Definition of the "Typical Role of This Machine" Setting

This article describes the purpose of the Typical Role Of This Machine setting in File System properties.

You can set the Typical Role Of This Machine setting to the following settings:

• Desktop Computer
• Mobile Or Docking System
• Network Server

The setting you use controls the size of various internal data structures used by the 32-bit file access driver (VFAT) that are used to optimize disk space.

When you use the Desktop Computer setting, VFAT allocates memory to record the 32 most recently accessed folders and the 677 most recently accessed files. This consumes approximately 10K of memory.

When you use the Mobile Or Docking System setting, VFAT allocates memory to record the 16 most recently accessed folders and the 337 most recently accessed files. This consumes approximately 5K of memory.

When you use the Network Server setting, VFAT allocates memory to record the 64 most recently accessed folders and the 2729 most recently accessed files. This consumes approximately 40K of memory.

To change the Typical Role Of This Computer setting, follow these steps:

1. In Control Panel, double-click the System icon.
2. On the Performance tab, click File System.
3. On the Hard Disk tab, click the setting you want to use in the Typical Role Of This Computer box, and then click OK.

For information about known problems with these settings, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: