Islam + Illegals + Obama = Death to the U.S.A

I’ll show you how to turn Windows 98 into a faster, more efficient operating system; you’ll hardly even recognize it.

One thing I’ve learned from living through the evolution of the PC is that like it or not, it takes just as long to write a two-page letter now as it did 15 years ago. So why, for example, do we need a word processor that supports embedded video clips? And why does Microsoft think an OS with an integrated Web browser and half a megabyte of sound clips will make our lives better? All the fluff Microsoft’s marketing gurus thought would sell you on the new OS could make a PC slower and less manageable. I’ll show you how to mold Win 98 into a lean, swift OS without spending a dime on add-ons.

Be a Good Listener Start by listening to your computer as Windows boots. Periods of silence–where the hard disk is not being accessed–most likely mean a hardware driver is being initialized. If you have a network card or other device installed that you don’t use, consider removing it or disabling its drivers using the Device Manager. In Control Panel, double-click the System icon and then find the device in question. Double-click it and select the “Disable in this hardware profile” option.

On the other hand, long periods of hard disk noise might mean that a bit of housecleaning is in order. Regularly running ScanDisk and Disk Defragmenter helps keep the hard disk clean. And if you like automation, try the Maintenance Wizard, a new Win 98 utility that walks you through the process of scheduling ScanDisk and Disk Defragmenter to run at predefined times. Because the program looks for unnecessary apps and unused files on the hard disk that can slow a system down, it’s worth using just to have it reclaim disk space.

If a computer often stalls for a few seconds, the most common culprit is a poorly configured swapfile. As a rule of thumb, if a system has at least 16MB of RAM, it will benefit from your overwriting the default swapfile settings. To do this, double-click the System icon in Control Panel and choose the Performance tab. Select the Virtual Memory button and then the “Let me specify my own virtual memory settings” option. By default, Windows sets the minimum swapfile size to 0 (zero) and the maximum to the amount of free disk space. If you don’t limit these numbers, Windows will simply continually resize the swapfile, thereby wasting time.

Set both the minimum and the maximum values to the same number, which should be approximately four times the amount of installed RAM (e.g., for 32MB, the swapfile should be 128MB). Of course, you’re limited by the amount of free space on the hard disk, so use another disk if that’s an option. You might have to experiment to find the best settings. Finally, defragment the swapfile. Unless you have Norton Utilities, you’ll have to do it the hard way (see the sidebar “Virtually Real Memory”).

Expert Tips: Windows’ Fat-Free Diet
1.Close useless programs The tiny programs that load every time a computer starts are common performance drains. Take a look at the system tray (in the bottom-right-hand corner) to see which icons represent programs you can live without and close them.

2.Compress the Registry Just as files can become fragmented, so can the data stored in the Registry. That’s why it’s a good idea to compress the Registry (see “Patchwork Built into Win 98,” Desktop Control, May 1998). It’ll make Windows load more quickly and give you more free disk space to boot (no pun intended).

3.Temporarily cluttered The \Windows\Temp folder can become cluttered with temporary files, which can slow the programs that read and write to the \Temp folder. Search for files matching the following criteria ~*.TMP, ~*.OLD, $*.TMP, and *.000. If you find these files in many folders, add the following lines to the autoexec.bat file, which makes sure .TMP files appear only in one place:

set temp=c:\windows\temp
set tmp=c:\windows\temp

Windows Turnoffs Programs that automatically load at system boot also could slow down Windows. Not only do these programs take time to load, they slow down a system when they’re running in the background–and can even cause conflicts with applications you use.

Start by disabling some of the more conspicuous programs. For example, if you don’t use the Active Desktop, the Scheduled Tasks folder, and the System Monitor, turn them off. The more insidious background programs are the ones you don’t see. When installing new software, if you choose the Express Install option instead of a Custom install, odds are some software is running behind the scenes.

To find out what loads during system start-up, look in three places. The most obvious is the Startup folder. You may not need some utilities, such as backup schedulers and fax software, that are loading. It’s easy to remove icons here, but be aware that doing so can disable certain functionality.

The next place to look is in the Registry. Open the Registry Editor by typing regedit in the Run dialog, press Enter, and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run (also look in the RunOnce, RunOnceEx, RunServices, and RunServicesOnce subkeys).

In the right pane, you’ll see entries for quite a few programs that load at start-up. Look at their paths for clues to what they’re for. For example, I found an entry for a memory-resident portion of Caere’s OmniPage Pro and a driver for Microsoft’s new TV Viewer program (and I don’t even have a TV tuner card). You can delete unwanted items by selecting them in the right pane (not the left) and pressing the Delete key. Be sure to back up any keys before altering them. To do this, select Export Registry File from the Registry Editor’s Registry menu.

The third place to look is the wini.ini file (type win.ini in the Run dialog and press Enter) especially on a system that was once host to Win 3.x. Some older programs, such as mouse and keyboard utilities, might still be lurking in the lines that begin with LOAD= and RUN=. Again, back up this file before tinkering with it.

The longer you use a computer, the more it gets bogged down with unnecessary software, useless fonts, and unwanted features. Although erasing everything and reinstalling all your apps from scratch will almost certainly revitalize Windows 98, this is not practical for most users. A little smart optimization and housekeeping can keep your system running fairly smoothly with minimal fuss. –David A. Karp

Virtually Real Memory
If you have some cash to spend on an upgrade, the best use of it is on more memory for your system–especially on one that has less than 32MB of RAM. The more memory available to Windows, the less it needs to use the hard disk (in the form of the swapfile). And Windows will be faster.

Regardless of the amount of installed RAM in a system, Windows still uses a swapfile. If you’ve taken the steps in the main bar to limit the swapfile’s size, you will benefit from defragmenting it so it consumes one contiguous portion of the hard disk. Disk Defragmenter can’t do this, but Norton Speed-Disk (which comes with Norton Utilities) can.

If you don’t have Norton Utilities, you’ll have to do it the hard way. First, defragment the hard disk using Disk Defragmenter. Then, search for the file win386.swp and note its location (usually in the boot drive’s root directory or in the Windows folder).

Next, restart the system in MS-DOS mode, and type CD DIRNAME (where DIRNAME is the name of the folder containing the swapfile). Delete the swapfile by typing ATTRIB -R -S -H WIN386.SWP (with spaces between each parameter) and then DEL \WIN386.SWP. When Windows restarts, it will re-create the swapfile in the largest portion of contiguous free space, which will mean the file won’t be fragmented. And because its size is fixed, it will never become fragmented again.

David A. Karp is webmaster of Windows95 Annoyances, at www.annoyances.org, and author of Windows Annoyances, from O’Reilly &Associates.

written by Eee Zee