The Un-Official Proxomitron Forum

Hi "Guyz",
Thought I'd share this with you. I've been working on installing some hybrid O/S, XP w/ vista type shells on some very old, . . .old, , , ,did I mention old? machines. LoL! I've been overclocking, and tweaking them just to learn and see what I can squeeze out of them. I give them to families that have kids that need a computer for home work and really really can't afford something up to-date.
Anyways, if You want to give Your HDD alittle extra kick here is a little trick I learned. You need at least 256 megs of ram for it to be noticeably, don't cost nothing, and it can't hurt the system even if it doesn't work for you.

Increase Hard Disk Speed

To speed up your hard disk speed we need to configure a special buffer in the computer's
memory in order to enable it to better deal with interrupts made from the disk.
This tip is only recommended if you have 256MB RAM or higher.
Follow these steps:

Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the Run command.

Expand the system.ini file window.

Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh].

Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line type

Irq14=4096

Note: This line IS CASE SENSITIVE!!!

Click on the File menu, then choose Save.

Close SYSEDIT and reboot your computer.

Done. Speed improvement will be noticed after the computer reboots.
Update: The most speed improvement is visible with IDE drives,
however there are reports that this tweak also does good for SCSI disks.
In any case, it won't harm your system, so why not try it yourself and let
me know what you find

by CyberGodFather

Catch You Guyz on the flip side and have a great and wonderful week-end,
"Jak"

Ps: I uploaded you some nice little proggies that I use and you might find interesting. Remember scan everything you download before opening. And please be careful using them if you're a newbie at "overclocking". Don't throw a rock at my house if you "fry" your processor.

cool! i'm a HUGE over-clocking fan (and thereby HATE Intel processors and would pay DOUBLE for an AMD any day, even in a (rec|depr)ession, lol)...

not seen the HDD tweak before, will give 'er a whirl...

according to here - http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html - the Irg14 bit is a "myth"...

i haven't tried it myself...
and it does seem to be a "popular" hdd-fix on the 'net, so "mileage may vary"...

Hey :ProxRocks",
Great to "see/Not See" you on the forum!
That hack is very noticeable on the slower machines I tinker with. That's the first thing I do when I start with them. Seek time seems to be faster. On a machine that already has some speed, it's hardly noticeable at all, but I go ahead add the code anyways just in case.

I wish you could see the expression on those kid's faces when they first boot up an old clunker I've reworked, . . . it's "priceless".
Take care My Good Friend and have a great week-end,
"JaK"

cool!...

Great to have you back Jak !! I tried the tweak on my system and it only slowed my boot to a crawl . Putting the paging file on a different partition and on a different physical hard disk drive is the only thing which worked wonders for me . Regards , Ralph

(Mar. 07, 2009 07:15 PM)Ralph Wrote: [ -> ]Great to have you back Jak !! I tried the tweak on my system and it only slowed my boot to a crawl . Putting the paging file on a different partition and on a different physical hard disk drive is the only thing which worked wonders for me . Regards , Ralph

I like to do that with my page file. The dedicated page file doesn't get fragmented over time either. Make sure you leave a page file of at least a few MB on the system drive for memory dumps.(MS recommends this)

Hey "Guyz",
Thanks for the welcome back, My Good Friend "Ralph"!
Sorry the tweek didn't do so good for you, I haven't experienced any negative effects with it, but with the "klunkers" that I've been working on, . . .any boost at all is good. So it is creating that "buffer", but it seems that with a newer faster system, it must take up to much ram. Good info. I appreciate everyone's feed-back.
Questions:
*(1). Does putting the paging file work better on another partition of the same drive or with a second hdd?
*(2). ALso does format need to be FAT 32 or NTFS on the partition or second drive?
*(3). Has anybody tried this with a "Flash-drive"?

Speaking of "flash drives", has anyone tried this little proggie out? "Click Here".
This actually speeds up my system's random read speed to 21057 KB/s. It's about 3 1/2 times faster than it normally is without it. Also the "trial version" runs at full feature for about 4 hours each time you reboot your system. You can allocate ram or use a flash drive. I just have the flash drive allocated. I would like to, when I can, to max out the ram and see what speeds could be accomplished. But it's hard to buy "ram" sticks when you're a guest of the state, living in the "big house", making two dollars a day and a horse-weed dinner on sunday, a'makin' license plates for alivin'. Hahahahaah! Glad the warden's got broad-band!!!! LOL!
If you re-format the "Flash-drive" to NTSF you can allocate up to 4 gig of cache, where as, the normal FAT 32 only allows for 2 gig.

Here's a couple more "tweeks" that I've "monkeyed" with:
(Warning: Deleting and messin' with the registry can stop your machine from booting up!) And you'll be sayin' "that dad-burn Jak, . . .now where'd I put them restore disks?

If you would like to try changing the transfer mode for your drives, follow the instructions below. Going from PIO-only mode to UltraDMA-6 will show you the most significant performance boost. However, your results may vary. Of course, your drive and motherboard must support UltraDMA-6, or you won't see much of a difference. Be careful while you are doing this; I am not responsible for any mistakes you make. Please back up your registry first in case something goes wrong!

How to Check Current Transfer Mode

1. Open Device Manager
2. Expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers
3. Double click on Primary IDE Controller or Secondary IDE Controller
4. Go to the Advanced Settings tab to see the current transfer modes. If you see anything besides UltraDMA-6, and especially if you see PIO Mode, then follow the steps below.

