TechArchive

Original article date: January 2002

If your New Year’s resolution was to take control of your PC and get a few things tidied up, then here’s a few tips for getting top performance, based on experience. If your PC is “somebody else’s problem” (ie the IT department) then stop reading now.

First, the hard disk. You probably know what defragmentation is. What many folk don’t realise is that perhaps the most crucial file of all (performance wise) is the Windows swap file, and that it (like any other file) can become fragmented. Defragmenting the drive from time to time won’t help as this file is created anew everytime you boot. All you can really do for certain is give the file a partition all of its own. So if, for example, ‘C:’ is your main partition and ‘D:’ is your second, create a third, ‘E:’, and call it something like “WinSwap”. Then set your virtual memory settings to point to it. Never use this swap partition for anything else. Give it a few hundred Megs. (Virtual memory is adjusted in the “Performance” tab in the “System” Control Panel).

There are two ways to mess with partitions: you can reformat your hard disk (and hey, it was probably due for it anyway) or you can use a program called “Partition Magic”. It’s about 99.99% safe but I would advise backing up before you make any changes just in case.

Of course, there are still benefits to be had from defragmenting your hard disk. But if you plan to do this, take a tip, and do it this way. First, on a Friday evening, boot into “Safe Mode” (hit F8 at about 1Hz throughout the boot until you see a simple menu, and then select Safe mode). Run a thorough ‘Scan Disk’ on all your drives. Then, on Monday evening (taking care not to crash all day Monday), enter Safe Mode again and start defragmenting the chosen drive.

That covers disk speed, but what about disk space? Well, you will never have enough disk space if you treat it like a bottomless pit. So the thing to treat yourself to is not a huge disk but a CD burner. Consumable costs of 50p for 700MB? No brainer. Segregate useful stuff into a particular directory, and when the directory is big enough, move it to CD. Now would also be an excellent time to consider a good backup routine. Every time you turn your computer off, imagine that it is the last time you will ever see the data on that hard disk. Will your backup regime protect you? Another way to save disk space is to look at the cluster size on your disk. With FAT32 you can have far more clusters per disk and hence they can be smaller. Every file must take at least one cluster, so it is a bit of a waste of you have 1000 small files and they take 64K each when they could be taking 4K each. With Partition Magic (mentioned earlier) you can resize the clusters on your disk. Depending on what the spread of file sizes on your hard disk is, this could save you 100s of Megs.

Dealing with emails

Also good for disk space is to have a policy for dealing with emails. If someone sends you a 4MB attachment, put it somewhere meaningful and then consider deleting the email. Keeping bucket loads of old emails wastes disk space, makes the mail program slow to start up, and uses more memory when the email program is actually running.

Now let’s consider memory. I recently bought a program called “MemoKit”. This marvel manages the memory on your machine better than Windows alone. It tells you how much memory is free and what is using it, it manages the disk cache better and so keeps more memory free, it makes lazy programs give memory back rather than just hanging onto it unnecessarily, and it monitors “system resources”.

Until I started using this program I had no idea what system resources were. Put simply, there is a small amount of memory which serves a distinct function and when you run out of it your PC crashes. You might have 50MB free memory elsewhere, but if the “system resources” runs out, it’s lights out. So you might have a load of things running, start just one more program and the system tips over the edge. With MemoKit you get a continuous taskbar display and a warning before you start that last program. Magic.

Of course, I bought MemoKit because it said in the blurb “don’t buy more memory – just use it better”. But when MemoKit showed me where all my memory was going, I bought more anyway, taking me from 64 to 192MB. Believe me, it’s the best $30 I ever spent.. Once Windows can use all the memory it needs without having to swap to disk unncessarily, the difference is staggering It’s like using a different computer!

Finally, protect yourself. Look up “ZoneAlarm”, a superb free program which will protect you from people hacking your PC while you’re surfing.

All the programs mentioned herein can be located pretty easily by searching the web.