Starting and Stopping The Desktop Taskbar Tweaking Tuning Up Explorer Keyboardese Shortcuts Galore Sound Advice Registry Review Improving Performance Installing Software Custom Looks Net Working Dos Forever IMPROVING PERFORMANCE Virtual memory and disk caching Windows95 handles disk caching and virtual memory much differently than previous versions of Windows. If left at default, Windows95 interprets the system and dynamically determines the size of the disk cache and virtual memory. However, if too much RAM is used for disk caching, too little is left for applications. As a result, excessive disk activity occurs from applications being swapped out to virtual memory too soon and too often. In addition, there is extra activity of the virtual memory resizing itself. Noticeable improvement on an 8 MB system may be had by fixing the virtual memory at 20 MB and more importantly limiting the size of the disk cache to a maximum of 2 MB. To control the size of disk caching (despite the implication by Microsoft it can't be done) you add two lines in the system.ini file in your Windows95 directory in the [vcache] section: MinFileCache=0 MaxFileCache=x Where x= the max size of disk caching in KB. In the case of an 8 MB system, x=2048 8 MB systems and perhaps higher, who are having excessive disk activity may find these changes a pleasant surprise. For fine tuning, you can use the System monitor that comes with Windows 95. Clean your Startup files Some existing entries in your autoexec.bat and config.sys may be superfluous, especially when having setup WIN95 over the old system. The following commands are now executed by Io.sys by default. himem.sys ifshelp.sys setver.exe dos=high,umb files=60 buffers=30 fcbs=4 lastdrive=z stacks=9,256 shell=command.com /p These settings will be overwritten by the entries of the startup files. Completely defragment your hard drive Here is how to completely defragment the hard drive on which Win95 is installed and clean out Win95 file droppings. Disable Virtual Memory under Win95. Reboot and when rebooting press "Shift-F5" to go to DOS. type attrib -r -s -h -a /s, to strip all attributes off all files. While you are at it, you might want to clean all that previously hidden crap that Win95 put in your root, and also delete all those .GID files all over your drive. Flush your TMP and TEMP directories by doing a DEL. Reboot into Win95. ---- LABEL COW ---- Shell to DOS. type attrib -r -s -h -a *.dat in the C:\WINDOWS directory. Repeat the preceding line except use *.da0. type attrib by itself to see if there are any more hidden files in your C:\WINDOWS directory and if so, strip all their attributes off. Exit back to Win95 defrag with full options on. repeat from LABEL COW Diamond Stealth 64 PCI Display driver If you have a stealth 64 PCI graphic card and you let Windows set up a driver it will probably set up something like S3 or if your lucky, "Stealth etc." Unfortunately, the refresh rates are all wrong. But, if you have Win95 on CD, you can change the driver. Right click on the desktop and select Properties Select the Settings tab Select "Change Display Type" Click "Change" under "Adapter type" Click "Have disk" and enter "n:\drivers\display\diamond. Where n: is your CD drive letter. This should bring up "Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM (or VRAM) PCI. If you select this driver then you will have perfect Hi-Resolution picture without and "Real Mode driver support". Freeing diskspace If you want to free diskspace, you can delete all .avi files in the windows/help dir. Those files only show you some very basic things like: how to move a window, how to use the startmenu etc. Interrupt settings (IRQs) - where can I change them? Windows 95 assigns IRQs automatically, but if you need to change them to a specific value, you can. Open Control Panel/System/Device Manager Find and double-click on the device whose IRQ you wish to change. A panel for that device will appear. Select the Resources tab and locate the "Resource Settings" window. Scroll the choices to "Interrupt Request" and highlight. The "Change setting" button will become usable. Click "Change Setting" for the "Edit Interrupt Request" panel which allows changes to the interrupt, and immediately tells you if your new choice conflicts with other equipment. Where is a list of my Interrupt settings? In the Control Panel/System/Devices, there is an option to print a detailed or summary report. The detailed report is huge - 20 pages or so! The summary report is two pages, and contains a list of all interrupts currently assigned and for what purpose. This report also lists DMA channel assignments and port addresses. Another method is to simply right-click on the My Computer icon, and select Properties. This will bring up the System control panel. Select the Device Manager tab, and double-click on Computer within the scrollable window. From here you can view IRQs, DMA channel usage, I/O assignments, and Memory settings. Free up some more memory In the Control Panel/System/Performance/File System/CD-ROM tab, there is a setting for "Supplemental Cache" which normally defaults to 1 MB. That is a lot of memory to for a rarely-used CD-ROM. If this setting is lowered Windows may use less memory at startup or during operation. (Still being tested) Upgrading from 