How to Force UltraDMA-6

1. Open up the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
3. There are several sub-keys under this one, such as 0000, 0001, etc. You are interested in two of them that say Primary IDE Channel and Secondary IDE Channel.
4. Make the following changes to both of those keys:
1. Delete any attributes named MasterIdDataCheckSum or SlaveIdDataCheckSum. This resets the tracking for errors that Windows uses to determine when the transfer mode should be lowered.
2. Add an attribute with the name ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess and a DWORD value of 1. This tells Windows that it should lower the transfer mode when there are six consecutive errors instead of six cumulative errors.
3. If they exist, set the following keys to a hexadecimal value of ffffffff (eight F's). This will change the transfer modes to UltraDMA-6:
* MasterDeviceTimingMode
* MasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
* SlaveDeviceTimingMode
* SlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed
* UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
* UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed
4. Reboot your computer and check the devices to see if they are set to UltraDMA Mode 6.

Of course your machine has to support UltraDMA mode 6!
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Windows XP reservers 20 percent of the Internet bandwidth for QoS ( Quality of Service). This is unnecessary and can be disabled. By disabling this you get a boost in the Bandwith. Follow the following steps:

* Select Start > Run and enter gpedit.msc to Open the Group Ploicy Editor.
* In the left-hand column in the window, navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > QoS Packet Scheduler
* In the right column double-click on Limit reservable bandwidth and select Enabled.
* Change the Bandwidth Limit to 0 and click OK.

Now you've disabled the QoS and enjoy the extra bandwidth.
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I know on the net you can find where it works for some and some say it can't work. Personally I've had more success than not with these tweeks. However, my latest project seems to "defy" the very physical laws of the universe! LOL! Can't get nothing to work with this one, I may have to just give this one a decent burial and let it R.I.P.
Catch You all later,
"JaK"

[quote=Questions:
*(1). Does putting the paging file work better on another partition of the same drive or with a second hdd?
*(2). ALso does format need to be FAT 32 or NTFS on the partition or second drive?
*(3). Has anybody tried this with a "Flash-drive"?
[/quote]
Jak , the recommendation that I remember was that it was best to place it on another drive . I have Vista on one partition and Windows 7 on a second partition on C . On my second HD , I have my paging file , Ubuntu and storage . My drives are NTFS . I don't know the answer however .

The best is placing the paging file in a second hdd. If it is also master, instead of slave, better twice. I don't know how many better it is, but the logic is if first hdd is busy, second could not be, and if the first drive is sending many information by the same cable, the second cable could less busy...

The best place for page file is no page file! Get more ram :P

(Mar. 08, 2009 09:22 PM)bugger Wrote: [ -> ]The best place for page file is no page file! Get more ram :P

How much RAM are we talking here? I've heard that, but more don't buy into it than do.

---

*(1). Does putting the paging file work better on another partition of the same drive or with a second hdd?
*(2). ALso does format need to be FAT 32 or NTFS on the partition or second drive?
*(3). Has anybody tried this with a "Flash-drive"?

I like putting the page file on a separate partition (different HDD), but mainly so it doesn't get fragmented. I don't really notice any difference. I use NTFS.
I can't wait to get an SSD flash drive or two.

Get at least 1BG and turn off the pagefile thing :P

The proper answer is to put the pag(e|ing) file on a separate hard disk. The reasoning is not a matter of fragmentation, but of the read/write head's access speed. If one HDD is present, there is only one r/w head, right? And if that one head is doing a job for an application, say reading data from a stored spreadsheet file, then it can't simultaneously go to the paging file, can it? However, if the paging file is on another drive, then two separate heads are moving under the direction of two separate commands, one from the app, the other from the OS. There's where your speed increase comes from.

bugger, that bit about not have a page file in the first place is good, but only valid for most flavors of *nix. Sad to say, ever since Windows 95, Microsoft OS's have insisted on a page file - no matter how much ram you have in your box. I have 4 gigs in my Toshiba, and if I disable the page file via the System Properties page, then in about 1 minute, perhaps less, Windows will bark at me about not having a page file. It might still work (whatever I was trying to do), but then again, it might not. And those are the times when BSOD's become a very visible component of one's computing life. Ugh! Trust me, I've been banging on Microsoft's door about this topic for more than 15 years!

If you've got a way to set WXPSP2 to ignore the disabled page file, I'd like to know about it, please.

And no, Wishta and Seven don't count - I don't use unstable (read: unproven by the popular masses) OS's.


And ProxRocks, I've gone the other direction - I finally figured out that no matter how fast I manipulate the console, the machine is still waiting on me, at the rate of approximately a billion to one. (For every CPU cycle it spends on transferring data to/from the console, it spends about a gigacycle just hanging out, whistling Dixie, doing nothing important.) Seems kinda wasteful to me, and what with the fan noise and heat, not to mention the power consumption, oy vay! They could all stand to be reduced, so...... Enter The Underclocker! Different strokes and all that, ya know?

HTH



Oddysey

I don't notice a difference whether I use a traditional page file, or go the separate one on a separate HDD. I've also used page files for each disk; again not noticing any difference. I still do it though as I figure if it were to get really fragmented, I may notice a difference. Windows is designed to go to the page file for different reasons, no matter how much RAM you have, and definitely needs it for dumps. I've also not noticed any or much difference with shutting down/disabling services etc.; often ending up with more of a slowdown occurring. The nice thing is that we can play with these things, and go with what we like, be it O/C, tinkering etc. O/C I gave up on years ago; causes too many anomalies, heat noise etc.; and you are limited by whatever bottleneck you have, be it HDD, RAM etc. But that's not to say that it isn't the right thing to do for the next person. To each his own.