[Poolsharkzz]

You guys just want to keep here at the shop a bit longer today!

Moving ahead -

SP3 - If you are running XP, you should be at SP3+. Why? Because one day, most likely in the near future, (Windows 7 - 2010?) Micro$oft will announce the support cycle for SP2 will end. Most likely, they will "update" the Windows Update Site again and the folks running SP2 will not access.

Like SP1 - you will no longer receive all them wonderful security updates that Micro$oft sends to us on Patch Tuesday. Also, SP3 has a few patches that fix a few outstanding bugs XP has, not to mention a few security enhancements. It always good to keep your system as updated as you can!

Fast User Switching - Okay, MAYBE in "our" world - but again, read the first post - his Uncle asked him for help - meaning that he Uncle has limited knowledge of how XP works - his Uncle most likely knows how to turn it on, open Internet Explorer, check his e-mail, and do a little surfing -

In my experience most OEMs desktops start you off with auto log in as Administrator, set up as the default settings. Most people don't change this because they don't know how to or don't care to.

Is this true with this system? I don't know. Does his Uncle have an iPod? I really doubt it, but you never know. That's why I gave him not one, but two really good, expert level resources for all the information he could ever want or need concerning services - both sites spell it out like if you were a 4 year old, he couldn't go wrong. If he did, all he has to do was ping me a quick e-mail.

Two or more accounts for this system? Might be true, but I really doubt it. Speedemon86????

Remember, we are looking at a fairly under-powered computer - why would anyone set up additional accounts that equates into an additional burden on the hard drive, CPU, Ram, registry, etc.

Manual - I agree with JedMeister - BlackViper's Guide is pretty foolproof - manual or disabled services will speed-up boot times - less for the Hard Drive to put into Ram or page back to file...

Think of it this way: you have a very small car - an older one - from the early 1980's - with a hell alot of miles on it and hell alot of wear and tear - would you try to haul more or less weight?

Given today's HDD and memory capacities - "picky" - I have explained this too many times already - he doesn't have what we have in terms of a modern, desktop PC. Lets be frank here: he has what we all know is nothing more than a oversized paper-weight - but it is all he has - and all he has to work with.

To make this system run a whole lot better - and performance has been the key issue here - it needs to become a lean, mean, secure, tweaked, slimmed down, updated PC - to make it until the hardware finally gives out or XP finally becomes unsupported on April 14, 2014 or Windows 7 SP1 becomes available and then he can finally upgrade his PC - which is what I am telling all my XP SP3 customers - ride that horse until it either drops dead or something much better (hopefully) comes your way.

There is nothing "today" about this system - except a few software updates and a guy who needed a little help.

It been suggested that he should use Ubuntu, Puppy Linux, Fedora - he uses W2K and his Uncle's is XP Home SP2 and he said twice now that he is very happy with what he has - read the posts people!

Hosts File - You guys are going to drive me to drink! (or is that the plan?)

From the website: http://www.mvps.org/...p2002/hosts.htm

Editors Note: in most cases a large HOSTS file (over 135 kb) tends to slow down the machine. This only occurs in W2000/XP/Vista. Windows 98 and ME are not affected.

To resolve this issue (manually) open the "Services Editor"

Start | Run (type) "services.msc" (no quotes)
Scroll down to "DNS Client", Right-click and select: Properties
Click the drop-down arrow for "Startup type"
Select: Manual, or Disabled (recommended) click Apply/Ok and restart.

If he decides to use HostsMan / HostsServer - this is also highly recommended!

Currently, the updated MVPS Hosts File is 565kb with 18,201 entries.

At home, I have DSL and with HostsMan / HostsServer, OpenDNS, Speed Guide's TCP Optimizer, and a few well-documented changed system settings and the standard registry tweaks that appear at this forum: I actually have gained speed versus lost performance in my internet connectivity...

Again, its all about leaving as much resources available (Ram, CPU cycles) for other things to use - he has limited resources - kinda like going to the bar with only $20.00 bucks in your pocket - you can have only a few beers and then you gotta go home.

Here is a thought: Imagine simply setting his system so that the kernel stays put in Ram versus paging back to file - speeding up performance - what if the system couldn't do it because he has 20-30 services running and the 2-3MB needed for DNS Client? He only has 512mb Ram.

"Computer Cleanup" - If your case came into my shop and it was 3 years or older - I would spend the 15 minutes doing it. Besides, it impresses the customer!

