Hi all,
Below is a tutorial to help get the best out of your PC for sims and games that put a heavy strain on your system (eg FSX and Crysis) but can be used to just generally speed up your system. The people I know that have tried this out have expressed gains of between 5% and 20% over an unoptimised system. This tutorial is only applicable to Windows XP with SP2.START - RUN type: regedit, click OK
Regedit will open. Find the following keys in the tree:
Browse to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
Set “Enable” to: “N” (right click, select MODIFY change from “Y” to “N”) then click OK
Browse to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
EnablePrefetcher
Right click select MODIFY change the setting from “3” to “2”) then click OK
Close REGEDIT
NEXT:
Browse to:
C:\Windows\Prefetch
Delete EVERY FILE IN THAT FOLDER. We will rebuild your boot system as we go. The first time you reboot after this has been done the computer will be VERY SLOW in booting, that is NORMAL. I will address that as we go below.
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SYSTEM - ADVANCED TABPerformance Section - SETTINGS button – VISUAL EFFECTS TAB
IMPORTANT YOU UNCHECK ALL ITEMS IN THE LIST EXCEPT the following:
Show windows content while dragging
Smooth edges of screen fonts
Use common tasks in folders <– Optional, I use this but you can deselect Use drop Shadows for Icon labels on the desktop <–Optional, I use this but you can deselect Use Visual styles on Windows Buttons The above settings will keep windows looking sharp but without the memory drain.
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Browse to CONTROL PANEL - SYSTEM - ADVANCED TAB - PERFORMANCE BUTTON - ADVANCED TAB - VIRTUAL MEMORY – CHANGE BUTTON First we must clear the system of the old page file and build a new one. Select NO PAGING FILE, the SET and OK then APPLY. Close the System Properties box and you will be asked to reboot, select YES and reboot. In some cases the old page file will remain on the hard drive. We want to delete that file before we rebuild a new one. Go to C:\ and se if the following file is there in the root directory: pagefile.sys If it is, right click and delete it. Browse to CONTROL PANEL - SYSTEM - ADVANCED TAB - PERFORMANCE BUTTON - ADVANCED TAB - VIRTUAL MEMORY – CHANGE BUTTON Rebuild the page file: If you are using 2gigs or more memory, place a bullet in CUSTOM SIZE then enter the following in BOTH MIN and MAX boxes: 3070 If you are running less than 2 gigs, place a bullet in SYSTEM MANAGED. The page file ALWAYS goes on the boot drive with WindowsXP. Never move it. Click SET then OK and the next box click APPLY and OK to close it. The system may ask you to reboot, select YES
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Browse to CONTROL PANEL - SYSTEM -SYSTEM RESTORE TAB: NOTE: THIS IS A SETTING YOU WILL NEED TO DECIDE ABOUT. I do not use system restore. It’s a Resource HOG. However many people use this feature and rely on it. If you use system restore and cannot live without it, SKIP THIS STEP. If you want to shut it down, here is the process: CHECK: TURN OFF SYSTEM RESTORE ON ALL DRIVES If any warnings pop up, just say YES and click APPLY, then OK to close the system properties.
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SERVICES SHUTDOWN CONTROL PANEL - ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS - SERVICES Each service I list below has the exact same procedure to shutting it down CORRECTLY. All you have to do is the following to each service on the list: 1. Double click the service. 2. STARTUP TYPE: if it is not already disabled, change it to DISABLED, click APPLY. 3. LOGON TAB: HARDWARE PROFILE BOX – double click your hardware profile and it should change the login under the SERVICE column to DISABLED, click APPLY and OK. 4. Go to the next service and repeat the process Here is the list: (note: some of these may not appear in your service list) ALERTER CLIPBOOK ERROR REPORTING SERVICE HELP AND SUPPORT INDEXING SERVICES MESSENGER NETMEETING REMOTE DESKTOP SHARING NETWORK DDE NETWORK DDE DSDM PERFORMANCE LOGS AND ALERTS REMOTE REGISTRY ROUTING AND REMOTE ACCESS SECURITY CENTER (IT’S ONLY THE NAG, NOT SECURITY) SYSTEM RESTORE SERVICE (Unless you want it enabled) TELNET (SOME PROGRAMS MIGHT NEED THIS BUT I DON’T USE IT) Close the services list
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The Windows XP Performance counters are not needed unless you are a network junkie and use them… here is how to shut them down and recover all those wasted CPU cycles: Download this package from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details…7ec-4da6-92ab… Run the installer: exctrlst_setup.exe Once installed you will have no shortcut to the tool… simply browse to: C:\Program Files\Resource Kit Double click the file: exctrlst.exe A box will appear. Make sure there is a bullet in “SERVICE” There is a list of services showing in the lower pane of the box, simply click the top service in that list to HIGHLIGHT IT and CLEAR the check OUT OF THE BOX labeled: “Performance Counters Enabled” Scroll down the list and repeat the highlight\uncheck until EVERY SERVICE in that list displays a cleared “check”, verify you got them all then close the box
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NEXT: Internet Explorer browser settings… Open the browser. Select TOOLS – OPTIONS TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES – Select DELETE FILES, check in DELETE OFFLINE CONTENT, let it finish. Click SETTINGS. “Check for newer versions of stored pages” Bullet in: AUTOMATICALLY Amount of disk space = 1200 Click OK PRIVACY TAB: The slider should be set to MEDIUM-HIGH unless you use a site that requires a lower setting. Click APPLY ADVANCED TAB: Scroll down to “SECURITY” and put a check in “Empty Temporary Internet Files Folder When the Browser is Closed” Click APPLY Close the internet settings box and the browser.
