Tips 6 Vista/XP
YOU CAN TWEAK VIRTUAL MEMORY SETTINGS FOR IMPROVED PERFORMANCE
In the Windows 95/98 era, conventional wisdom held that you should manually set your virtual memory [i.e., pagefile] size to at least 1.5 times the amount of RAM in order to optimize performance. [By default, Windows will manage pagefile on its own: You will likely find the initial pagefile size set to 0.5x or 1x the amount of RAM you have]. We were skeptical about this tip, but our benchmarks surprised us: Some systems showed no change at all, but some(particularly older machines) showed substantial improvement beyond the usual random noise we see in benchmark results. We got at least a 10 percent jump after we upped the initial pagefile size to 2x amount or RAM on two separate machines. It won’t work for all computers, so the jury’s still out on this one, but because it’s so easy to do and there are no negative consequences, it’s worth a shot just to see if it has any effect.
DO IT In the XP System Control Panel, click Advanced, then [under Performance] click Settings, Advanced. In the Virtual Memory module, click Change. Click Custom size then up both initial and Maximum size to roughly double your amount of RAM. Click Set [important!], then OK out of all windows. In Vista’s, click “Advanced system settings” in the System Control Panel and follow the same instructions.
CLEARING THE PREFETCH DIRECTORY [OR CACHE] WILL IMPROVE STARTUP TIME
One of the most notorious Windows tips ever is that deleting all the files in the Windows/Prefetch directory will cause your system to boot faster. We tested the tip by repeatedly measuring boot times on a trio of both XP and Vista machines with overstuffed Prefetch folders, then running the same test after clearing the folders out. The result: No improvement in boot time in any of the cases. Some testers have reported that clearing the Prefetch cache actually lengthens boot time, though we didn’t experience this either.
DON’T DO IT
WRITE CACHING WILL IMPROVE PERFORMANCE ON SATA DRIVES
This feature is disabled by default in VISTA because if your computer loses power before a write is completed,you can lose data. If you’re confident in your UP’s capabilities, crank it up and you’ll see at least a 10 percent improvement in performance. Remember, write caching is supported only on SATA drives. The options are grayed out for older ATA disks.
DO IT In Explorer, right-click the drive you want to speed up and select Properties. Click the Hardware tab, select Properties again. Click the Policies tab. Check both of the boxes beneath “Optimize for performance.”
