Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: HavocTM on June 24, 2004, 09:48:43 AM
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Better Flight Simming
5 WINDOWS XP PERFORMANCE TWEAKS
After these tweaks, your Windows XP system will blitz!
Brought to you by: PC Aviator - The Flight Simulation Company!
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Windows XP is a vastly superior operating system to it’s predecessors – Windows 95, 98 & ME. It is overall faster in terms of boot time and program loading and it’s also much more stable than its predecessors.
You may already be running Windows XP and experiencing its improved performance but do you have it finely tuned for performance greater than you could have even expected?
Here are 5 tweaks to get Windows XP operating at close to optimum performance without spending a dime. As a flight simmer, you'll benefit from these tweaks.
Firstly, however, we’ll assume your hard disk is operating NTFS. If your system came bundled with XP then it most likely is. If you upgraded your previous version of Windows to Windows XP, then your file system may still be using the FAT32 file system. If it is then you need to convert it to NTFS. While this will convert your hard disk to NTFS however your cluster size will not be optimized. Converting your hard disk from FAT32 to NTFS gives you 512 byte cluster sizes which is not the optimum and will give you less than optimum hard disk performance since 512 byte clusters result in higher hard drive overhead. The recommended cluster size is 4096 bytes. If your hard disk is not using this cluster size then you should reformat your system using this cluster size which is the Windows Format default cluster size. Alternatively Partition Magic V8 will let you change your cluster size for an already formatted hard drive without requiring a reformat.
If you do not want to go through a complete reformat but do want to convert to NTFS if you are running FAT32 then go to the Command Prompt – START => All Programs => Accessories => Command Prompt.
To confirm which file system you are running at the C: prompt type CHKDSK.
The first line will tell you which file system you are running. If you are running FAT32 then to convert to NTFS enter the following:
CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS
The conversion will take about 30 minutes. Repeat this for other hard disk volumes you may have e.g. D: drive or E: drive.
When complete, reboot your system and prepare for the 5 Windows XP Tweaks That Will Boost Your System Performance…. Out Of Site!
Note: Before you perform these steps, please ensure that you are familiar with REGEDIT. Incorrectly using Regedit could damage your Windows registry and leave your system unbootable and unrecoverable. If you are not confident using Regedit, have a friend who is perform these tweaks for you.
Tweak #1 – Disable Last File Access Stamping
By default, every time Windows XP reads a file, its stamps the file with the date and time of last access. Whilst it can serve a purpose, it is generally not required for everyday computer use. It hogs resources by writing to a file each time it is accessed. So every read operation is also accompanied by a write operation of a few bytes.
To turn this off go to the command prompt:
At the command prompt enter the following:
FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 1
If you ever want to turn it back on again enter: FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 0
Reboot your computer.
Tweak #2 – Turn Off Windows Indexing
While it’s great for finding files faster when you are doing a search, Windows file indexing is always working in the background indexing files and thus contributing to hard disk overhead.
To turn it off go to Control Panel => Add/Remove Programs => Windows Components. Then deselect Indexing Service.
Tweak #3 – Increase Your File System Cache
On a typical high end system such as a 2.4 MHz Pentium a hard disk will transfer data at around 30-40 MegaBytes per Second. That’s pretty fast! How would you like hard disk transfer bursts of around 1 GigaByte per second? You can achieve this easily using any version of Windows as it’s already part of the file system… that is file caching where data that has been read from the hard disk remains in memory so that if it is required again before it is flushed from the cache it reads directly from the cache for these super fast data access rates. That’s right it is already part of the file system but the recommended default setting (the setting you might already be using) is not necessarily the best. The default setting in Windows is to allocate more memory to programs and less to the file cache but this is wasting precious memory that could be used for file caching instead of not being used at all. If, for example, you are running a 512 Mb RAM, and you have a program or two loaded, you have around 300 MB that isn’t being used AT ALL. It’s being reserved partly for file caching and partly for any programs you might load with the priority being for any programs you might load. It will not allocate all of that memory to the file cache and it is VERY RARE that you would use all of that memory for programs.
So you could either waste that memory and have degraded system performance or you could use that memory for file caching. USE IT FOR FILE CACHING! After you make the change below, you will notice after you reboot and start using your system greatly reduced hard disk access for both read and write operations which is where the biggest bottleneck in computing is.
Performance benefits of this tweak are see no matter how little RAM you have but are more pronounced with the more RAM you have. We suggest no less than 256 Mb and more is better.
Perform the following:
CONTROL PANEL => SYSTEM => ADVANCED => PERFORMANCE => SETTINGS => ADVANCED => MEMORY USAGE. Change the option from Programs to System Cache.