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Click START – RUN In the box that appears copy the following text and paste it in the run box EXACTY as I posted it below: rundll32 advapi32,ProcessIdleTasks Click OK NOTE: You will be using that command line again as we clean up the system so keep it handy. Also, sometimes Windows gets a bit slow in booting.. This happens from time to time and when it does you can repeat the above step to optimize the system boot. It writes a file called LAYOUT.ini to the PREFETCH folder which tells Windows where all your drivers are on the hard disk for fast boot loading. REBOOT THE COMPUTER You have finished the Windows Settings Process It’s time to clean up your hard drive and use the defrag software correctly. I want you to find and delete everything out of the following folders: C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR ACCOUNT NAME\Local Settings\Temp C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR ACCOUNT NAME\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files C:\Windows\Temp There may be files that will refuse to delete. If that happens and the delete operation is halted, you can select all and while holding the CTRL key deselect the file(s) that refused to delete which should continue the operation. Repeat that process until you get rid of all the files in those folders that will allow you to delete them. The ones that remain and refuse to delete are harmless such as windows defrag data files. Go to your C drive root directory. If there is a folder named “ATI or NVIDIA” there, delete it. If there is any other junk laying around on your hard drive that you have been wanting to get rid of, now is the time to delete it. Empty the recycle bin, then right click it, select PROPERTIES and select “USE ONE SETTING FOR ALL DRIVES” set the slider to 1-2%, I use 1% but I have HUGE drives. It’s up to you but don’t set it over 3% Click APPLY Reboot The rest is making sure your not running a huge list of startup programs and properly defraging the system. O&O DEFRAG NEXT: Boot O&O Defrag. The first time it is run a wizard will appear, just get rid of it and if possible, select to not have it run again (there may be a checkbox for that in the wizard that appears) Once you get rid of the wizard, do the following Go to: FILE MENU/OPTIONS: GENERAL TAB: UNCHECK Create Reports OFFLINE DEFRAG TAB: LEAVE THIS ALONE FOR NOW but we will change it later. TUNING TAB: Bullet in “USE ALL AVAILABLE RESOURCES” Bullet in “SEQUENTIAL” CHECK IN: “LAYOUT.INI” Click APPLY CLOSE and RESTART O&O Defrag. THE FIRST DEFRAG PASSES: In the top pane click your C drive and highlight it. From the menu, select DEFRAGMENTATION then select SPACE. Let it run and DO NOT TOUCH THE SYSTEM FOR ANY REASON WHILE IT IS RUNNING. After it completes the first defrag pass, reboot the system and run the SAME SPACE defrag AGAIN. DONT touch the system while it is doing that. Reboot when it is finished. ———————————————————— NEXT: THE OFFLINE DEFRAG: Before you do the offline defrag I want you to run a Windows Disk Check and have it repair any problems. Go to MY COMPUTER - Right click your C drive, select PROPERTIES, then TOOLS TAB. On ERROR CHECKING, click CHECK NOW. In the box that appears place a check in “Automatically Fix File System Errors” nothing else. Click START. A box will appear telling you the disk check cannot be performed…. click YES to have it performed at boot. Reboot the computer. The disk check will run automatically while booting. Don’t touch anything and let it finish. Once done the system should automatically reboot back into Windows. Once back in Windows: Open O&O Defrag. Go to FILE - OPTIONS - OFFLINE DEFRAGMENTATION Bullet in EXECUTE ONCE ON NEXT SYSTEM STARTUP In the box below, click your C drive… then click ACTIVATE and APPLY Close O&O Defrag and REBOOT the system. The O&O Offline Defrag will appear during the reboot. Let it finish. It will reboot the system automatically when complete. ——————————————————————- Go to C:\Windows\Prefetch You should now only see 2 files in there similarly named: LAYOUT.ini NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.pf If you have any other files in that folder, delete them now but leave the files NTOSBOOT and LAYOUT.ini