I offer it as a part of a computer "tune-up" service - which also includes most of what I have painfully mentioned in all of my posts - all the programs are freeware - it just a matter of downloading them - they all should be included with most systems anyway...

If you take the time to teach your customers a thing or two about a thing or two - just the basics - they will always come back for more which equals billing hours!

I have one huge registry "tune-up tweak file" that merges most of the better known and proven registry tweaks - and removes most of the unnecessary garbage from the registry: like unneeded time zones (who cares what time it is in Korea? or Russia?), unneeded languages (tell me you speak Chinese or Arabic) windows classic color schemes (when the last time you used Rose, Wheat, Teal, Rust, or Pumpkin?) don't ya "love" them tool tips?, and to tighten down system security, especially with Outlook Express and the Windows Media Player.

I remove approx 17% of the registry - Yes, that is how much garbage is really in there - as well as I remove approx 50-70mb from the system itself in terms of deleting unnecessary folders and files, uninstall unneeded Micro$oft programs (Messenger, NetMeeting, Dr. Watson - there is a winner!), of course tweaking background services and changing a few system settings for performance, deleting a few unused cursors and a few unnecessary fonts, wallpapers (Autumn or Bliss?) and screen savers (I download a few cool ones ported back from Vista, like Bubbles!), hotfix uninstall backup files, interactive training files, and uninstall the many 3rd party "trial-wares" which are mostly adware / spyware -

I have achieved performance gains benchmarked by up to 40%! (versus a fresh, default OEM install)

I usually spend a day and a half with a client's computer - 12-14 hours - all this for $450.00 clams - less than half the price to purchase a modern, desktop PC with 2.0+ Gigs of Memory and today's ultra-fast hard drives to run Vista correctly.

Okay, I gotta run, it's almost 5:00pm here in the windy city - time for me to scoot home and see what my wife is up to and kick the dog...

Enjoyable as always, gentlemen.

poolsharkzz

This post has been edited by Poolsharkzz: 21 August 2008 - 03:51 PM

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Agreed 100%, Poolsharkzz. I've ran underpowered computer systems for a long while till i finally saved money to afford a proper rig. And i've learnt a lot this way.

It's funny how the mods of this forum reply to any affirmation not matching their views with "Are you drunk?" or "I agree, but what happens later?" I am a moderator of a forum myself. And when the admin promoted me for helping out people and being nice, i saw that as a huge privilege. And i still enjoy moderating to the day, and actually keep on topic, and when i give warnings or bans it's because they deserved it. Of course, to most of you i may count as "a kid", i'm only 17. But there's one thing you gotta realize - kids these days have so many more ways to learn, and learn faster. And you should never forget that you should never despise those that are, in some way, lower than you, because you can learn a lot from anyone in this world.

Me and Poolsharkzz gave on-topic advice. You come and say something that translates into "he should just get a new computer". What if he doesn't need a new computer??? What if he's happy with his current computer and doesn't want more?

As a matter of fact, i have a 24" flat CRT here on my dual-PIII. But it's a TV, and that means running 1024x768 on a display that can only do 720x576 natively. Just a few hours ago i popped the thing open and was tweaking focus so i could read text better. Because i can't afford a new monitor here at the moment, so i get by with what i can. Yesterday i was running around the house chasing and killing bugs.

Yeah, i do have a pretty high-end rig at home, but it took a while of running crap PCs to save money for that. And what do i get - 3 graphics cards fried in 8 months (warranty ftw), and my current HD3870 suffering from a design flaw which makes the memory overheat and artifact - it needs a new cooler. But why should i buy a new cooler to fix a flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place? Anyway, i realized i'm much more happy with my dual-PIII than my C2D. I tweak at it all day when it needs tweaking, but once i'm done tweaking it runs without a single hitch, for months on end.

So why should the OP's uncle get a new computer with Vista if he can check his email just fine on his current PIII?

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: 21 August 2008 - 03:59 PM

[Zxian]

Poolsharkzz, on Aug 21 2008, 01:37 PM, said:

Remember, we are looking at a fairly under-powered computer - why would anyone set up additional accounts that equates into an additional burden on the hard drive, CPU, Ram, registry, etc.

