[prashant]

Now that the first two parts of the system startup are optimized, it is time to work on making your Windows experience better. This part will concentrate on different ways to make your computer more responsive and faster. First, it will talk about ways that the file system can run faster. This section will show you how to hack the System Registry and disable some extra features of the file system. Once you have mastered the file system, the next section will show you how to make your menus pop up quicker, which will make your computer appear to be running significantly faster.

The next section will concentrate on all of the performance settings that are built into Windows XP. A handful of settings will, when disabled, provide you with a much faster experience. Although these options often take away visual effects and aspects of Windows XP, this section will help you find the right balance between the visual effects and a fast experience.

The last section of this part will show you how to remove one of the extra features built into Windows XP that does more harm than good, the indexing service. The service was designed to make it faster to search for files on your hard drive. This sounds great, but for users that rarely search their drive for files, this service becomes unnecessary and eats up a lot of system resources too. Now that you know what this part will cover, you are ready to dive in.

Speeding up file browsing and access

You can speed up system access to a file and the system’s browsing time through the files in several ways. In addition to defragmenting your drive, which will speed up accessing and browsing time, a few other things can be done to speed up how the file system works.

Making the file system run faster is easy. All you have to do is follow the next two sections, which will guide you through the steps of hacking the System Registry to change the file system settings. These settings will disable aspects of the file system that are not critical to the system and will help you with your system performance.

Before you go any further, be aware that the following speed tips for the file system will work only for the NTFS file system. If you do not know what file system your system is running on, you can go to My Computer and right-click your hard drive and select Properties. This will bring up the Local Disk (C Properties window, which will tell you the type of file system your hard drive is running. If your hard drive is running FAT32, these tips will not work for you.

In my opinion, NTFS is a far better file system. It has many advanced security features and also performs better on many machines. If you are still running FAT32, or for some odd reason your computer came preinstalled with FAT32, consider converting your hard disk to NTFS.

Converting your drive to NTFS is a snap. Open up Command Prompt by clicking the Start button and selecting Run. Type cmd in the box and click OK to start up it up. Then at a prompt, type in convert c: /fs:ntfs and press Enter to start. If you want to convert a different drive letter, just replace the c: with the drive letter that you want. For example, if you want to convert your d drive, then you will have to type convert d: /fs:ntfs. The actual conversion process will take a little while, especially on large drives. Keep in mind that once you convert to NTFS, you cannot convert back to FAT32.

Now that the requirements are cleared up, you are all ready to get started.

Disabling the file access timestamp

Every time you access a file, or a program on the system accesses a file, the file system keeps track of when it was accessed. This feature can be useful if you are interested in finding out when a file was last read. Sometimes a program might find this information useful. For example, the Defragmenting application could use the access timestamps; it would be able to decide what the most frequently accessed files are and would then be able to put them on a fast part of the disk.

So, disabling the file access timestamp would obviously not be beneficial to the Defragmenting app. But the loss would not be a big one. Usually, when you defragment your drive, you will want the entire application files placed together on a disk for optimal speed. Defragmenting based solely on access timestamp will not give you a sizeable performance increase.

For systems that have many (several thousand) files and folders, disabling the access timestamp will give you a noticeable performance increase. Every time you open a file, the system has to write to the file and update its access timestamp. According to Microsoft, disabling the file access timestamp will help most systems with more than 70,000 folders. Nevertheless, based on my experiences and the experiences of others that have used this tip, it can still help users that have a fraction of that number.

The process for disabling the file access timestamp is quite easy. All that is required is one quick change in the System Registry. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click the Start button and select Run. Then type regedit in the textbox and click OK.

2. This will start up the Registry Editor and will allow you to edit the file system settings. Once the Registry Editor has loaded, navigate to the file system settings by expanding HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SYSTEM, CurrentControlSet, Control, and then FileSystem.

3. Depending on your system, you may see an entry called NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate. If your system has this entry already listed, skip to the next step. If you do not see this entry, don’t worry; just create it by right-clicking and selecting New and then DWORD Value, as shown in Figure 10-1. Key in NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate for the name.