4Mb to 8Mb ram If you install Windows 95 on a 4 megabyte machine, then upgrade your PC to 8 megabyte, to get the full benefit of the Win95 operating system, you have to re-install Win 95. The reason for this is that the install program installs one set of files for a 4 megabyte machine, and a different set of files for an 8 megabyte machine. Setting "refresh rate" for console windows Add a "WindowsUpdateTime" key in the [386Enh] section the SYSTEM.INI file then reboot your system. For example: WindowsUpdateTime=10 The value is the refresh rate in ms. E.g. 10 means, update contents of console windows every 10ms. NOTE: Using values less than 15-20ms needs a fast machine and a fast videocard! Otherwise your system will really become very slow, when a DOS-Box or Win32-Console-Application is running. Share swapfile between Win95 & Win 3.1x It is possible to share the Windows permanent swap file between '95 and 3.1x on a dual-boot system by setting 'MinPagingFileSize' in the [386Enh] section of the Win95 SYSTEM.INI greater than, or equal to, the physical size (in Kbytes) of the swap file. Take the size in bytes of the '386SPART.PAR' file (usually found in the root of drive C:) and divide by 1024. One way to get the true size is by typing "dir c:\*.par /a:s" at the DOS prompt. The entry in the Win95 SYSTEM.INI would be for example: [386Enh] PagingFile=C:\386SPART.PAR MinPagingFileSize=8196 Tricks to Speedup Win95 Here is a quick list of fundamentals for getting more speed from your system. Don't use wallpaper. Just as in Win 3.xx, fancy wallpaper can slow down the system. This probably has more to do with what kind of video card than how much RAM you have. Don't use more colors than you really need. 256 colors is adequate to meet most needs. Some people need more colors than this. Some people can make do with 16 colors. Again, this probably has more to do with your video card than how much RAM you have. Don't use animated cursors. Not as much impact as wallpaper, but it seems to impact system performance slightly. Set up your CD ROM settings according to your needs. If you don't access your CD ROM heavily, don't go overboard on the caching or the optimization pattern (for 2x, 3x, 4x, etc.). Avoid using Sound schemes that come with Win95 and the system schemes that come with the Plus! pack. Take advantage of the well-documented registry hack that speeds up the response of your Start menu. To do this: Open the system registry using regedit Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel Highlight Desktop. Right-click on the right-hand window pane and chose New - String Value. Give the new string value a label of MenuShowDelay. Now double-click on the new string and enter a value from 1 to 10. Closely scrutinize your autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini, and system.ini files. Determine what, if any, entries are no longer necessary in these files and delete them. Look especially for the loading of 16 bit real mode drivers that are no longer necessary. Have you removed the old swap file? When you install Win95, the setup program does not remove your old swap file. This being 386spart.par. Some people have it set to 20mb+. You can safely delete it, but first must take the attributes off of it and also change your "system.ini" in the [386enh] section by deleting the lines: PagingFile= PagingFileSize= After the equal, it usually has the 386spart.par file name. WIN95 uses another swap file called "win386.swp" Speed up Program Tree To speed up the Program tree accessed from the START button: Open the Registry Editor Expand the HKEY_CURRENT_USER and then Control panel. Inside of Control Panel you will find Desktop, highlight it without expanding it. In the right pane make a right click and choose New-String value. Name the string "MenuShowDelay" without the quotes, give it a value of 10 or less. This value is the time in milliseconds that the popup will wait before showing. When you restart WIN95 you'll see the Start menu pops up almost instantaneously. Speed up your old CD-ROM Want to make your single or double speed drive perform like a quad+ speed drive in Win95? It's easy: Right Click on My Computer / Properties / Performance / File System / CDROM Set the supplemental cache speed to its maximum and the access pattern to 'Quad speed or higher." Previously "choppy" single speed drives might expect significant improvement. Speed up Windows 95 Backup The backup program included apparently runs 15-25% faster if you keep it minimized during the backup. Video Card refresh rate Even if Win95 recognizes your video card it often requires an entry in AUTOEXEC.BAT to set the correct refresh rates. For instance a Stealth 64 card requires a ref. to S64MODE in AUTOEXEC.BAT. Unabridged version of Tips and Tricks for Windows 95 copyright © 1995 - 2001 Hanar Software, all rights reserved. Tips and Tricks for Windows 95 Abridged Internet Edition copyright © 1997-2001, Hanar Software and William Foard Publishing, all rights reserved. AmericaToday.com copyright © 1995 - 2001 William Foard Publishing. Microsoft, MS, Windows, and the Windows logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft Corporation in no way endorses or is affiliated with Tips and Tricks for Windows 95. All other trademarks are the sole property of their respective owner(s).