Sorry, but this simply isn't true. The system in question has 512MB of RAM, which is plenty for a basic web-surfing, document-writing system with two or three users. My parents system was an Athlon 1GHz with 512MB of RAM, and they used this for years before changing to a laptop (they live off the grid now, so power consumption is a concern). An idle user in the background doesn't apply any "burden" to the system resources. If the system does need more RAM, idle pages will be written to disk, and then read back when needed. For the tasks that the OP's "limited knowledge" Uncle has, this really shouldn't be a concern.

Poolsharkzz, on Aug 21 2008, 01:37 PM, said:

Think of it this way: you have a very small car - an older one - from the early 1980's - with a hell alot of miles on it and hell alot of wear and tear - would you try to haul more or less weight?

Sure... so you remove the entire A/C system from the car (let's assume it's currently winter time) because you have no need for it. Then the summer comes along... you might be wanting that A/C back again, but the driver has no idea how to do that. Even worse, in cases like with nLited installations, the A/C system has been thrown out altogether!

Poolsharkzz, on Aug 21 2008, 01:37 PM, said:

To make this system run a whole lot better - and performance has been the key issue here - it needs to become a lean, mean, secure, tweaked, slimmed down, updated PC - to make it until the hardware finally gives out or XP finally becomes unsupported on April 14, 2014 or Windows 7 SP1 becomes available and then he can finally upgrade his PC - which is what I am telling all my XP SP3 customers - ride that horse until it either drops dead or something much better (hopefully) comes your way.

The system described in the original post is a very typical 2000/2001 computer. Those specs are exactly what XP was originally designed to run on.

Poolsharkzz, on Aug 21 2008, 01:37 PM, said:

At home, I have DSL and with HostsMan / HostsServer, OpenDNS, Speed Guide's TCP Optimizer, and a few well-documented changed system settings and the standard registry tweaks that appear at this forum: I actually have gained speed versus lost performance in my internet connectivity...

I suggest you check again. You're suggesting that a DNS lookup from a web server is faster than looking up that same entry from cache? Your hosts file might be helping things by blocking ads, but otherwise, the setup that you described will lead to slower page load times.

Poolsharkzz, on Aug 21 2008, 01:37 PM, said:

Again, its all about leaving as much resources available (Ram, CPU cycles) for other things to use - he has limited resources - kinda like going to the bar with only $20.00 bucks in your pocket - you can have only a few beers and then you gotta go home.

Here is a thought: Imagine simply setting his system so that the kernel stays put in Ram versus paging back to file - speeding up performance - what if the system couldn't do it because he has 20-30 services running and the 2-3MB needed for DNS Client? He only has 512mb Ram.

Erm... "only" 512MB of RAM? Look at the recommended system requirements! You're talking about "only" 512MB when that was the equivalent of modern systems with 8 or 16GB. 512MB was a LOT of RAM back then. My mother's system, with 256MB, boots up, and task manager reports 100MB free.

Poolsharkzz, on Aug 21 2008, 01:37 PM, said:

I have one huge registry "tune-up tweak file" that merges most of the better known and proven registry tweaks - and removes most of the unnecessary garbage from the registry: like unneeded time zones (who cares what time it is in Korea? or Russia?), unneeded languages (tell me you speak Chinese or Arabic) windows classic color schemes (when the last time you used Rose, Wheat, Teal, Rust, or Pumpkin?) don't ya "love" them tool tips?, and to tighten down system security, especially with Outlook Express and the Windows Media Player.

I remove approx 17% of the registry - Yes, that is how much garbage is really in there - as well as I remove approx 50-70mb from the system itself in terms of deleting unnecessary folders and files, uninstall unneeded Micro$oft programs (Messenger, NetMeeting, Dr. Watson - there is a winner!), of course tweaking background services and changing a few system settings for performance, deleting a few unused cursors and a few unnecessary fonts, wallpapers (Autumn or Bliss?) and screen savers (I download a few cool ones ported back from Vista, like Bubbles!), hotfix uninstall backup files, interactive training files, and uninstall the many 3rd party "trial-wares" which are mostly adware / spyware -

I have achieved performance gains benchmarked by up to 40%! (versus a fresh, default OEM install)

I'd like to see this "40%" performance gain. Benchmarking tools test raw CPU power, or memory access speeds, or disk access speeds - none of which are going to be affected by additional registry entries. There have been far too many discussions and reviews about this, and they've all been turned down. Read the results for yourself.

