Performance enhancement for win2k/xp

[Koepi]

Hi,

I just read an article about a registry key of win2k/xp which is responsible for "weaker than necessary" performance of those OSes, it's a key concerning the treatment of executables - they get paged out into the swapfile by default.
By disabling this on systems with more than 128mb of ram you get a significant better performance when you're using some more applications at the same time, and specially when you're encoding movies next to that (at least that's my observation here).
Since I dislike manually searching and modifying keys in the registry I built a small tool which will handle that, find it attached.

Please give me some feedback if this works for you, too!

Best regards
Koepi

EDIT: updated attachment!

[Fantasma]

Hello

I don't see any file attached.

Anyway, I have Winblows XP and 384 megabytes of ram, I used
Tweak-XP Pro 2.0 to try to achieve better performance, and to be
frank with you, the differences are meaningles.

P.S.
I have an Athlon XP 1900+

[killingspree]

@Fantasma: (:

Originally posted by Koepi

PS: the attachment will need some time until it's verified, so just come back in some hours to d/l the 5.13kb ;)

@koepi
definitely worth a try... with 512 mb ddr ram there shouldn't be any problems :-P
i'll surely give it a try!!!

[Koepi]

Hm, anyone with results?

I really like that switching between applications takes no time now, even if I encode for hours already (usually mozilla got swapped out and it took a long time for the browser to reload into memory).

This small registry change isn't comparable to any tools like "tweakxp" or similar, it's really just changing this one key - while having a huge effect with that (after reboot of course). If that tweakxp stuff didn't help you, this tool might...

Regards
Koepi

[nikthebak]

Yes, I think it did the trick just like you told, Koepi.

I tried it by loading a few IE windows and and a low-CPU GUI app. Then I played for 60 minutes worth of Worms World Party, exited the game and started switching between applications.

Result: Instant switching, no more 10 secods of "cooling down" period W2K usually does after doing something memory & CPU intensive work.

The OS is W2K and I have 1.8 GHz Northwood with 256 MB's of DDR memory. Great work, Koepi!

[aleksander]

This post will not have any results of use of your tool included, but I just couldn't resist to tell you one thing:
YOU'RE MY MASTER, MY GURU, MY .....
Man!
I.... well....Hmmmmm....
Geez.....
Don't know what to say...
Thank you a 1000 times!
As soon as I get my AC adapter (damn Compaq sent me wrong one) and reinstall the system (they pre-install a lot of useless stuff) I will give it a try... It will take some time though...

take care and keep up good work....

[killingspree]

i've tested it... or let's say i've run your program... i actually didn't notice a bigger performance boost... but it Is running a little faster...

good work... i'm going to do some hardcore testing soon (:

regards
steVe

[markrb]

For a nice guide (actually 3) of Windows XP Tweaks, including the one mentioned above, but many more. Read the guides at Tweaktown.
I don't use the XP SP1 guide and tweak since most of it is redundant, but I use most in the XP 1 and 2 guides.

It requires using regedit and other potentially dangerous tools.

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=guide

I just love getting rid of those shared folders in My Computer.

Mark

[theReal]

Koepi, does your little program set the DisablePagingExecutive key to 1 ??

If yes - I have been doing this manually after every installation of Win2k and it seems to work quite well.

Another trick that seems to work quite well with a lot of RAM is to set the IOPageLockLimit to 10,000 hex. (which equals 65,536 dec).
This value increases the default reserved HD-cache from 512kb to 64MB

What I have also tried but what I wouldn't do anymore is to set the key "LargeSystemCache" to 1.
It turned my system into a super-slow single-task system (only one program window would would open at a time).

[Koepi]

TheReal:

Exactly that key is set/unset with the switcher. As I wrote initially, I'm lazy and dislike to hack around in the registry - one double click and I'm done now, it's much easier than searching around with regedit and maybe messing up something in there accidentially.
The other keys you're describing are really only useful for systems with plenty of RAM, and I only have 256MB ;) But it's safer not to tweak all keys. Only this ExecutablePageout key was worth the code IMO.
I hate these monster-GUI "tweaking" apps which do nothing than screw your registry, maybe setting even dangerous stuff, causing unpredictable system behaviour sometimes (saw that at some users' computers here in my LAN that I administrate).

Regards,
Koepi

[killingspree]

@thereal:

Originally written by theReal
Another trick that seems to work quite well with a lot of RAM is to set the IOPageLockLimit to 10,000 hex. (which equals 65,536 dec).

sorry i'm kind of unfamiliar with finding the right keys in the registry. where do i find this key and does this 'tweak' make sense with 512 Megs of DDR ram?

thanks
steVe

[Koepi]

Hi,

we need to wait for a Mod to verify the new attachment.

I updated this tiny tool as I fell over another registry key which concerns the second level cache size of your CPU.
By default, windows 2ooo/xp are optimized for 256kb second level cache, but a duron has only 192 (hm. plain 2nd level would be 128kb, which value to use?) and other processors have even more cache.
I don't know if the key changes something that you can notice, but at least it's worth a try.

I hope you like it.

Regards
Koepi

[[Toff]]

I think that it would be even better if it show the key that it modify.

[Koepi]

Well, the keys concerned are known:

DisablePagingExecutive
SecondLevelCacheSize

in HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/SessionManager/Memory Management/

Where's the problem?

[[Toff]]

There is no problem. I just think that some people want to know what a program do. Just put it in the readme file.

[BlackSun]

Seems to work fine on my WinXP :)

[deanx0r]

Koepi, I think the fear is that you write down a exe file that most people are usually reluctant to run, especially when downloaded from the net :)

Why make a exe file to modify the registry when you can make a small regedit script that will do the same thing? It should be soemthing like that:


regedit4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:1
"IoPageLockLimit"=dword:10000


Open a txt file, copy the script and save as a .reg file, then merge by right clicking on it.

Correct me if I am wrong tho :)

[theReal]

It works - but I think you should use "CurrentControlSet" rather than "ControlSet001"

As far as I know you can't be wrong with CurrentControlSet because it is only a pointer to the control set which is currently in use. Something like that...