View XP System Uptime

To view the amount of time that XP has been running with out rebooting or restarting the computer:

1) Open the Command Prompt (located under Accessories)
2) Type ’systeminfo’ (without the dashes)
3) Once the system has finished gathering the information, scroll up and the time is displayed in the System Up Time field.

As you can see, running systeminfo also gives a lot of useful information.

Popularity: 41% [?]

Unload.dll’s to Free Memory

Windows Explorer caches DLLs (Dynamic-Link Libraries) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory.

Find the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer].

Create a new sub-key named ‘AlwaysUnloadDLL’ and set the default value to equal ‘1′ to disable Windows caching the DLL in memory.

Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

Allan, the author said: “I tried this after running a intense program,then watched the task manager; memory recovered it self.”

Popularity: 64% [?]

DMA Mode on IDE Devices

Just like Windows 2000, Windows XP still fails to set the DMA mode correctly for the IDE device designated as the slaves on the primary IDE and secondary IDE channels. Most CD-ROMS are capable of supporting DMA mode, but the default in XP is still PIO. Setting it to DMA won’t make your CD-ROM faster, but it will consume less CPU cycles. Here’s how:

1. Open the Device Manager. One way to do that is to right click on “My Computer”, select the Hardware tab, and Select Device Manager.
2. Expand “IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers” and double-click on “Primary IDE Channel”
3. Under the “Advanced Settings” tab, check the “Device 1″ setting. More than likely, your current transfer mode is set to PIO.
4. Set it to “DMA if available”.

Repeat the step for the “Secondary IDE Channel” if you have devices attached to it. Reboot.

Written By: Lolo LaSida

Popularity: 38% [?]

Improve NTFS Performance

The NTFS file system is the recommended file system because of its advantages in terms of reliability and security and because it is required for large drive sizes. However, these advantages come with some overhead. You can modify some functionality to improve NTFS performance as follows:

1. Disable creation of short names. By default, NTFS generates the style of file name that consists of eight characters, followed by a period and a three- character extension for compatibility with MS-DOS and Microsoft® Windows® 3.x clients. If you are not supporting these types of clients, you can turn off this setting by changing the default value of the NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation registry entry (in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem) to 1.

2. Disable last access update. By default NTFS updates the date and time stamp of the last access on directories whenever it traverses the directory. For a large NTFS volume, this update process can slow performance. To disable automatic updating, change the value of the NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate registry entry (in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentContolSet\Control\Filesystem) to 1. If the entry is not already present in the registry, add it before setting the value. (Add it as a REG_DWORD)

3. Reserve appropriate space for the master file table. Add the NtfsMftZoneReservation entry to the registry as a REG_DWORD in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem. When you add this entry to the registry, the system reserves space on the volume for the master file table. Reserving space in this manner allows the master file table to grow optimally. If your NTFS volumes generally contain relatively few files that are typically large, set value of this registry entry to 1 (the default). Typically you can use a value of 2 or 3 for moderate numbers of files, and 4 (the maximum) if your volumes tend to contain a relatively large number of files. However, be sure to test any settings greater than 2 because these higher values cause the system to reserve a much larger portion of the disk for the master file table.

Reboot after making changes.

Popularity: 44% [?]

Basta la Vista: Windows loyalists force Microsoft to keep XP in business

The decision to keep the Microsoft XP operating system available till mid-2008 has fuelled suggestions that its expensively developed, but critically challenged, Vista replacement is facing a serious acceptance problem. Read more

Popularity: 74% [?]