Poolsharkzz, on Aug 21 2008, 01:37 PM, said:

I usually spend a day and a half with a client's computer - 12-14 hours - all this for $450.00 clams - less than half the price to purchase a modern, desktop PC with 2.0+ Gigs of Memory and today's ultra-fast hard drives to run Vista correctly.

Wow... you charge people half the cost of a modern computer... to make their old computer slightly faster, if not more broken?

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 21 2008, 01:58 PM, said:

Agreed 100%, Poolsharkzz. I've ran underpowered computer systems for a long while till i finally saved money to afford a proper rig. And i've learnt a lot this way.

It's funny how the mods of this forum reply to any affirmation not matching their views with "Are you drunk?" or "I agree, but what happens later?" I am a moderator of a forum myself. And when the admin promoted me for helping out people and being nice, i saw that as a huge privilege. And i still enjoy moderating to the day, and actually keep on topic, and when i give warnings or bans it's because they deserved it. Of course, to most of you i may count as "a kid", i'm only 17. But there's one thing you gotta realize - kids these days have so many more ways to learn, and learn faster. And you should never forget that you should never despise those that are, in some way, lower than you, because you can learn a lot from anyone in this world.

Please tell me if I've been rude or off-topic in any way here. I've simply been trying to debunk several myths that have been brought up by Poolsharkzz (which have come up time and time again over the past 7 years).

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 21 2008, 01:58 PM, said:

Me and Poolsharkzz gave on-topic advice. You come and say something that translates into "he should just get a new computer". What if he doesn't need a new computer??? What if he's happy with his current computer and doesn't want more?

Again, I never suggested that he simply get a new computer, but rather that a default clean install of XP would probably do a world of good.

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 21 2008, 01:58 PM, said:

Yeah, i do have a pretty high-end rig at home, but it took a while of running crap PCs to save money for that. And what do i get - 3 graphics cards fried in 8 months (warranty ftw), and my current HD3870 suffering from a design flaw which makes the memory overheat and artifact - it needs a new cooler. But why should i buy a new cooler to fix a flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place? Anyway, i realized i'm much more happy with my dual-PIII than my C2D. I tweak at it all day when it needs tweaking, but once i'm done tweaking it runs without a single hitch, for months on end.

So why should the OP's uncle get a new computer with Vista if he can check his email just fine on his current PIII?

Your hardware troubles are the reason why I'm rarely a first adopter of new technology. Up until this past year, I've always worked on older hardware. My main workstation up until last summer was also a dual PIII 1GHz system with 1GB of RAM. My new computers were built, installed, and updated, and the only major problems I've had have been from a couple of sticks of bad RAM (hey - it happens).

[jcarle]

I tend to use this a lot lately... are you guys drunk? (Zxian excluded)

Anyone who writes Microsoft with a $, refers to BlackViper and suggests turning off the DNS Client then replacing it with a hosts file shouldn't be distributing that kind of poor advice. Those are the people that drive systems into a mess that professional technicians such as ourselves end up cleaning up for people. You want a fast and reliable system? Clean install XP with SP3, install the latest drivers and upgrade the RAM and you'll have a wonderful system without the mess caused by those so called "tweaks". Increasing the amount of memory, even in an old system will outway the benefits of any possible "tweak" you can imagine.

This post has been edited by jcarle: 21 August 2008 - 06:21 PM

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

jcarle, on Aug 22 2008, 03:15 AM, said:

I tend to use this a lot lately... are you guys drunk? (Zxian excluded)

Anyone who writes Microsoft with a $, refers to BlackViper and suggests turning off the DNS Client then replacing it with a hosts file shouldn't be distributing that kind of poor advice. Those are the people that drive systems into a mess that professional technicians such as ourselves end up cleaning up for people. You want a fast and reliable system? Clean install XP with SP3, install the latest drivers and move up to 2GB of RAM and you'll have a wonderful system without the mess caused by those so called "tweaks".

Why do we all need to move up to 2GB RAM? XP's minimum requirement is 64MB btw, and it actually runs with lower than that. And his uncle's mobo doesn't even support more than 512MB.

Do you think everything that Microsoft makes is perfect? If it were, nobody would've been tweaking it as we would've been all happy with it out of the box. I've been a happy TinyXP user for 2 years and continue to be. My retail copy of XP (which i bought only after SP1 came out btw, i ran 98SE till then) has been sitting on the shelf for a lot of time. And my retail Vista Ultimate 64 has been nothing but a waste of money.

