I Need Help With Win 98 Sluggisshness

[Valek]

Hello once again everybody. I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions to help me speed up Windows 98 any at all.

Here are my system Specs:

Asus A7V Mobo, Rev 1.04, Bios 1005C
AMD AXIA 0 1.2Ghz Processor
1GB Crucial PC133 SDRAM
Enermax 431W P/S
Swiftech MC462 HSF
Seagate Barracuda 30GB ATA 100 HDD, Set to DMA in Device Mgr, on ATA 66 Primary IDE controller (Trying to set it to ATA 100 and Windows wil not Recognize it)
3 Intake Fans, 4 Exhaust Fans for Case

Vcache set to 25% of Total RAM
Chunk Size=512

Virtual Memory Set to Double the RAM

Here are some of the symptoms I'm experiencing:

General overall sluggishness of Windows, however it is not THAT noticeable, but not nearly what I would have expected upgrading from a 500Mhz AMD with 384MB RAM...slight performance increase.

I noticed the other day when I transferred a large amount of Files at one time....yes it was a VERY large amount...in excess of 179 subfolders and 10,000 files...windows started out blazing then steadily decreased in transfer speed until molasses moving uphill in January would have been faster (Took approximately 45 minutes to complete the transfer). I transferred it from one spot to another on my HDD so it should have actually been a very quick move...so I have been told.

From a fresh reboot I start out with 88% system resources free, with my MSCONFIG start menu shaved as tight as I can, even to the point of sacrificing complete virus protection from Norton's, just leaving E-mail protect enabled so that I can access my e-mail from Road Runner (Yeah, disabling E-mail Protect will prevent me from accessing my email until I re-enable it, then it retrieves it just fine).

I don't know what my CAS Latency Settings are in the BIOS and if my RAM will support 2-2-2 or not (Don't really know what that means but I've heard the term used as being much better than 3-3-3) or how to change it.

Now, I don't expect to own a CRAY 2 or whatever here, but Jeeeeeeeeeeze this thing should be faster than this. All Windows Updates are Current, etc. If I can provide any more information than this please let me know and I will do my best.

Thanks For All the Help,

Valek

[qball]

scandisk,
defrag (choose option to load progs faster)

[Xeroid]

Do a start....run....msconfig (select the startup tab) and report back to us which programs still have a checkmark next to them.

Mike

[batmeat]

Run defrag, scandisk, look what is in your startup folder and get rid of it if you don't need it, and uncheck all the unessential stuff using msconfig. Set your computer as a server. Disable the floppy seek upon boot up. Set your computer to boot with no logo and get rid of the 2 second delay (both of which are done in the msdos.sys file on your c:\ ). That should help you out quite a bit.

[Valek]

Startup in MSCONFIG includes the following Items checked:

ctfmon.exe
scanregistry
iomega drive icons
system tray
email protect
TWEAK UI
pointer

That's it. Have tried to uncheck ctfmon....believe it has something to do with Office XP, but it keeps rechecking itself...stubborn little twit. (It's not in the startup folder so I can't take it out of there. It resides in the C:\Windows\System folder) Computer is already set up for network server. Defrag every other night if not nightly using Norton Speed Disk. While I have not done a full surface scan, scandisk shows no errors.

Still scratching head,

Valek

[Xeroid]

What Is CTFMON and What Does It Do? HERE ( Strait from Microsoft’s mouth).

Check HERE for more information on deciding which programs should start when Windows starts. Also detailed information on how to remove stubborn programs. Information on which programs are needed and which are not. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will find an alphabetical index of programs).

It doesn’t appear that you have too many unnecessary programs running in the background. You could also try a Control-Alt-Delete to see if there are any hiding that don’t show up in msconfig.

Hope this helps some.

Mike