it back with regular defragmentation sessions.

The Disk Defragmenter tool comes as part of Windows 98, and you should run this once a month. It can take several hours though, so leave it to perform the task at a time when you won't need to use your computer.

Run Scandisk regularly to ensure there are no data arrangement errors on your drives, which can cause delays of loss of data.

Check your hard drive?s performance using the trial version of Data Advisor that you can get from www.ontrack.co.uk. This runs a number of checks, including a read/write one.

With a few nips and tucks you can have Windows zooming along.

Click and drag a file using the right-hand mouse button. Release the button at the desired destination to reveal a menu from which you can choose to copy, move or create a shortcut to the file concerned.

Make your Start menu easier to navigate by sorting all items into alphabetical order. Right-click any item and select Sort by Name.

Use an Explorer interface to organise your Start menu items. Right-click the Start button and choose Explore.

To quickly copy files or folders to floppy disk, right-click the file in question and choose Send To, 31/2 floppy (A:).

Minimise all open windows by clicking the Show Desktop icon in Windows 98.

Quickly close an application by right-clicking its taskbar entry and choosing Close.

Create keyboard shortcuts to launch any program shortcut. Right-click the shortcut icon and choose Properties, then click in the Shortcut key box and press a letter on the keyboard, such as [G]. Press OK. Now [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [G] will launch the shortcut.

Quickly change your Internet Options by right-clicking the shortcut to Internet Explorer and choosing Internet Properties.

Speed up your keyboard?s response time by opening Keyboard in Control Panel. Adjust the repeat rate and repeat delay.

Maintenance utilities such as scandisk and disk defragmenter can speed up your PC, but they take ages to complete. Use Scheduled Tasks to set these to run when you aren?t using your PC; you?ll find it in the System Tools group of Accessories.

Shave a little time off your Windows 98 boot by stopping your PC checking for new floppy drives when it boots. Right-click My Computer and choose Properties, Performance tab, File System and select the Floppy Disk tab. Remove the tick from the box marked Search for new floppy disk drives each time your computer starts.

The quickest way to get to an MS-DOS prompt in any version of Windows is to choose Start, Run, then type Command into the Open box and click OK.

Normally, when you select Start, Shutdown and then choose Restart, your PC reboots from scratch. If you only wish to restart Windows without running through the initial hardware checks, hold the [Shift] key as you select Start, Shutdown. The ?Windows is restarting? message that appears verifies you?ve been successful.

Choosing the right file system when you install Windows can make a huge difference to its performance. For Windows 98, choose FAT 32 over the slower FAT 16.

Does Windows 98 hang during shut down? You may need to apply the Windows 98 SE Shutdown supplement, which fixes problems with Windows 98 SE and certain hardware configurations. You can find the supplement at www.microsoft.com/ windows98/downloads/contents/WURecommended/S_WUFeatured/Win98SE/Default.asp, but check this document before downloading and applying the patch. It doesn?t work for the original release of Windows 98.

Virtual Memory is an area of your hard drive that is treated as RAM. Windows normally allocates this automatically, but you can alter its settings to improve performance. In Windows 98, right-click My Computer, choose Properties and the performance tab, then click the Virtual Memory button and opt to specify your own settings. RAM is faster than disk, so reduce virtual memory if you have plenty of RAM to play with.

Maintenance tasks

Regular maintenance will provide you with plenty of performance gains, but striking a suitable balance is important. Running disk defragmenter every day might keep your data compact, but the time you?d gain wouldn?t cover the time you spent doing it. Here?s a list of suggested maintenance tasks, excluding backups, which you should schedule as frequently as is practical.

Everyday, delete emails that you no longer need and empty the deleted items folder in your email program.

Every week, give your desktop a clean, removing unnecessary files and short cuts. Empty the Recycle bin.

Every other week, run Scandisk or Check disk without a full surface scan. Consider emptying your browser cache.

Run a full scandisk every month. Clean out your email, deleting old messages that are no longer important.

Defragment your drive monthly to rearrange the data and speed up your system's performance.

Don?t forget that disk defragmenting must be done when there are no background processes running, so run it in Safe mode.

Registry settings can improve performance.

The Registry in Windows 98 is a large file containing much Windows configuration information. It?s a one-stop shop, but hard to do without if it fails. Back it up before you make any changes.

To back up the Registry click Start, Run and type Regedit into the Open box, then click OK. In Windows 98 choose Registry, Export Registry File, give the file a name and click Save.

To restore the Registry in Windows 98, click Start, Run and type scanreg /restore. Press OK, Yes and choose the Registry backup to restore. Click OK and restart your PC.

If you can?t get Windows to boot, use a start-up disk to boot into DOS and type scanreg /restore at the A:\ prompt.

Use Find Next, which you can launch through the Edit menu, to scan for strings within Registry keys. This tracks down wayward entries for software that you?ve removed.

Run a search for flt.dll. It?s a piece of spyware that eats up system resources.

Make a performance-boosting program like MaxMem run from start up without using the Start-up folder. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Right-click in the left-hand pane and choose New, String Value.