And what exactly did BlackViper do wrong? Explain please. And no, i'm not drunk. Why does everybody that tweaks his Windows OS have to be drunk? Oh, and i write Microsoft whatever way i want to. It's called freedom of speech.

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: 21 August 2008 - 06:30 PM

[Zxian]

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 21 2008, 04:24 PM, said:

Do you think everything that Microsoft makes is perfect? If it were, nobody would've been tweaking it as we would've been all happy with it out of the box. I've been a happy TinyXP user for 2 years and continue to be. My retail copy of XP (which i bought only after SP1 came out btw, i ran 98SE till then) has been sitting on the shelf for a lot of time. And my retail Vista Ultimate 64 has been nothing but a waste of money.

No, I don't believe that everything MS makes is perfect, but having dealt with several OSes on various hardware, I'd say that it's better than the rest at a lot of things.

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 21 2008, 04:24 PM, said:

And what exactly did BlackViper do wrong?

BV makes it seem as though you can disable those "unnecessary" services at will and not worry about the possible repercussions of doing so. The worst part of it all - if something breaks, you often don't know which service it is that is required without a lot of trial and error.

If you want to disable services on your own computer, go for it. If you're doing work for others, chances are you'll end up disabling something that's going to cause them problems later. While this might end up giving Poolsharkzz more customers in the long run, I think it's just wrong, and isn't worth the "OMG 3 seconds faster boot" that you get.

EVERY time I nlited my system or started tweaking services, something broke in the end. My laptop had a plain vanilla install of XP on it for two years. No tweaks, no services disabled, just plain XP and updates. Number of incompatibilities with software - zero. Number of times I needed to enable a service for something - zero. It worked. Plain and simple.

I'd bet you guys a beer that the OP's uncle would rather have a system that works reliably rather than one that's 10% faster. As you're typing your reply - is your browser that much faster at responding to your typing if you've twaked your system?

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Zxian, on Aug 22 2008, 03:45 AM, said:

No, I don't believe that everything MS makes is perfect, but having dealt with several OSes on various hardware, I'd say that it's better than the rest at a lot of things.

Such as? A lot of talk but no hard examples.

Zxian, on Aug 22 2008, 03:45 AM, said:

BV makes it seem as though you can disable those "unnecessary" services at will and not worry about the possible repercussions of doing so. The worst part of it all - if something breaks, you often don't know which service it is that is required without a lot of trial and error.

That happens if you don't read the service descriptions.

Zxian, on Aug 22 2008, 03:45 AM, said:

If you want to disable services on your own computer, go for it. If you're doing work for others, chances are you'll end up disabling something that's going to cause them problems later. While this might end up giving Poolsharkzz more customers in the long run, I think it's just wrong, and isn't worth the "OMG 3 seconds faster boot" that you get.

When i disable stuff on other peoples' computers i only disable those that i'm sure they aren't going to need, and ask about it. "Do you need LAN networking" "No, i only use the internet." 2 services less. And i leave a little batch file. "Well, if you're ever going to need it, run this and reboot." No one ever called me back saying stuff doesn't work, and i've done quite a few installs.

Zxian, on Aug 22 2008, 03:45 AM, said:

EVERY time I nlited my system or started tweaking services, something broke in the end. My laptop had a plain vanilla install of XP on it for two years. No tweaks, no services disabled, just plain XP and updates. Number of incompatibilities with software - zero. Number of times I needed to enable a service for something - zero. It worked. Plain and simple.

I'd bet you guys a beer that the OP's uncle would rather have a system that works reliably rather than one that's 10% faster. As you're typing your reply - is your browser that much faster at responding to your typing if you've twaked your system?

That's bad luck for you. The furtherly tweaked TinyXP Platinum 2 install i have here on my dual-PIII is 2 years old, and survived being moved from an IDE HDD to a SATA one attached to a PCI controller card, 2 CPU upgrades and one mobo swap. It still boots in 20 seconds. 17 processes at idle, that's including the Vista Drive indicator, ATi Tray Tools, and the two processes for my multimedia keyboard and special mouse buttons, so that's 13 Windows processes. It does everything i need it to do, and never had any software which didn't install. Oh, and i still get automatic updates.

