[ppug] Re: speed

Hi Mal,
do you know how big your swap file is, and is it set for Windows to manage it?

the first thing I do with EVERY computer I get is to tell windows not to 
manage the swap file, I set it to a minimum size at least equal to the 
amount of physical RAM I have ( and often even larger than that ), then use 
Nortons Speed Disk to move the swap file to the front of the disk... The 
windoze defragger is crap, and won't let you move the swap file...

Optimising the hard drive is more than just defragging as well... I move 
the folders to the front of the disk, and make sure that the files that I 
use often are at the front of the disk as well....   Some older defraggers 
(and Nortons had an option for this as well), will simply defrag the files, 
leaving them all over the hard drive... I always do a full optimisation on 
a drive, moving frequently accessed files to the front, frequently modified 
to the end, leaving a nice contiguous free space in the middle of the 
drive....   The other thing is ensuring that there is plenty of space 
available on the drive...  a minimum of 15% free.

That's the disk taken care of... As others have noted, make sure you're 
running nothing else when you run your system test... Close all the 
windows, and check the system tray down near the clock... Then go 
Ctrl-Alt-Del and look at what "hidden" processes are running.... I recall 
with Win98 there would be heaps of them... most of them you don't need... 
So blast them..... This not only frees up memory but ensures that Windoze 
doesn't task-switch to them during your system test....  There's some nice 
utilities out there that will do this for you.. One I used to use was 
called End-It-All.... I used to use it under 98 to clean out all the 
non-required processes before burning a CD...

Lastly, try the test immediately after rebooting... And try it twice in 
succession... let me know if the second test is significantly faster than 
the first?????

Norsaint's 400Mhz Pentium II did the test in 12 minutes, so I guesstimate 
that you should be able to get yours done quicker than that, and perhaps as 
low as 10 minutes..............

Cheers,
Chris.


=====
Unofficial Price Predictor Users Group
To send email to the list: ppug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subscribe/Unsubscribe/Options: http://www.freelists.org/list/ppug
Archives: http://www.freelists.org/archives/ppug
Help    : http://www.freelists.org/help/

Other related posts: