by Greg
Tue, December 13 2005 10:12
To complement my other article on the basics of PC security, here are my favorite tweaks to help improve computer performance.
#1. Adjust your page file. A Windows page file is extended computer memory for tasks that are not running “at this moment”. This allows your current program to run in your computer’s main memory (RAM) while keeping track of your other applications. As you swap tasks (such as with ALT-TAB), your computer may decide to swap the contents of RAM with the contents of your page file. Hence, why sometimes a page file is called a swap file.
Size of the page file matters, and what size to make a swap file is a matter of great debate. My present swap file is 768 MB on a machine with 1.5GB of RAM. If you are a little short on hard drive space, sizes of 512 MB or 384 MB work as well. Less than this may cause issues on certain hardware configurations.
To make this change, right click on My Computer, select properties. Click on the Advanced tab, Select Performance Options. Change the Page File size to the number you decide upon. MAKE THE MINIMUM AND MAXIMUM NUMBERS THE SAME. While on this tab, if you have more than 768 MB of RAM, check the “Optimize Performance for” Background Services/System Cache option.
Reboot when done.
#2. Clean up your registry. Use this tool to help out.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2048
#3. Defrag your hard drive. Google how, do it, do it often (weekly – set your calendar!)
There are a whole bunch of other things that can be done, but this is a good start.