And tell me, do you need the wireless monitor always running on a computer that will never have a wireless card? Or the Server/Workstation services on a computer that will never need to share files via LAN? Or even worse, Remote Registry??? Those are only potential security holes. The more you plug from the get go, the less you have to deal with later on.

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: 21 August 2008 - 07:10 PM

[jcarle]

You know what's wrong with what you're doing? Everything.

You want proof that there's nothing wrong with XP as it is? Try asking the MILLIONS of users that use XP as is without "tweaking" it. nLite/vLite are the busiest sub-forums of this entire forum, and they're not praise and celebration posts either. Most of the posts in the nLite/vLite section are posts about problems and complaints of broken parts of Windows after "tweaking" the OS. The same goes with complaints about BlackViper's "tweaks". It's funny, you never hear people complain that an up to date install of XP with up to date drivers doesn't work, because guess what, it just does.

Oh and yes, you can spell Microsoft any way you want, spelling it with a $ just proves your lack of education.

This post has been edited by jcarle: 21 August 2008 - 07:58 PM

[CoffeeFiend]

I can only agree with Zxian and jcarle here, on all points. Most of those tweaks do very little in terms of performance, and quite often people get problems from them later on -- just like we see everyday in the *lite sections (I've removed X, now how to add it back? what to keep so app xyz works? etc). Large hosts file can be a problem (and kind of suck, even for ad blocking), it's misusing it at best.

Anyone who actually charges customers large sums of money for doing such things to their PCs are only doing them a disservice. For $450 you'd get quite an upgrade (or an entire new computer even). Any competent tech or shop would sell them an upgrade kit for half that, which would actually give them a real performance boost, instead of charging a LOT of money for almost no difference and potentially breaking things/creating their customers more trouble.

[Mr Snrub]

While the thread is still a "healthy debate" and keeping an eye on the temperature...

Zxian, on Aug 22 2008, 02:45 AM, said:

If you want to disable services on your own computer, go for it. If you're doing work for others, chances are you'll end up disabling something that's going to cause them problems later. While this might end up giving Poolsharkzz more customers in the long run, I think it's just wrong, and isn't worth the "OMG 3 seconds faster boot" that you get.

I wanted to +1 this.

The focus appears to have been on components being stripping components from the install media, deselected during install or disabled post-install with a view to saving resources with the expectation that this implicitly leads to better performance.
Those "erring on the side of caution" are suggesting that care is taken to measure correctly that there is in fact any difference in performance and also that the end user is aware of and understands what was changed so that future issues that crop up can have their root cause identified more readily.
(In the corporate world this awareness changes more to "security hardening" and "group policies" having strange side effects - the latter at least can be filtered out for troubleshooting.)

Trying to increase performance through tweaks requires a good understanding of what the components do for you or the system, a simple paragraph that describes what a service does with a recommendation that "it should be okay to disable this - try it and see" doesn't cut it IMO.
I feel that Black Viper's list is a collection of such statements that people often follow blindly and acts as a placebo.

Performance needs to be measured accurately, with a baseline and changes being made individually to observe their impact - also as Zxian mentioned "startup times" are nowhere near as important as "operational speed" - with S3 sleep mode boot times become completely irrelevant for workstations and I see this being the future, and for most applications once they are loaded into memory their performance is unlikely to be affected by other consumers of virtual memory (as unneeded ones will already have been paged to disk anyway).

Trying to measure how optimized a system is based on the amount of memory (physical or virtual) is committed, how long it takes to start up or where CPU cycles are being spent (when not at 100% for long periods of time) can turn out to be inaccurate, so a false economy to try to "fix".

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Mr Snrub, on Aug 22 2008, 11:34 AM, said:

I feel that Black Viper's list is a collection of such statements that people often follow blindly and acts as a placebo.

Performance needs to be measured accurately, with a baseline and changes being made individually to observe their impact - also as Zxian mentioned "startup times" are nowhere near as important as "operational speed" - with S3 sleep mode boot times become completely irrelevant for workstations and I see this being the future, and for most applications once they are loaded into memory their performance is unlikely to be affected by other consumers of virtual memory (as unneeded ones will already have been paged to disk anyway).

Trying to measure how optimized a system is based on the amount of memory (physical or virtual) is committed, how long it takes to start up or where CPU cycles are being spent (when not at 100% for long periods of time) can turn out to be inaccurate, so a false economy to try to "fix".

I don't follow BlackViper's guide blindly. Actually, when i first messed up with services i had no idea that such a site existed.

