Tweaking Optimizing Windows.pdf - GEGeek

detect and/or recognize your hardware device. Another bonus, it is very easy to install this support. Simply insert your Windows NT
4.0 CD-ROM and navigate to the \Drvlib\Pnpisa\X86\Pnpisa folder/directory.
Right-click the "Pnpisa.inf" file and choose "Install" from the resulting menu. Reboot Windows NT 4.0 and it will recognize most Plug
N Play devices just as Windows 95 and Windows 98 do. As in services in tip 2 for NT I would leave the services on manual until
needed, saving memory.
4. Rollback not
Windows NT 4.0 comes with a "utility" named "ROLLBACK.EXE" which will corrupt your registry in most cases and render your
system unusable, forcing you to reinstall Windows NT from scratch. Don't use Rollback !
5. Service Packs
Install the last service pack for NT - which is service pack V6a - some people say that you must install the service packs in order
e.g. install service pack 3, than 4, than 5 etc but this is complete crap. Service Pack V6a will install all the fixes, updates and
enhancements from all the previous service packs - and believe me there are thousands of fixes!
6. Pagefile (also see pagfile tip in XP tips)
Make sure your pagefile is set correctly for you. The settings you need to change are in control panels\system\performance. It
doesn’t matter if you’ve got 128 or even 256MB of RAM - if your pagefile isn’t in tip-top shape, you’re taking a performance hit, and
that extra RAM you paid for isn't truly paying off. But how much RAM do you need in the first place?
To see how much Virtual Memory you really need, you've got to put your box through its paces, and them some. Use your
computer as you normally would. Then use it some more. Run Quake, Access, or whatever you can find to really push your
system. Leave it on all day. Abuse it by loading and closing your programs all day long. The point of all of this is to push your
machine to the natural limits of your usage pattern. Don't just thoroughly abuse it by loading 500MB files if you never do that sort
of thing - we're trying to get an accurate picture of your most intense user scenario.
After you've put the box through its paces, let's have a look at the Task Manager. You can access the Task Manager either by
evoking the almighty Ctrl-Alt-Del and clicking "Task Manager," or by choosing "Task Manager" when you right click on the taskbar.
OK, got it up? You'll want to have a look at the goodies hiding behind the "Performance" tab. As you can see to the left (or above,
depending on your font size), I've highlighted the lower left-hand section of the "Performance" tab's contents in red. This is the
"Commit Charge" meter, and it's one of your best tickets to figuring out how much RAM and how much Virtual Memory you should
have.
Total refers to the total amount of system memory, real and virtual, that you are using right at that moment. It's the least
significant figure. Limit is, you guessed it, your system's combined memory limit, or, the amount of RAM you have plus the amount
of Virtual Memory you have allocated. Don't forget, they are displaying these values in 'K' not 'MB,' and there's 1024 'K' in 1MB.
Peak is where the truth comes to light. This is the highest total system memory usage during this session.
If your peak number is higher than your limit, you're seriously under-allocated in terms of total system memory. You need more
virtual memory, and perhaps you need more RAM. How do you determine which you need more of? Well, in the world of NT, it's
easy to get a peak reading that's higher than your total physical RAM. Ideally, you should strive to have more RAM than your peak
needs, but not everyone is made of money. As you can see above, my Peak for this session was 170,376K. That's a good deal
under 256MB, but it's far above 128MB of RAM. That's why I've got 512MB - it makes life that much smoother.
By default, NT will place your pagefile where ever %winnt% lives, so if you've got NT on D:\, that's where it is.
That's hardly optimal in most situations. Here's how to figure out where to put it: whether your using SCSI or IDE, try to split up
your pagefile across your physical drives. Don't waste precious power on splitting up the pagefile across multiple partitions on the
same physical drives - that defeats the purpose of what we're trying to do. NT is pretty adept at making multiple simultaneous I/O
calls to hardware. This capability enables NT to work with your pagefile in as many locations as it can get access to in any given
moment. You can see, now, why NT would take a hit if you split up a pagefile over a partition on one logical drive: hard drives
cannot serve two requests simultaneously, IDE or SCSI. However, two different drives can. You cannot move the pagefile from C:
but you can reduce the size of the original file and set up a larger paging file on the other drive. The minimum size you can set
your pagefile to is 2mb on the boot drive. My advice is to put a paging file on a hard disk (or multiple hard disks) that does not
contain the operating system or a paging file should be on a dedicated non RAID FAT partition.
So, if you have multiple drives, spread that pagefile out. On an IDE system, it's best to have them on different chains if possible,
too. When it comes to the format of that drive, use NTFS. It's far superior to FAT for the pagefile's needs. So, keeping it on the
Win 9x partition on C: probably isn't the best performance-minded decision to make. There is one caveat: if you want to be able to
write a full dump when you bluescreen, you have to have a pagefile that is at least the size of your RAM on your boot partition (in
NT Speak, the boot partition is the partition with %winnt%, not necessarily C:\ ).
7. The L2 Cache myth
One of the most infamous NT tweaks since the introduction of NT4 has got to be the "L2 cache" tweak, a lone registry entry which
stipulates the amount of L2 cache (or secondary cache) that the OS will make use of. Well, as with many things in life, the effects of
this tweak are not so black and white. If you're using a processor that implements a direct-mapped L2 cache design (like Pentium
I's), then this registry adjustment is indeed for you. However, if you own any Intel processor post-PI, or any modern AMD
processor (K6-2 and newer), then your processor is using a set-associative L2 cache design, and thus you need not specify your L2
cache size. Despite the technical logistics of this model, the fact remains that numerous accounts exist of users claiming that after
setting this tweak, they received a serious boost in performance. Tests have revlealed that the tweak made absolutely no difference
on PII or PIII processors. However, if you wish to save your system the HAL call, and just supply the accurate L2 cache size (or
preempt an unlikely HAL error), feel free to set the static value for your processor. Or, if you still have a PI (heaven forbid),
continue on.
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
(take note of the space in "Memory Management")
In this key, double-click on the SecondLevelDataCache registry value to open a DWORD editor window.