Tweaking your Windows 2000 Machine for better performance.

Here are several tweaks for ensuring your Windows 2000 Pro system runs faster and smoother. Some of them you will have to down load. Others are registry tweaks.

When inputing the registry settings alway use a DWORD.
Running 3Com Modems:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
"EnablePMTUBHDetect"=dword:00000000
"Tcp1323Opts"=dword:00000003
"SackOpts"=dword:00000001
"DefaultTTL"=dword:00000020
"EnablePMTUDiscovery"=dword:00000001

Enable UMDA 66 support (Off by default on Win2K Pro):
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
"EnableUDMA66"=dword:00000001

Read ahead optimization for Hard Drives:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"ReadAheadThreshold"=hex:00,00,20,00

DisablePagingExecutive:
When enabled, this will disable paging the NT Executive files to the hard disk and force them to remain resident in the RAM. Enabling this setting will increase overall system performance, but it is only recommended for people with 128 MB of RAM or more because of the load that it puts on your system RAM
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001

Open up Note Pad and put in the following:
Mystring = Space(16000000)
Now save as Memory.vbs and then click on it. This will help "defrag" your RAM.

Go to Video Properties and go to Settings then Advsnced. Go to Torubleshooting. Slide the Bar to the Left 1 notch. This will improve Gaming performance since the Video card does not have to accellerate everything.

Go to Device Manager then to Disk Drives and do the following:
Write cache enabled: If you enable this feature, your computer sends an enable-write-cache command to the hard disk activating the hard disk write-back cache, & if you disable this feature, the hard disk write-back cache is deactivated. When enabled disk I/O performance may improve, although if you experience system failure e.g. Power loss, you could experience drive/file corruption. I'd recommend leaving this ticked unless your system is prone to bad shutdowns/power failure.

Disable Tagged Queuing: Tagged queuing is done by the SCSI controller & driver to increase the speed of completing I/O tasks. This is accomplished by sorting the commands so the order of the commands issued to the physical disk drive to read or write results in the most efficient movement of the physical read & write heads. As you can guess, doing it in this sequential order is far more efficient than when disabled, resulting in greater I/O performance. You should only tick this if you are experiencing problems with a hard drive(s) as performance is slower when Tagged queuing is Disabled. Leave it unticked.

Swap File:
If you have two Hard Drives put the SWAP FILE on the Fastest (If your System drive is the fastest leave the swap file there) NON-SYSTEM Drive.(The Drive without Windows.) Go to SYSTEM PROPERTIES (right click on MY COMPUTER) then ADVANCED then PERFORMANCE OPTIONS then VIRTUAL MEMORY and click CHANGE. Set the swap file there. I have found Forcing the Minimum and Maximum swap file size to 256 Meg (no matter how much RAM you have up to 256meg. Amounts more than 256 should be set to the same size as the RAM) to be an excellent amount.

Performance Options:
Right click on MY COMPUTER then ADVANCED, in PERFORMANCE OPTIONS under APPLICATION RESPONSE ensure that OPTIMIZE PERFORMANCE FOR: is set to APPLICATIONS.

Now go to IDE ATA/ATAPI DEVICES. Ensure that all cahnnels are using DMA mode. Look under Primary and Secondary IDE Channels and under Advanced Settings.

If you are running ATA 100 Drives you will need to down load the Windows 2000 ATA100 Support driver. Get that at:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q260/2/33.asp



Also ensure your Windows 2000 Pro machine is FULLY updated with the Latest Service Pack. Also ensure the latest Direct X version. You can get it at: http://www.microsoft.com/directx/


These are some of the more basic tweaks for Windows 2000. If you find any more let me know and I will add them. Check back from time to time for I will be adding more as I test them and ensure there is no problems with them.

James Collins
Systems Analyst
A+, MCP, MCSA, Network+
email: jim.collins@itt.com