WinXP Tweaking Guides

[PersianImmortal]

I've edited the guide recently to change a couple of the service recommendations (Print Spooling being one) and one Group Policy recommendation (Remove My Documents from desktop - apparently has some strange side-effects).

Keep the guide bookmarked and check in every once in a while as I add to it and tune it further.

So far it seems the majority of people aren't having any problems with it though :)

[Beefy]

mtb1bkr - Sadly yes a lot of sysadmins are fairly clueless about optimal software settings and live in perpetual fear of users changing settings. You sound like you know exactly what you're doing so tell her not to badmouth my tweaks :)

I take offense to that. :)

Yeah, there are a lot of clueless sys admins out there, but from the user's point of view, some sys admins may look clueless, but in fact they either don't have time to perform minor tweaks which aren't necessary or they don't have the chance to sit down and tweak everything.

With the 80+ computers I'm in charge of here, if they are working then I'm happy. I'm not gonna sit down and patch this and tweak that, just so the users can get that little bit more speed out of them. It's not worth my time / effort to do it.

And yeah, there is always that fear of users playing around with settings. A lot of people will know what they are doing, and that's ok. But then there's the ones that think they know what they are doing, but actually haven't got the first idea about things. They are the ones that screw things up for everyone and create more unnecessary work. so unless a sys admin knows exactly what you are capable of, not what you think you are capable of, then they will be pretty strict as to what you can do.

Just my $.02 :)

[PersianImmortal]

Yes, the clueless ones always defend themselves the most :D

Just kidding...I guess I've just had bad experiences with them. I don't work in an IT job, so I'm forever having to prove to sys admins that I know almost as much as they do (if not more) about software settings and how PCs work.

Unfortunately I regularly have to deal with those people you talk about Beefy - the ones who genuinely believe they know what they're doing. When they stuff up, instead of going to the techies they come quietly to me and ask me to fix up their mess :)

[Mr. C]

Well how else are they supposed to learn:?:
You don't really expect them to fiddle with the PC they have at home ....... do you?:laugh:

[drpeterbright]

Mr. C They have tried it on the one at home & it no longer runs. Then they go to work & practice some more.

[dougbrad81]

hi,
is there any perfomance gains by using the tweak "conservativewapfileusage=1" applied in msconfig system.ini under '386enh'?

[Mr. C]

Mr. C They have tried it on the one at home & it no longer runs. Then they go to work & practice some more.

I think I know that guy............he blames his system not working on a virus, right

[Mr. C]

hi,
is there any perfomance gains by using the tweak "conservativewapfileusage=1" applied in msconfig system.ini under '386enh'?

none whatsoever. (check your spelling)
However, based upon your OS and amount of physical RAM in your system, conservativeswapfileusage=1 can have the effect of forcing the OS to use RAM instead of a swapfile on the harddisk - it will still use the swapfile when neccesary but will utilize RAM first.

Here's a good link to study that topic a bit more;

http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/Swapfile_Optimization/Swapfile_Optimization_01.htm

If you aren't experiencing the phenomenon of "hard disk thrashing" I'd say just leave it alone. But then again, it might be worth a try just to see if you get any noticable performance change.

[PersianImmortal]

dougbrad81 - use the Cacheman program in my guide to set all your cache and associated memory settings to those recommended. I don't think there are any other memory settings you need to worry about once you've done that.

[AussieMaNchilD]

Howdy, I have a simple home network running at home of a PC and Laptop, well it use to but after applying the WinXP Tweaking: From Reformat to Relax my network does not work. My USB network device does not even register a cable being pluged into it?

Please Help.:confused:

[PersianImmortal]

The guide is not really designed for networks, and it turns off several network-required services and functions.

From my post in this thread on the first page:

Try turning on the blatantly Network-related services first (Set them to Automatic) such as:

Network DDE
Network DDE DSM
Terminal Services

The changes won't come into effect until you reboot btw.

More importantly, check the link I give to the WinXP Services Guide. That contains detailed explanations (or links to detailed explanations) of every MS Service.

Also, check page 3 of the guide, at the bottom where you may have unticked "Automatically search for network folders and printers" under Folder Options.

The guide's not really designed for network machines because I turn off so many networking features. As stated it's more for gamers but I apologise if it's caused you any inconvenience.

Cheers

[Potatoe2]

I think that Mtbibkr's issue with deleting a partition with xp needs addressing. I have been running xp pro for 2 weeks now and have had to reformat twice now. (my fault not the guides) I received the same message when I tried to delete the partition so I could reformat. I just spent an hour fumbling around and it finally let me delete the partition. For the life of me I don't know what I did different. I know that this problem doesn't belong on this thread but maybe some of you more experience folks could make up a guide on the procedure.

[sid440]

Thanks for putting this guide together. I have noticed a
performance improvement.

However, something is wrong here, and I can't figure it out.

Without getting into too much detail; my system
has 256 Ram. Checking the task manager after startup,
I had 170K available. I thought that was a little low, so
I pretty much followed the tweak guide to a T. Now,
right after startup, I begin at 100K available. Without
even running any programs or games, I'm easing down
to 75K. Needless to say, that isn't very desirable.

I'm hoping there's a simple explanation? I can go into detail if it's necessary -regarding changes and settings I've made etc.

Thanks,

Paul

[PersianImmortal]

Potatoe2 - Unfortunately I don't have a spare HD to go through the procedure for deleting/creating partitions in WinXP and I haven't done it since I formatted this drive late last year (so my memory is vague on the process). I ran across a Formatting guide for XP released recently but I can't find it again now...search on Google and see if you can.

sid440 - you need to be more specific about where in the task manager you're looking. If you're looking at the Commit Charge (at bottom of the task manager) then it's good when that falls as that's how much memory is currently being used.

If you're looking under the Performance Tab in the "Physical Memory (K)" box, then you'll see your total physical memory (256K) and the remainder should be a fair chunk of that.
Remember that some of my tweaks will use up more physical RAM for improved overall performance (and I typically recommend them for those with 512MB or more RAM). LargeSystemCache, DisablePagingExecutive, Large IOPageLockLimit etc. will take up more RAM but speed up your system.

Go back through my guide and reverse the tweaks based on the explanations I give. You can also use Cacheman and use its recommended settings for your RAM size.

For your info, here's my task manager with 512MB RAM, 768MB Virtual Memory and all my tweaks applied:

<img src="http://lindset.codect.com/images/1030858818Taskman.jpg" border="0">

[sid440]

Thanks for the response. I'm reading the "available"
underneath the heading "Physical memory." Right now,
Total is 261,616 and Available is 96,360. The commit
charge is 133M/983M.

There must be something running in the background that
I cannot see. Just a few moments ago, without me doing anything, the Available jumped back up to 168,000. I restarted
and it was down to 100,000. I will take your advice, and "undo"
my tweaks.