4. Now, modify the DWORD value. Right-click the name of the entry and select Modify. Then type a 1 in the box to disable the last access update feature.

5. Then click OK and restart your computer. The changes will be in effect.



FIGURE 10-1: Registry Editor adding a new DWORD value.

This setting will allow you to experience much faster file browsing. This hack is not without a price, as was mentioned at the beginning of this section. Disabling this feature may cause problems for certain applications, such as hard disk defragmenters and other programs. If you notice any strange behavior with your applications, try reverting to an earlier system restore point, or apply an undo script to the app.

Disabling legacy filename creation

Backward compatibility allows users to upgrade to the latest version of Windows but still run many older programs that were designed for an earlier operating system. This feature is something that is very crucial to the success of Microsoft Windows. Without backward compatibility, users would be very unwilling to upgrade to the latest versions. Instead, they would be forced to wait until all of the applications that they use are rewritten to run on the new operating system.

Unfortunately, this backward compatibility is one of the reasons why Windows has become so large on the hard drive. Although it is getting packed with new features and technologies, the old features and technologies have to be included as well, even those that can slow the system down, for compatibility purposes. One example of the old features that can slow your system down is legacy filename support.

Over the years, the file system structure has changed dramatically. One of the first things that changed in the file system was the limited nature of the old MS-DOS 8.3 file system standard. The old file system would limit filenames to a maximum length of 8 characters plus a 3-character extension and also restricted what characters could be included in the name. This was something that needed to be changed to allow for greater user flexibility. Eventually, these limitations were expanded with the release of Windows 95, which bumped up the maximum filename limit to 255 characters, with a modified version of the FAT16 file system.

With the implementation of the new, longer filename support and the ability to have more characters in the filename came the added task of making sure that older applications that were written to run only with the 8.3 standard still worked on the new file system structure. This was accomplished by an extra entry in the file table. Now, for every file, there are two names saved. One is a real long filename and the other is a short 8-character version so that older programs will still be able to access the file.

The extra filename that has to be saved can cause decreased performance when you are working with the file system. Disabling this old feature can give you an extra boost that will make browsing through your files faster.

Keep in mind that disabling the old compatibility feature comes with one downside. Applications on your computer that depend on the old 8.3 standard to run will stop running and will give you errors when you try to run them. Although this technology is more than 10 years old, several popular applications, mentioned in the following paragraphs, still depend on the old standard. Unfortunately, in the software world, some companies don’t bother fixing things if they aren’t broken to increase the performance of the user’s computers. For the most part, they do not have to worry about it because Microsoft supports the lazy programmers by leaving these old, inefficient features in the operating system.

Even though a few applications will have difficulties when this feature is disabled, the majority of users can still disable this feature and have no problems. Basically, you just have to watch out for problem applications. One type of program that has the most problems when the 8.3 standard is disabled is installer applications that many software developers use to get their programs up and running on your computer. For some reason, a few installers are still programmed using old 16-bit technology, which depends on the short filename compatibility feature to function.

Users frequently run into this error with Symantec’s AntiVirus software. According to Symantec, users may receive an error stating “1639 Invalid command line argument” when they install certain versions of Symantec’s software. For users of Symantec software who want to disable the old support for greater performance, the company recommends that they enable the 8.3-standard filename compatibility support when the software is being installed and then disable it once the software is installed. The software should then work fine.

That basic Symantec approach can be applied to any situations that you may run into when applications are being installed and errors received. Just enable the 8.3-standard filename compatibility support during the install, and then disable it once again after the install is complete.

That simple workaround will work for 95 percent of the problems that you will encounter when the 8.3 standard filename compatibility is disabled. The remaining few will encounter problems when the applications are running or trying to run. These applications are usually very old 16-bit applications. (Applications are now 32-bit and there are already 64-bit applications starting to pop up.) Either that or the apps are just not programmed very well. If you have an old application that refuses to run when the compatibility feature is disabled, consider upgrading to a new version of the application to see if that will help. If it still does not work, then you will be in the position of having to keep the legacy support enabled.