Okay, let me give you a real-world example. My dual-PIII used to take over 2 minutes to boot, and most of that 2 minutes the bar just scrolled and scrolled, with no HDD activity. I opened up Device Manager and disabled the onboard SCSI controller that i wasn't using since i have a SATA card. Now it takes 40 seconds, half of which are the hardware checks - Windows itself boots in 20 seconds.

In your opinion, should i be so nice to let Windows handle it, and enable the SCSI controller back so i have time for a snack till my computer boots? And unfortunately S3 doesn't work on this machine.

@ jcarle: If everything i've been doing was wrong, i couldn't have been able to type this post since a lot of people would be chasing me and trying to kick my butt.

Lack of education huh? Well, i still have a lot to learn, but i wouldn't put it that way.

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: 22 August 2008 - 03:45 AM

[Ponch]

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 21 2008, 11:58 PM, said:

Me and Poolsharkzz gave on-topic advice. You come and say something that translates into "he should just get a new computer".

At this point you should stop asking people if they read the thread. Honestly, out of the blue statements and derailing totally off topic.

Zxian, on Aug 22 2008, 02:45 AM, said:

If you want to disable services on your own computer, go for it. If you're doing work for others, chances are you'll end up disabling something that's going to cause them problems later. While this might end up giving Poolsharkzz more customers in the long run, I think it's just wrong, and isn't worth the "OMG 3 seconds faster boot" that you get.

I said it first but I still back you up.
As also stated by Zxian and by the OP (read the thread ?) the computer we are talking about is more than acceptable on the hardware level. People talk about their experience "from the times of Win3.11"... have you ever ran a properly installed XP on a PIII 800 with 256 RAM, sent mails or surf the internet with it ? Exactly, no problemo. So say "fairly under-powered computer" for this 1.2GHz-512, not at all.
I'm sure Black Viper knows an awfull lot about services, but I'm also sure he formats his PC at least 10 times a year. This is not what the OP is planning to do. This computer needs to be properly reinstalled, in a few hours, not 12-14, have a drink with the family up North. And maybe come back in 4 years and do it again.
Microsoft makes Windows XP the best they can to
1) make it look good so it sells (that's the unneeded bit for not so "hard core tweakers")
2) make it work out of the box for 99.99 % of buyers, this implies unneeded components, but does not translate in "making a bad product".
And it sure doesn't mean anyone replying here knows "the" uncle best than Bill Gates knows the uncle. None of us knows the uncle, only the OP, but maybe MS has a little understanding of their users and of their product.

I'm going off topic as well. I wonder why this thread is turning almost emotional for some posters. I'll stop here.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

I don't see where i got emotional... Anyway, i'll be leaving. See you later.

[techywiz2007]

nvm... had a post written, but didn't read the whole topic, rendering my post irrelevant.

This post has been edited by techywiz2007: 22 August 2008 - 04:54 AM

[Mr Snrub]

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 22 2008, 11:41 AM, said:

Okay, let me give you a real-world example. My dual-PIII used to take over 2 minutes to boot, and most of that 2 minutes the bar just scrolled and scrolled, with no HDD activity. I opened up Device Manager and disabled the onboard SCSI controller that i wasn't using since i have a SATA card. Now it takes 40 seconds, half of which are the hardware checks - Windows itself boots in 20 seconds.

In your opinion, should i be so nice to let Windows handle it, and enable the SCSI controller back so i have time for a snack till my computer boots?.

In your situation I would have gone into the BIOS and disabled the unused hardware so it is not even presented to Windows when it comes to device enumeration.

The example you gave was machine-specific, and if there isn't an option in the BIOS to disable the onboard SCSI controller then sure, Device Manager would be the way forward - but that has zero impact on system performance and I would say the delay is down to the driver or BIOS, not the OS.

Any post-install customization takes you further from the "out of the box" configuration and into territory where all sorts of issues (possibly way, way down the line) can occur - disabling devices in Device Manager to me is a last resort, and disabling Windows services via the Services Control Panel applet is something to look at for servers to be deployed in DMZs or secured environments as a security hardening procedure, not for performance.

Yes, you can eke out a relatively small decrease in startup time and virtual memory consumption with knowledge of the OS, your system and what you have changed - but I wouldn't do this for other users' systems (only 3rd party service tweaking when they are causing problems, like someone who had Norton and Norman anti-virus installed at the same time which deadlocked the system ~30 seconds after startup and neither would uninstall properly).