Reboot your computer.
Now to see this tweak in action do this:
1. Load Microsoft Flight Simulator. It will take the normal amount of time to load depending upon your system.... anywhere from 45 seconds to 2.5 minutes.
2. Once FS2002 has loaded and you are sitting on the runway, exit the program and go back to your desktop.
3. Just wait a moment or two for all hard disk activity to stop and then re-launch FS2002. What you'll see is that the program will load in just seconds!
Why? Because it is all being loaded out of RAM and not having to read from the hard disk at all. You should be loaded and sitting on the runway anywhere between 10 and 40 seconds depending upon your RAM and processor speed. All up about 300 or more percent improvement in loading time because it is being loaded out or File Cache. With Windows XP being fairly disk intensive in general, all of your computer operations will benefit from this increased allocation of free RAM to disk caching.
Tweak #4 – Clean Your Windows Registry
A great Trialware program called Ace Utilities that will clean out your Windows registry from old, obsolete, and incorrect Windows registry settings is. You can get this at:
http://www.acelogix.com/downloads/aceutils.exe
Ace Utilities will also find and clean out all old unused temporary files from your system that other methods might miss.
Download this FREE by clicking here and run it on your system. After you have cleaned your Windows registry then reboot your system.
Tweak #5 – Increase CPU Priority
This will increase the CPU priority for programs running in the foreground. E.g. Your Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002.
Run Regedit
Find This Key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl\
Set the Win32PrioritySeparation to 38
The last adjustment is to set the "Launch folder windows in separate process" setting by opening the "My Computer\Tools\Folder Options\View -and tick the "Launch folder windows in separate process" box.
Window XP will open any new window (including program) in its own memory and in separate process priority. (increase stability and speed but use much more RAM than before)
Try all these tips and watch your Windows XP system performance increase out of site for both your general computing and flight simulators.
For another article that gives you further Windows XP performance improvements follow this link:
http://www.pcaviator.com/articles/article_hd_opt.htm
This article recommends some software programs available from PC Aviator to enhance your system for optimum flight simulator performance. It also involves defragmentation, how to repartition your hard drives to minimize fragmentation, increasing your RAM and a great cache management utility program.
Brought to you by
PC Aviator
The Flight Simulation Company!
http://www.pcaviator.com
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Also try http://www.blackviper.com
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Yes, absolutely!
Black Viper is THE best XP tweak site around.
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Great info... I must try it later. Can I assume these apply to both XP Pro and XP Home?
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Yep... in fact the *only* difference in Home and Pro is the networking. Pro is designed to network in an office env and has more settings.
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Black vipers site rocks.....!
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DON'T DO THIS!!!!! I DID THE DIASABLE INDEXING AND MEMORY USAGE TO SYSTEM CACHESING AND MY PC IS SCREWED. MAY HAVE TO RE-FORMAT.
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Originally posted by Xargos
Also try http://www.blackviper.com
VERY BAD idea if you use the PC for ANYTHING other than gameing.
using those setting you disable the ability to properly install drivers, programs, and windown updates. let alone many other things.
yeah your pc will run fast, untill not having a security fix, and not being able to install it lets your system get a trojan.
i have had to help 3-4 people out resetting their systems because of the terrible advise of this site.
if you dont know EXACTLY what EVERYTHING means that is discussed on that site (meaning MCSE cert or higher minium and able to completely reformat your system without ANY help) dont follow their advise.
either that or dont come running to the BBS saying help help i got a virus, or i cant install the new AH patch, or i cant get windows updates, or i cant access some files on my PC, or whatever.
sorry, but i am very unhappy with that site, and it's intentional misleading of easily duped PC n00bs.
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Switching my ram over to file cache, even with 1024M of ram made AH2 unable to run any resilution over 1024 X 768 and load time increased from 30 seconds to over a minute. A better alternative if you have a lot of ram is to creat a ramdrive and copy your AH2 folder into it, loadtime then is less than 10 seconds and the ingame caching freezes completly dissapear. You can do this with a free trial program called RamdiskXP.
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I'm old enough to know better, but these tweaks screwed my system. I got it back, but..... No one to blame but myself. Beware:rolleyes:
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Dont think its bad advice at all from Black Viper....you just need to follow the steps correctly...I by the way only use this puter for gaming (the one for AH2)...the one I am typing on is another.
My 2 cents...
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Yeah, I suppose I should have posted these caveats:
1 - Don't do this if you are stupid.
2 - Don't do this if your computer is a piece of ****.
3 - Don't whine if it doesn't work.
4 - Don't sue me.