Now that you are aware of the possible problems that can be caused by disabling the legacy filename standard, and also know what to do if you experience any, you are ready to disable the feature. Disabling the legacy support is not as easy as clicking a button, but is not very difficult either. Follow these steps to disable/enable this feature:

1. Click the Start Menu and select Run, then type regedit in the box and click OK. This will start up the Registry Editor.

2. Once the Registry Editor has loaded, navigate to the file system settings by expanding HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SYSTEM, CurrentControlSet, Control, and then FileSystem.

3. Look for the key that is named NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation and right-click it and select Modify, as shown in Figure 10-2.

4. In the Edit DWORD Value box, type in a 1 and click the OK button.

5. Then, restart your computer and you are done!



FIGURE 10-2: Changing NTFS 8.3 compatibility with regedit.

Once your computer restarts, the new settings will be in effect. If you ever experience any of the aforementioned problems with older applications and installers, the first thing you should do is re-enable the compatibility feature to see if it is the culprit.

Speeding Up the User Interface

Various features built into Windows XP slow down the performance of the system. The new look and effects degrade overall system performance. If you have a very fast computer, leaving these features enabled will not slow down your computer very much, but you will still notice a difference if you have some of them disabled.

On top of taming some of the new features, you can also fine-tune some of the other settings, such as menu delay, to make your computer more responsive by eliminating unnecessary delays. The following paragraphs show you how to do this:

Reducing the menu delay

Whenever you move your mouse over an item that expands in the Start Menu, you have to wait for the system to expand that menu and show you the submenu. By default, your system is configured to wait 400 milliseconds before it automatically expands any submenu. Navigating through the Start Menu is when you will notice this delay the most.

Using the system Registry Editor, you can hack the System Registry to modify the amount of time that the computer waits before it automatically expands a submenu. The best value for the menu delay is different for every person. You might like the submenu to show up instantly, although others might like it to appear after the mouse hovers over the item for a little while, or vice versa. The best way to fine-tune this setting is by testing it a few times with different values. If you want the submenu to show up instantly, then set the delay to 0. This may have a bad effect for some that do not have very fast computers, as just dragging your mouse over the Start Menu will cause your computer to open up every submenu over which the mouse is dragged. Doing so will cause your computer to do a lot of work, and if your computer’s hardware is slow, then everything on your computer will slow down as a result when the menus are expanding. If you have a fast computer, then your computer will have no problem keeping up. I prefer to set my menu delay to 100 milliseconds because this does not open up any menu that the mouse moves over but still gives a very fast response.

Now that you know a little about what the best values for the delay are, follow these steps to change the menu delay on your computer:

1. Start up the Registry Editor by clicking the Start Menu and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.

2. Once the Registry Editor has opened, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Control Panel, and then Desktop.

3. Look for the MenuShowDelay entry and right-click it and select Modify, as shown in Figure 10-3.

4. Enter the new value in the box and click OK.

5. Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer to see the new changes.

You may have to repeat the preceding directions a few times so that you get the menu delay just the way you like it.



FIGURE 10-3: Registry Editor showing how to edit MenuShowDelay.

If you ever have problems after changing your menu delay, such as the submenus never showing up, then go back into the System Registry and make sure that you did not type in a large value by accident. Remember that the default value is 400 milliseconds, in case you want to revert to the default.

Working with the performance options

All of the new visual effects that Windows XP includes can be customized so that you can turn off the ones you don’t need or like. This capability allows you to find a balance between performance and appearance. Some of the visual effects are very taxing on systems that are not very powerful. This section will help you identify the graphical effects that are slowing down your system and will show you how to manage them.

Hidden away under System Properties is a Settings panel that allows you to enable and disable each effect or feature. Follow these steps to get to the Settings screen:

1. Right-click the My Computer icon in the Start Menu or on the desktop and select Properties.

2. Then, click the Advanced tab and click Settings under the Performance section.

3. This will launch the Performance Options screen, as shown in Figure 10-4. Click the Visual Effects tab, if the tab is not already displayed.