alone. Click START – RUN when the box appears, copy and paste this line EXACTLY as it is posted here: rundll32 advapi32,ProcessIdleTasks CLICK OK You will see hard disk activity for about 10-20 seconds. —————————————————————– NEXT: THE NAME DEFRAGMENTATION This defrag run will place ALL the files on your hard drive in NAME order. As a reference, that means the files will be located on the disk in the same FOLDER\ alphabetical and numerical number as you see on the screen when you look at your C drive or open a folder. START O&O Defrag. Click your C drive in the top pane, go to DEFRAGMENTION and select COMPLETE\NAME DO NOT TOUCH THE SYSTEM WHILE O&O DEFRAG IS WORKING FOR ANY REASON The NAME defrag is going to access every file on your hard drive and put it in order. That process may very well take 2-3 hours if it has never been done before. Once complete, reboot. EVEN IF THE GRAPHIC DISPLAY shows everything is in order in O&O Defrag that does NOT mean it is. Since this is your first time doing a COMPLETE NAME Defrag maintenance, repeat the defrag. If you have done a COMPLETE\NAME Defrag in the recent past you can skip the second run. Click your C drive in the top pane, go to DEFRAGMENTION and select COMPLETE\NAME Once complete, reboot your computer. 5. THE FINAL DEFRAG RUN(s) Start O&O defrag and select SPACE. It should not take more than a minute or three to complete. Once completed, go to FILE – OPTIONS OFFLINE DEFRAG and activate the offline defrag by selecting EXECUTE ONCE, then making sure it says ACTIVATE in the box below, click apply and REBOOT. Once back in Windows, Click START – RUN when the box appears, copy and paste this line EXACTLY as it is posted here: rundll32 advapi32,ProcessIdleTasks CLICK OK The above may sound like allot of repetitive operations however in order to assure the disk is totally clean it must be done as I listed above. Defrag software will skip files on low memory systems (1gig or less) and usually does not defrag a hard drive in less than 3 passes. Now that the above process is complete, the only thing you have to do once a month (or so) is the following:
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SYSTEM MAINTENANCE ONCE A MONTH: Delete everything out of the following folders: C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR ACCOUNT NAME\Local Settings\Temp C:\Windows\Temp Go to Windows Update and get the monthly CRITICAL updates Then: 1. Update and Run Ad AdAware 2. Update and Run Spybots, make sure to IMMUNIZE after an update. 3. Update and Run Registry Mechanic. You should not need to run the registry compactor again, just the main scan. 4. Click START – RUN when the box appears, copy and paste this line EXACTLY as it is posted here: rundll32 advapi32,ProcessIdleTasks CLICK OK. You will see hard disk activity for about 10-20 seconds. 5. Start O&O Defrag and run a SPACE defrag first, and then set the offline defrag to run and reboot. ONCE EVERY 3 MONTHS … you should add to that list a WINDOWS DISK CHECK and a COMPLETE\NAME defrag: RECAP FOR DISK CHECK: Go to MY COMPUTER - Right click your C drive, select PROPERTIES, then TOOLS TAB. On ERROR CHECKING, click CHECK NOW. In the box that appears place a check in “Automatically Fix File System Errors” nothing else. Click START. A box will appear telling you the disk check cannot be performed…. click YES to have it performed at boot. Reboot the computer. The disk check will run automatically while booting. Don’t touch anything and let it finish. Once done the system should automatically reboot back into Windows. Once back in Windows run a COMPLETE\NAME defrag That will keep your system in top shape from this point on. You should always check once a month and see if any new programs installed a startup file through the system configuration utility by typing MSCONFIG in the RUN box and click OK. Check the STARTUP tab and see if any non-essential programs are booting. If so, it is best to delete the key from the registry instead of un-checking the process in the configuration utility. If you are not sure something is safe to delete from the registry, leave it. The start keys are located here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run And shortcuts in the START folder on the Programs Menu.
