Removing Unnecessary Programs from Starting Automatically

CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT Files
Make sure you don't have any unnecessary device drivers or programs here. Windows95 has most you will need already built into the OS.


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Removing Unnecessary Programs from Starting Automatically

Many programs add portions of themselves starting automatically on every login.
This can be either in the Startup Folder or the Registry.

One easy way to tell is by looking at how many icons are in your system tray. If you have a large number, perhaps unnecessary resources are being allocated them as well as increasing your boot time.

Typical examples are Microsoft Office, Office FindFast, Real Player, ATI Video setting etc.

You can remove them in one of three main ways:

In the Start / Programs / Startup Folder

In the Registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Run

If you have Win98, WinME or Windows2000 you can use MSCONFIG to easily remove programs. This is my preference since it allows you to toggle them back on again in case you make a mistake

Increasing Disk Performance

Increasing Disk Performance

Go to Start \ Settings \ Control Panel \ System \ Performance \ File System \ Troubleshooting

Check the box Disable synchronous buffer commits.

File System Settings

File System Settings

If you have 64 megs or more of memory you increase the performance of your system.

Go to Control Panel / System Properties / Performance / File System.

Change the typical role of this computer to Network Server.

If you have Win95 SR1, and you do not see a performance increase, occasionally the NameCache and PathCache values are written to the registry incorrectly for the Network Server. To fix the problem:

Start Regedit

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\FS Templates\Server

Make sure the following values are being used:

PathCache=40 00 00 00

NameCache=a9 0a 00 00

Defrag the Hard Drive

Defrag the Hard Drive

I do this fairly frequently. Once a month or so. There are a few things I do first to make sure I don't waste time defragging unnecessary files.

First is to delete the Internet Explorer Temporary Files and History.

Second is to delete TMP and BAK files.

Third is delete any files and directories in the \TEMP and \WINDOWS\TEMP directories

Defragment without the swapfile. The instructions for this can be found at Defragmenting the Swap File

Windows98 has a built-in utility called Disk Cleanup. You can run it from either the Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Disk Cleanup or directly run CLEANMGR.EXE

Cleaning the TEMP Directory

Cleaning the TEMP Directory

One thing that is often overlooked, and can have a negative affect on your computer's performance,
are all the files that are in the TEMP directory. I've had quite a few people ready to get new computers until this was cleaned.

These are easy to clean and slightly different in Win9x and Windows2000 or WindowsXP

Windows98

Open up a DOS prompt

CD \windows\temp (make sure you are in that directory before running the next line.

Run deltree /y *.*

CD \windows

Run del *.tmp (be very careful of the spelling)

Windows2000 / WindowsXP

Go to C:\Documents and Settings\User_Name\Local Settings\Temp (where User_Name is replaced by the person who is logged in)

Delete all the files