4. Now that you have the Visual Effects settings screen on your screen, you will notice four different settings: Let Windows Choose What’s Best for My Computer, Adjust for Best Appearance, and Adjust for Best Performance, and Custom. The Let Windows Choose What’s Best for My Computer setting does not seem to work very well, because I have not seen Windows choose to disable anything on any computer, even on some very old machines. The Adjust for Best Appearance setting enables all options, whereas the Adjust for Best Performance setting disables all options. The Custom setting is the best setting to use on your computer. Click the Custom radio button to enable this setting.



FIGURE 10-4: Performance options.

5. Now you will be able to manually check and uncheck the various boxes listed below for each of the different effects. Refer to the following list for recommendations on each of the effects. Once you are finished, click the OK buttons and you are set.

The following is a list of different effects, along with my recommendations on what to do for the best balance between appearance and performance.

Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing: This effect will animate the title bar along with the border by enlarging and shrinking instead of instantly changing the size of the active window. This effect is not very heavy on the system. When the effect is disabled, no change can be detected in the system, such as the amount of memory used and the CPU usage. You would think that the CPU usage would decrease, but compared to when the effect is disabled, the usage of the CPU to minimize and maximize a window is the same. Even though there is no performance change in the numbers, your system will appear to be running faster because the windows will instantly resize and be displayed. Because of that, I recommend that you disable this effect.

Fade or slide menus into view: This effect allows the menus that pop up throughout the system to fade in. You will experience this when you navigate through a menu bar or when you right-click something. This effect does not affect the performance of the system except for when the effect is called on. Some users that have older computers and slower video cards can experience better performance with this effect off.

Fade or slide ToolTips into view: This effect will allow the yellow ToolTips in various parts of the system to slowly fade in when either an event occurs or you hold your mouse over an object. This effect has no effect on the system performance of most users, but once again, those with older systems should disable this effect for better performance.

Fade out menu items after clicking: This effect will fade the submenus in the Start Menu out after you click an item within the menu. This effect, just like the other fade effects, is slower on older systems and should be disabled for best performance.

Show shadows under menus: This effect will display a light shadow when pop-up menus are displayed, giving more of a 3D appearance to the flat interface, as shown in Figure 10-5. My analysis of the system data when the effect is enabled and disabled resulted in such a small difference that this effect does not matter if it is or isn’t on for the average user. Also, just like the fade effects, this is something that users of older machines can disable to get better performance.

Show shadows under mouse pointer: This effect allows the mouse to have that semi-3D effect. However, it is not applied to the mouse when the mouse is over certain applications, such as Microsoft Word. The shadow under the mouse seems to have no influence on the system performance for the average computer. However, just as with the shadow and fade problems mentioned earlier, older machines may have problems with this effect too.

Show translucent selection rectangle: When this effect is enabled, you will see a nice-looking blue border with a semi-transparent blue interior when you drag the mouse to select items, instead of the old dotted line box as we have all seen in older versions of Windows. Figure 10-6 shows the two different types of selection rectangles. On older machines, I have seen this effect working very slowly and often interfering with the mouse’s selection of items because it seems to use up a lot of the CPU. On the average computer, this effect presents no problems at all. If you have a slow machine, then disable this effect, but if you have an average machine, then keep it enabled and enjoy the nicer look.



FIGURE 10-5: Shadows under menus.

Show window contents while dragging: This effect will not slow down the average computer but will cause some problems for users of older machines. On my older desktop that runs Windows XP, I have disabled this effect, and the system is now much more responsive.

Slide open combo boxes: This effect has no effect on performance at all. I do not see why anyone would want to disable this effect, but if you are the type of person that cannot wait for extra 50 milliseconds to view the contents of the combo box, then knock yourself out disabling this one.

Slide taskbar buttons: This feature has very little effect on system performance, but it may affect system responsiveness on older machines when the machine is doing a lot of work. You will notice this when you are doing something in the background and you can slowly see the taskbar items for open programs resizing. If you ever have that experience, go ahead and disable this effect.



FIGURE 10-6: Left: Normal selection rectangle; right: translucent selection rectangle.