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IN CONCLUSION… NOTE: DO NOT USE MEMORY OPTIMIZERS, MEMORY DEFRAGMENTERS CACHE OPTIMIZERS, FSAUTOSTART OR ANY OTHER PROGRAMS FOR OPTIMIZING YOUR COMPUTER. THEY ARE A WASTE OF RESOURCES AND PROVIDE LITTLE OR NO GAIN. IN MOST CASES THEY CAUSE THE SYSTEM TO RUN WORSE. ALSO NOTE THAT SHUTTING DOWN CERTAIN SERVICES IN WINDOWS WILL ACTUALLY CAUSE YOUR PERFORMANCE TO DROP. ONLY SHUT DOWN THE SERVICES I LISTED ABOVE UNLESS YOU KNOW FOR A FACT YOUR SYSTEM DOES NOT NEED A CERTAIN SERVICE. NEWER DRIVERS MUST HAVE DCOM AND COM+EVENT ENABLED AS THEY ARE BY DEFAULT, FOR FULL DRIVER SUPPORT. 7. For Nvidia systems, install the latest version of Nhancer. Reboot. 8. Once back into Windows, run Nhancer from the start menu. It does NOT need to boot with Windows or have a tray icon since the service runs in the background and will properly influence the settings. When it is first run select NO to have it run with Windows or have it place an icon on the tray. With any driver above 163.xx Nhancer can no longer delete the profiles as it did in the past, instead the way you OVERRIDE the FSX and FS9 profiles is do the following: a. Scroll down the profile list until you find the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (or) Microsoft Flight Simulator X profile. Click on it once to highlight it. Once it is highlighted, click the DUPLICATE button. You will get a message, select YES to complete the duplication. What that will do is DEACTIVATE the Nvidia profile and ACTIVATE your new duplicate. b. With the new profile in the list, make sure there is a bullet in PROFILE on the right. Go down the list on the right and select the following: AA: For FSX select SUPERSAMPLING and 8xS NOTE: Slower cards and systems in FSX, set to MUTISAMPLING and 4X or SUPERSAMPLING and 4xS Under the next box, check GAMMA CORRECTION DO NOT ENABLE THE SECOND SUPERSAMPLE FEATURE IN THIS AREA AF: CHECKED Bullet in: 16X VERTICAL SYNC: CHECKED, Bullet in: APPLICATION NOTE: I have heard SP2 and Accel have a BUG with the latest Nv drivers where VERTICAL SYNC is DISABLED in FSX. If you see tearing in the image, set the above to ON inatead of APPLICATION OPTIMIZATIONS Tab: Texture Filtering CHECKED Bullet in - High Quality Trilinear Opt CHECKED, Bullet in - Off Aniso. sample opt. CHECKED, Bullet in - Off Negative LOD BIAS, CHECKED, Bullet in - Clamp Check the next three items but do not change their values COMPATABILITY TAB: Place a CHECK in all header values but only change the following if needed: Force Mip-Maps = NONE Conformant Texture Clamp = ON Hi Dynamic Range HDR (Enabled) All others should be at their default values. Under the CPU Multicore Support, REGARDLESS OF THE TYPE OF CPU YOU USE: FOR WINDOWSXP SET CPU TO SINGLE FOR WINDOWS VISTA SET CPU TO MULTICORE Repeat the above for any other game profile as you may need it. c. In the main Nhancer Window, set the bullet to GLOBAL Set the SAME settings on GLOBAL as you did above. Close Nhancer and reboot. 9. Open the Nivida Control panel (right click desktop, select Nvidia Control Panel) Show the ADVANCED settings. Under Managed 3D, make sure the Multi Display Mixed GPU is set to SINGLE DISPLAY MODE if you are ONLY using one video card and monitor. If you use more than one, leave the setting on default Click APPLY. FOR LCD: Under “ DISPLAY” and “Change Flat Panel Scaling” make sure it is set to: “Use my Displays built in scaling” Next, under ADJUST DESKTOP COLOR SETTINGS: NOTE: FOR LCD and CRT. Under the “Adjust Desktop Color Settings” you may want to play with the CONTRAST, BRIGHTNESS and GAMMA. Every monitor is different. Your mileage may vary. 8800 cards WILL NOT have any Image Sharpening control by design. 7xxxx series cards can boost the image sharpness by about 25% or to taste. Sometimes BOOSTING Contrast UP a tad is better in MSFS. You have to play with this to get it set to your taste. It is strictly based on your monitor and card. Click APPLY and close the Nvidia driver control panel NOTE: When you replace video drivers nvwiz.exe will be installed by default. If you do not use multi-monitors you can use SpyBots as outlined earlier in this thread to DELETE the nvwiz.exe line in startup. In FSX UNCHECK AA and set filtering to TRILLINEAR Try diffrent frame locks. 30 or unlimited usually works best especially for TFT monitors. When you install Acceleration I recommend you save the FSX config file, delete the original and let the sim write a new file when it is booted the first time, then edit in your changes. NOTE: When I was playing with Accel/SP2 I found ALL my suyggested tweaks were still valid and worked best with the exception of SMALL Parts Reject. With SP2 autogen is batched and that tweak will not play right with the new update. Remove it from the config file. Credit to NickN Thanks Mark