5 - If all you are going to do is ***** when somebody tries to help folks out, then go have yourself a nice steaming cup of STFU.
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Not blaming you mate, just blaming myself for listening to you:p
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BlkViper's site has some dangerous tweaks which can cause problems with other applications. If you really do not know what all the things are that you are fooling with and what they do, then I would suggest not doing it.
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I changed memory to system cache and disabled windows indexing. I wouldn't have thought this would cause problems, but I had to reinstall video drivers and had all sorts of hassle.
Don't be sore havoc, it might be my machine. I've done a few of vipers tweaks really carefully and no probs, but these two. Wow, nukesville. Like I say, maybe I did something wrong:D
Not stupid
PC is not a piece of s**t (I don't think lol)
Am whining because it didn't work
Definitly not going to sue anybody
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Be VERY Careful with the above so call tweaks,
turning off the date stamp and playing with the way system handles the cache...can really hose your system.
Increase CPU Priority VERY DUMB thing to do this can cause the system to hang.
You been warned
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Agreed - Even switching over to System Cache is not advisable. My old system kept giving me Delayed Write failures upon windows startup. My current system gives the same crap. Its best left alone unless you're 100% on the change.
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btw that link to download Ace Utilities seems to be pretty dead, even went to the author's site to download, and no go.
Might try Super Rabbit Registry Optimizer, unlike most of the crippled registry optimizer demos available for download, it actually removes the problems that it locates.
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Yes, http://www.blackviper.com can be very dangerous to your PC, sorry I should have stated that in my first reply. The site will show you how to have several setups. My computer is set up to ask me, before windows loads up, if I want default mode(all services are running) or gaming mode(printer, auto updates, switchable user, nortons, themes & many other things won't work). It took me 2 weeks to get it right, I would only disable one thing at a time and see how it ran. Be very careful of this and read everything before you start tweaking. It is a good site if you don't get in a hurry.
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Blackvipers site isn't for mainstream gaming such as most people who play AH2. I have did most of the tweaks on many systems and the performance isn't much different. No, I'm not noob and I know much about pc. Blackviper site may help in some cases but not in many. My suggestion is if it works don't fix it. Also he dosen't tell you it will lead to system instablity a long with some programs need have the things he wants you to disable.
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As I gain experience I am also finding that these tweaks make hee-haw difference to real game performance. Same with fiddling with Memory timings etc. The main thing is having no background apps running while playing. This used to be easy in Win 95/98 using ctrl-alt-del or "End It All". With XP and the "processes" thing, the waters have become muddied, hence Blackviper etc and idiots like me trying tweaks which hose the system.:rolleyes:
It's not Havoc's fault, but I have read up a bit on this and there issues with these tweaks especially with ATI cards and/or a full set of RAM in your PC. To be fair, you wouldn't think a simple tweak like ticking the "system cache" button would cause such problems! There are no warning pop ups or anything.
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The Black viper site is a great site...Some of the people on this thread sound like the type of people who want to Sue the gun manufacture for some person shooting someone else.....
This site is for people who use it with caution. If your comp gets messed up its your own fault. He provides warnings at the site..
This kills me..... Blame the site for people who dont know how to use it. So much for personal responsibility.
It is clear that Theses people DID NOT FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS....I have my original profile untouched...I run 4 different profiles for Services. BTW...The most stable service profile That runs AH2 is the profile running 11 services..My original XP Service profile has the majority of the issues of instability for AH2. Hummmm, How could that be? It must be Blackvipers fault...Or I know I need to update my drivers...Or NO My systems too slow...OOPS I forgot My Comp case is the wrong Color? HELP Im so confused....NOT...:rofl :rofl :rofl
Kalamori
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my 2 cents......im using a new machine with clean installs on everything, and so far no problems. the problems with installing updates and drivers will be no problem because ill reverse all the tweeks before hand.
but with them on i like the way windows starts up in less than 20 seconds now, and my gaming performance is much better overall.
so if i have to deal with a couple extra steps to update, so what:D
ok..spoke too soon....o well wanted to use "wipe drive" and do fresh install anyway:rolleyes:
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Kalamori,
I agree 100%....FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS to the "T"
I printed out a copy of what all those "pesky" winxp pro "services" and selected the ones I wanted and didnt.
NO PROBLEMS on this end...plus with the selective boot up I can go back to the original easily.
Regards
:)
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Kalamori,
I agree 100%....FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS to the "T"
I printed out a copy of what all those "pesky" winxp pro "services" and selected the ones I wanted and didnt.
NO PROBLEMS on this end...plus with the selective boot up I can go back to the original easily.
Regards
:)