Smooth edges of screen fonts: This feature seems to depend more on your video card than your system. Use of any type of font smoothing will require it to do more work. On older machines, I would disable this effect. Also, if you have a cathode ray tube type monitor, you will not benefit all that much by having this enabled. The font smoothing effects, especially ClearType, work best on TFT (Thin Film Transistor, also known as Active Matrix)–based flat panel monitors.

Smooth-scroll list boxes: This effect has no effect on performance based on my tests. You would have to be crazy to disable this effect, because it is just so cool.

Use background image for each folder type: This effect has a small effect on the performance of browsing through folders. On faster computers you won’t notice anything, but on the average and older computers, this is something that you can live without. On top of that, some of the background images are so light that they do not show up on some monitors, such as my old laptop’s LCD panel that does not have good contrast with light colors. My advice is to get rid of them.

Use common tasks in folders: This feature is nice–looking and makes Windows Explorer look different but it really is not very useful. It was born in Windows 98 SE and now has completely evolved into some massive navigation aid. I never find myself using the items on this menu. When you go to My Computer, it gives you the option to View System Information, Add or Remove Programs, or Change a Setting under the System Tasks block. It never seems to cross my mind to get to these features this way. Unless you are a beginner computer user, then go ahead and disable this feature. It will speed up your browsing through folders and will also allow you to view more files at once on your screen.

Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop: I have noticed that some older computers with bad video cards can benefit from this feature being disabled. Personally, this feature is a nice addition to Windows XP and I would always leave it enabled. However, if you don’t like the look, disable it and you will see a small benefit.

Use visual styles on windows and buttons: This effect is what makes Windows XP look so different from older versions of Windows. If you disable this effect, the whole new interface of Windows XP will be gone. If you do not like the new look and are one of the people that feel the interface was made for a child, disable this feature and you will see a big performance increase. But beware, the system will look like Windows 2000, as Figure 10-7 shows. The amount of free RAM will increase by a megabyte or two and the system will be much more responsive.



FIGURE 10-7: Windows XP naked.

Disable Indexing Service

The Windows Indexing Service is a service that is designed to index all of the files on your computer into a database. Your computer can then search through all of your files faster. The idea behind the service is great; it will drastically cut down on the amount of time that is needed to search your hard drive. Although this is a great benefit, you have to consider the downside of this feature. In order to create a database of files, the service has to continuously monitor the files on your computer and import basic file details into its database when new files are found. The monitoring is not always done in real time, but at times you will notice it running. The most common symptom of this service working is when you are reading something on your computer and all of a sudden your hard drive starts making a lot of noise as if it is working really hard. That is because it is working hard to update the Indexing Service’s database.

Just like any other service that starts up when the system does, the Indexing Service takes up memory quite a bit of memory compared to other services. In fact, the service takes up exactly 4364KB of memory when the service first starts up on your computer. Eventually, about 30 seconds after the service has started, the amount of memory used decreases to 306KB. This looks good, but after you use your computer for a little while, the memory usage will start to creep up again. On average, the service takes up about 1316KB of memory.



FIGURE 10-8: Indexing Service Properties.

When the service is idle on your computer, it is just taking up memory. Also, it is running at the lowest CPU priority, so you can be sure that it won’t interfere with other applications very much at all.

Personally, I rarely use the Search feature of Windows XP and would much rather disable the Indexing Service and take the performance hit the one time every few months that I actually do need to search for a file. In return, I get more free memory space that can be used for more useful services and applications. Follow these steps if you rarely search for files and would like some more free memory:



FIGURE 10-9: Setting the Indexing Service to Disabled.

1. Click the Start Menu and select Run. Then key in services.msc in the box and click OK.

2. This will start up the Services snap-in control, where you can manage all of the services on the system. Look for the Indexing Service on the list, right-click it, and select Properties, as shown in Figure 10-8.

3. Once you see Indexing Service Properties, click the Stop button, if the service is already running. Then, click the Startup Type drop-down box and select Disabled, as shown in Figure 10-9.

4. Click the OK button and you are finished!

Now you don’t have to worry about the Indexing Service using any more of your memory.