Performance Tweaking Myths

I just read this article over on LifeHacker.com. It could be of some interest for you as well. Enjoy.

Mythbusting: Debunking Common Windows Performance Tweaking Myths

 

[Nez]

My goodness.In XP I used to empty the prefetch file once a week,to get rid of "junk files".As for a Registry cleaner.I still use CrapCleaner,on both XP,and Vista,but avoid using the Registry option.

Good job the article does not advise against anti-virus products....then I would be really confused.

A nice read.

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

chkdsk (error checking) and defragmentation is all I do. I did setup the 12MB cache in the registry. The rest of the Vista options did not really load with my hardware specs being so high.

 

[WildEagle]

All I do is run a TuneUp once a week, which does a defrag, cleans up files that are no longer needed, and does a full system scan for viruses. I also uninstalled the features from Vista, that I don't need or wont use, including Windows Fax and Scan.

I know enough, where I can go in to the registry and delete orphaned entries without messing up my system.

A program that comes to mind, that can royally mess up the registry, is the registry cleaning tool in Fix-It Utilities. That thing can delete entries it should be deleting when run. I know, cause I tried Fix-It Utilities on XP a number of years ago, and it royally messed up a few things.

 

[ripbox]

Disabling QoS to Free Up 20% of Bandwidth

This tip made the rounds with people believing that Microsoft always allocates 20% of your bandwidth for Windows Update. According to the instructions, you were supposed to disable QoS in order to free up bandwidth. Unfortunately this tip was not only wrong, but disabling QoS will cause problems with applications that rely on it, like some streaming media or VoIP applications.
Rather than taking my word for it, you can read the official Microsoft response: "There have been claims in various published technical articles and newsgroup postings that Windows XP always reserves 20 percent of the available bandwidth for QoS. These claims are incorrect... One hundred percent of the network bandwidth is available to be shared by all programs unless a program specifically requests priority bandwidth."


*** COMMENT REMOVED BY: Brink ****

 

[CreepinJesus]

Loving the avatar, ripbox :P

 

[Brink]

Hello Ripbox,

Please be sure that you read the entire tutorial before making a statement like that:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/109326-qos-bandwidth-reserve-limit.html

   Information

By default, Vista reserves 20 percent of the connection bandwidth for QoS traffic handled by the QoS Packet Scheduler. The reserved bandwidth is still available to all programs though unless a program, for example Windows Update, specifically requests priority bandwidth. Vista will then restrict the best effort traffic to 80 percent of the bandwidth to the other programs so that high priority traffic, for example Windows Update, can be accommodated. This will show you how to change the percentage of reserved bandwidth, or disable the reserved bandwidth to get back the full bandwidth so that everything will share all of the available bandwith all of the time.

However, I will update the tutorial to help clarify it even more.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention,
Shawn

 

[johngalt]

A better compendium of myths:

XP Myths

Vista Requirements

Not a lot of myths for Vista, in fact none really mentioned - but the XP myths are still applicable to Vista for the most part, so....

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello Ripbox,

Please be sure that you read the entire tutorial before making a statement like that:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/109326-qos-bandwidth-reserve-limit.html

   Information

By default, Vista reserves 20 percent of the connection bandwidth for QoS traffic handled by the QoS Packet Scheduler. The reserved bandwidth is still available to all programs though unless a program, for example Windows Update, specifically requests priority bandwidth. Vista will then restrict the best effort traffic to 80 percent of the bandwidth to the other programs so that high priority traffic, for example Windows Update, can be accommodated. This will show you how to change the percentage of reserved bandwidth, or disable the reserved bandwidth to get back the full bandwidth so that everything will share all of the available bandwith all of the time.

However, I will update the tutorial to help clarify it even more.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention,
Shawn

Shawn is the Vista OS incarnate; you go Shawn!


Later Ted

 

[fieseler]

yeah, most of this already makes sense to me, except i do disagree with a couple:

1: clearing the prefetch folder does shorten boot time (more specifically deleting the NTOSBOOT.......pf file does on my machine) but you end up with a longer logon time because your programs load at logon, not during boot. So it takes the same time, possibly longer.

2: I would have thought disabling pointless services when ur pc is limited to a small amount of ram would help your pc from paging more stuff everytime you run an app that needs a lot of memory.

 

[z3r010]

Remember that article is only the authors opinion and although I agree with most of it, it should not be taken as total fact.

 

[WildEagle]

I personally don't do every tweak out there for Vista, as if I did, I would have a royally messed up system, to the point, I would have to reformat and reinstall Vista 64.

 

[CreepinJesus]

I personally don't do every tweak out there for Vista, as if I did, I would have a royally messed up system, to the point, I would have to reformat and reinstall Vista 64.

Same for me. In fact, the only real tweaks I've done are all Look and Feel tweaks, such as removing the arrow on shortcut icons. If one did all these system tweaks, we may as well be writing out own OS .

 

[WildEagle]

I've done the tweak to remove the arrow from shortcuts. I still use Aero, as I've gotten use to it. I even uninstalled stuff like Windows Fax and Scan, which I will never use.

 

[fieseler]

anyone else do the tweak to make vista use all 4mb of ur l2 cache? i get an increase in my performance score so that one must make a diff

 

[roy69]

The only tweak I do is to manually check the registry after removing a program. The odd defrag and chkdsk if I am not busy on the computer. I have turned some services off such as the Parental controls.

 

[z3r010]

I don't tweak anything, if it gets to a point when it begins to slow, I just reformat or buy newer hardware.

 

[CreepinJesus]

anyone else do the tweak to make vista use all 4mb of ur l2 cache? i get an increase in my performance score so that one must make a diff

Which tweak is this? Do you have a link?

 

[WildEagle]

Only other thing I do, is do a once a week tuneup, can't remember if I mentioned this before, where a defrag of all drives happens, a deep virus scan, and cleanup of unessecary files, such as temp files happens.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

anyone else do the tweak to make vista use all 4mb of ur l2 cache? i get an increase in my performance score so that one must make a diff

Which tweak is this? Do you have a link?

This one ???

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/75681-cpu-l2-cache-memory-setting-vista.html?ltr=C


Later Ted