10% increase in Windows performance, FREE

[RobRich]

While surfing through tweak3d.net, I found an interesting article on how to trick windows into mapping your most used system files into memory in the same manner as it maps the windows kernel core. It allows the mapped programs to access the memory faster, plus the program can run directly from the virtual cache. That means serious speed improvements. Sometimes upwards of 10%.

This trick works for most programs, but it can completely wreck some. If that occurs, you will need to restore it from a backup archive. Since the commonly used files are the *.exe and *.dll files from your windows system folder, this trick directly covers how to manipulate them, but it could be easily applied to other files as well.

Here's the link:
http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/windows/3.shtml

Here's a slightly improved way to do it:
http://www.tweak3d.net/comments.cgi?view=1846

If you opt for the second easier option, make sure to use notepad or another raw text editor to cut and paste the contents of the old winali.bak file into the new winali.ini file to preserve all your old settings as well. This isn't mention, but it defitely should be done.

[This message has been edited by RobRich (edited 02-16-2000).]

[BBA]

W2K already uses this trick as standard install...

Maybe thats why it seems faster?

[OuTpaTienT]

I am stunned/embarassed/etc. that this performance hack has gone unnoticed to me for so very long. With all the performance tweaks I've done/read about/heard about/discussed over the years, I just can't believe I've never come across this. Oh well, anyways, I've now done it and it seems to work beautifully.

Thanks for the tip RR!

[Steve R Jones]

Here's another tweak site worth looking at: http://members.aol.com/axcel216/newtip15.htm#FMM

[RobRich]

If anyone else is interested in this little speed improvement trick, but don't feel like playing with your system files, then winmag has wrote a little batch file that will do all this for you.

http://www.winmag.com/library/1999/0301/fea0052.htm

http://www.winmag.com/win98/winalign.htm

I orginaly posted a link to my own batch file, but I like their's better.

[This message has been edited by RobRich (edited 02-17-2000).]

[This message has been edited by RobRich (edited 02-17-2000).]

[arn]

According to WinMag this utility only opens your programs faster and from what I have tried this seems to be true.

You don't want to put everything (using *.exe or *.dll for instance) or you'll end up with too much residing in memory for your programs to operate in.

A way to tell if a program is aligned is to right click the file and use quick view, under "Image optional Header" if "Section Alignment & File Alignment" both read
00001000, then the file is aligned.

This is good if a program takes too long to load but, as far as I can tell it doesn't help it run faster.

I looked at this because I have Autocad and it is really memory hungery. Even though I have 128M if I open a 10M file and draw some the 128M is full. No free mem left.

I have been using FreeMem but, it tends to free all the memory it can, which is too much and and slows the machine (program) down a lot for a while.

What I have found and seems to work real well is RamPage. It only (you can set it) 10M at a time automatically, every 5 seconds (you can also set this).

You can find it here:
http://63.194.217.126/software/RAMpage/index.html

arn