Double-click the new entry and make the value name the same as the program concerned. For the data value enter the file path of the executable for the program.

Disable animated menus for quicker access. Open the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, and create the string value MinAnimate. Give it a zero value.

Increase the number of downloads you can make from a Web site. Open this key in Regedit: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Internet Settings. You now need to create two Dword values unless they already exist, which are MaxConnectionsPerServer and MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server.

Now set the values to whatever values you want. By default the MaxConnectionsPerServer value is set to two, which gives you two simultaneous downloads from any one site. MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server defaults to four, giving you a maximum of four simultaneous downloads from multiple sites. Increase this number if you wish.

The previous edits can affect the stability of the HTTP protocol. Be prepared to switch them back if your browsing becomes unstable.

Reduce fragmentation in Windows 98 by setting a minimum contiguous free space to use for writing data. You can do this by modifying HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ System\CurrentControlSet\ Control\FileSystem.

In the above key create a Dword value called ContigFileAlloc Size if it doesn?t already exist. The value is the size of the space in Kb. Larger values mean less fragmentation but less efficient storage.

Use RegCleaner to clear out Registry clutter.

Install and launch RegCleaner. You start on the Software tab, which shows applications with Registry entries. Check any that you?ve uninstalled and click Remove Selected.

Switch to the Uninstall Menu tab, and check any programs that you?ve removed but still persist in the list, then press Remove Selected. You can uninstall applications as well by selecting them and clicking Uninstall.

On the File types tab, look for file extensions with N/A in their descriptions. These aren?t used by your system, so you can select them and click Remove Selected to make more room.

Reduce the time you spend online by accelerating Internet Explorer 6.

To alter the size of your browser cache, switch to the General tab of Internet Options and click the Settings button. Move the slider to increase or decrease the size of the cache file.

Alternatively, click Move Folder to change its location.

The size of your browser cache affects your browsing speed. If you have a dial-up connection, you gain faster performance if most of your pages load from cache, in which case a larger folder is advisable.

If you have a broadband connection, a huge collection of offline files can slow your browsing down, as Internet Explorer searches the cache for an offline version of the file. Restrict your cache size to around 80Mb for faster browsing.

To delete individual offline files or simply to see what you are storing offline, click the Settings button on the General tab of Internet Options. Press the View Files button and an Explorer window opens, showing the contents of the cache. You can sort, view or delete any of these files in the usual way.

Ensure your offline pages are kept up to date by choosing Settings in Internet Options General tab. Under Check for newer versions of stored pages, select Every visit to the page or Automatically for regular updates. Choosing Every time you start Internet Explorer will tie up your connection needlessly.

To browse quickly, turn off all multimedia components; you?ll see broken links where the pictures should be, but you?ll get the Web site?s text very quickly. Choose the Advanced tab of Internet Options and scroll down to Multimedia, then uncheck Show pictures, Play videos, Play sounds and Play animations.

To remove just one site from the history, open the history pane by clicking the History button on the tool bar. Now right-click the site in question and choose Delete.

IE won?t print Web site backgrounds by default. To enable this, flick to the Advanced tab of Internet Options, scroll to Printing and tick Print background colours & images.

Set a simple home page like www.msn.co.uk or click Use Blank; the option to set this is within the General tab of Internet Options. You?ll then start your browsing much quicker.

To ensure Internet Explorer always triggers a dial-up when launched, go to the Connections tab of Internet Options. Make sure that your current ISP is the default connection and click either Dial whenever a network connection is not present, or Always dial my default connection. Click Apply.

As you install new programs, they often reset file associations and set themselves as the default application. The Programs tab of Internet Options enables you to set the default programs for five key Internet areas, so just choose the programs you want from the drop-down lists and click OK.

The Web Accessories pack, available from www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/previous/Webaccess/ie5wa.asp, was designed for use with Internet Explorer 5 but works fine with IE6 as well. Once installed, you get a few extra utilities. For example, select some text on a Web page, right-click the selection and choose Highlight. The text remains highlighted as if you used a marker pen ? great for Web research.

The Web accessories pack also gives you some great image handling tools. Right-click a picture and choose Zoom In or Zoom Out, and this way you can examine images in detail or get larger ones to fit the window. Open the links bar and click Toggle Images to turn pictures on or off for speedier surfing.

If you are getting error messages when you visit certain Web pages that ask you if you want to debug, you?ll need to disable script debugging. You only need this if you are testing out your own Web page. Select Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, Browsing, then check Disable script debugging.

To stop IE6?s shrinking images, click Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, Multimedia. Now uncheck Enable automatic image resizing, and click Apply.

If Internet Explorer 6 is playing up under Windows 98, try repairing its installation. Select Start, Settings, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and double-click the entry for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Tools. Select Repair Internet Explorer and click OK; you?ll need to restart your PC.

Sort your Favourites alphabetically for quick access. Click the Favourites Menu, right-click any entry in the menu and choose Sort by Name. Favourites in both the menu and the pane will now appear in alphabetical order.

Hold down [Shift] while clicking Organise on the Favourites menu and you?ll get a standard Explorer window, which enables you to arrange favourites such as other Windows files and folders.