You are here > Home > Windows > Windows 2000 Optimization

Optimizing Windows 2000

 

Software Updates

    There are a couple updates that are required to keep Windows 2000 running smoothly. Start by installing the latest Service Pack, the latest version of Internet Explorer and the latest version of Windows Media Player. Also, download any patches that are available from Windows Update.

 

Virtual Memory

    In the hardware department, ensure that you have at least 256MB of RAM. Only now will that excessive disc swapping be minimized. No page file tweak can come close to adding more RAM. Windows 2000 allows the page file to be split over multiple partitions on multiple hard drives. If you have one hard drive, place the page file on the first partition of the drive. This is where the drive is fastest at data transfer. Do not try to disable the pagefile nor set it to a very small value. This will increase the usage on the pagefile. Remember to adjust your settings when RAM is added or performance may actually drop with more RAM.

Recommended minimum page file size is 300MB or RAM + 64MB, whichever is larger.

    Should you have two hard drives, the best course of action is to create a split page file. On your bootable hard drive, create a 300MB or RAM + 32MB page file on your boot partition, that is the partition with boot.ini and ntldr. On the second hard drive, create a page file that is 1.5 times the size of your RAM. Set the maximum to disc space available. Place this page file on the first partition of the drive, as it is the fastest. The reason for including the page file on the boot partition is that should a crash occur, Windows 2000 creates a memory dump file which is stored in the swap file on the boot partition. This feature can be disabled, but is a needed option for diagnosing system errors.

To configure the page file, go to Control Panel>System>Advanced> Performance Options>Virtual Memory and click Change.

 

Control Panel Settings

The logic behind some of these tweaks is that these features require CPU utilization and hard drive accesses, both of which will reduce performance when encoding those MPEG4 movies.

Display

Web tab - Remove Active Desktop

    Uncheck "Show web content on my active desktop"

Effects tab - Remove Visual Effects

    Uncheck "Use transition effects for menus and tooltips"
    Uncheck "Show window content while dragging"

Settings Tab - Increase the Refresh rate of your monitor.

Select "Advanced". In the monitor tab, change the Refresh Frequency to the highest usable frequency. You may need to download the Monitor inf files (drivers) from the manufacturer.

Folder Options

General tab - Remove html content.

    Active Desktop - Use Windows Classic Desktop
    Web View        - Use Windows Classic folders

View Tab - Show all files

    Select "Show all files and folders"
    Uncheck "Hide file extensions for known file types"
    Uncheck "Hide protected Operating System files"

Mouse

Pointers tab - Uncheck "Enable Pointer Shadow"

The only video card that supports a pointer shadow in hardware is the ATI Radeon. I am currently unsure if the GeForce 3 supports this feature.

Phone and Modem Options

Modems tab - Select your modem and select properties

    Modem tab - For "Maximum Port speed", select the highest available.

    Advanced tab - Advanced Port Settings - Select "Use FIFO buffers". Set buffers to maximum.

Network and Dial-Up Connections

Right click on your dialup connection and select properties.

    General tab - Select "Configure"

        Maximum Speed - Select highest available.
        Slelct "Enable hardware flow control"
        Select "Enable modem error control"
        Select "Enable modem compression" - Gamers may wish to disable this as it increases ping times.

    Options tab - Select "Redial if line dropped"

Power options

Hibernate tab - Check "Enable hibernate support"

Hibernate is useful for quick booting or if you regularly power up and power down your system.
The contents of RAM is stored to a file on the hard drive for quick resumption, so this will only work if you have free space on your C:\ drive equal to the amount of RAM in your system.

APM tab - Check "Enable Advanced Power management support"

APM reduces power usage and will automatically power down your system when shut down.

Sounds and Multimedia

Sounds tab - Select "No Sounds" in scheme.

Sounds have to be loaded from the hard drive, thus reducing hard drive performance and occupying CPU cycles.

System

Hardware tab - Select "Device manager". Expand "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"

    Select properties for each channel and move to the Advanced Settings tab

        For "Transfer Mode" select "DMA if available"

DMA, Direct Memory Access allows IDE devices to read and write directly to and from RAM, bypassing the CPU. CPU usage is significantly reduced as compared to PIO, Programmed Input Output mode. DMA also has the added advantage of increasing the data transfer rate of the IDE device.

 

Registry Tweaks

Memory Management

Browse over to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

SecondLevelDataCache - Default is 0. Set to the amount of L2 cache on your processor. Windows 2000 should auto detect this correctly, but it pays to be exact.

DisablePagingExecutive - Default is 0. This setting determines whether the NT core files are paged to the hard drive. Set to 1 for a slightly speedier Windows 2000. This setting will reduce performance on RAM limited systems. As such, a tweak for 128MB+

IoPageLockLimit - Default is 0 (which corresponds to 512 bytes). This setting adjusts the size of data that is read/written to the hard drive. 4096 bytes is a good value to start from (A HEX value of 1000 or decimal 4096). This setting has to be configured for your particular system, so you should benchmark to obtain the optimal size. Setting this too large will reduce performance as the disk will be unable to keep up with the data speeds.

Enable UDMA66. This has to be done through manipulation of a DWORD value. Go to

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10319}\0000

Create a new DWORD named EnableUDMA66. Set to 1 to enable. Set to 0 to disable.

Disable CD autorun. This setting will disable autorun on all CDROM/DVDROMs. Go to

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom

Set the AutoRun value to 0 to disable autorun. Set to 1 to enable autorun.

 

Text File Editing Tweaks

Increase the number of components available in "Windows Components" in "Add/Remove Programs" in Control Panel. Edit the sysoc.inf file contained in %System root%\Inf, usually C:\Winnt\inf. Remove all traces of the word "Hide" from the section labeled "Old Base Components".

 

Head on over to Tech Spot for an excellent Services Tweak Guide

Viewing the non frames page? Start from the front page.