[jcarle]

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 22 2008, 05:41 AM, said:

Okay, let me give you a real-world example. My dual-PIII used to take over 2 minutes to boot, and most of that 2 minutes the bar just scrolled and scrolled, with no HDD activity. I opened up Device Manager and disabled the onboard SCSI controller that i wasn't using since i have a SATA card. Now it takes 40 seconds, half of which are the hardware checks - Windows itself boots in 20 seconds.

In your opinion, should i be so nice to let Windows handle it, and enable the SCSI controller back so i have time for a snack till my computer boots? And unfortunately S3 doesn't work on this machine.

@ jcarle: If everything i've been doing was wrong, i couldn't have been able to type this post since a lot of people would be chasing me and trying to kick my butt.

Lack of education huh? Well, i still have a lot to learn, but i wouldn't put it that way.

This is further proof that you simply don't know what you're doing. It took me about 90 seconds to find page 4-27 of the manual for your Gigabyte GA-6BXDS. That includes the time it took for me to download it. After which, I saw that Mr Snrub had already beat me to my point, set "Onboard PCI SCSI chip" to "Disabled".

There are a several dozen ways you can increase a system's performance without doing anything to affect end user experience. Disabling services is not one of them.

Disabling un-used devices in the BIOS. Moving the pagefile to a 2nd physical drive if available. Changing the XP theme to Classic. Defragmenting. Those go a lot further than any service you can disable and don't change the end user experience.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Mr Snrub, on Aug 22 2008, 03:01 PM, said:

The example you gave was machine-specific, and if there isn't an option in the BIOS to disable the onboard SCSI controller then sure, Device Manager would be the way forward - but that has zero impact on system performance and I would say the delay is down to the driver or BIOS, not the OS.

Any post-install customization takes you further from the "out of the box" configuration and into territory where all sorts of issues (possibly way, way down the line) can occur - disabling devices in Device Manager to me is a last resort, and disabling Windows services via the Services Control Panel applet is something to look at for servers to be deployed in DMZs or secured environments as a security hardening procedure, not for performance.

Well, of course it was machine-specific. Are there any "generic" computers out there? As a matter of fact i had the SCSI controller disabled in the BIOS, but XP was still detecting it. And of course tweaking services takes you away from the "out of the box" configuration, it lets you set up your system the way you want it, and use only the parts that you really need.

Mr Snrub, on Aug 22 2008, 03:01 PM, said:

Yes, you can eke out a relatively small decrease in startup time and virtual memory consumption with knowledge of the OS, your system and what you have changed - but I wouldn't do this for other users' systems (only 3rd party service tweaking when they are causing problems, like someone who had Norton and Norman anti-virus installed at the same time which deadlocked the system ~30 seconds after startup and neither would uninstall properly).

I don't exactly tweak a lot on other peoples' systems, i said so above. I don't have time for that anyway, but i ask what they run and only turn off a couple of things they really don't need, and also leave batch files for re-enabling them, named "click here if you have trouble with (wifi, lan sharing, blah blah blah). Simple, fast, and effective.

It's basically the same reason why people tune cars. Some tune them for performance, some tune them for better fuel savings. If all cars would've been perfect, no one would need to tune them, and the ones who would try would eventually revert them to stock configuration as they ran better that way. Exactly the same goes for computers as well, regardless if it's software or hardware.

When you need to use all those services or have resources to waste, you just leave everything as it is (and install Norton ). Honestly, i had to disable more than half of Vista 64's "features" (retail copy, not pre-tweaked in any way) to have it feel right. I kept Aero (actually Aero and DX10 are the only reasons i run Vista), but disabled all its animations and stuff. And then i found myself doing half of my stuff in a 32-bit XP VM, because just about everything except Crysis, Opera and Solitaire, crashes under Vista. And no, it's not due to my tweaking, i reverted to out-of-the-box configuration yet it still does the same.

I don't mind a pretty interface as long as it's still functional and doesn't slow down my work. But when it does, it's time to trim it a little.

Edit: jcarle, i know my boards' BIOSes like i know the palm of my hand. Onboard SCSI IS set to Disabled yet XP still picks it up. Want a photo of that? And if you mention the classic theme, why shouldn't one disable the themes service entirely? The Classic theme is still sluggish compared to disabling the service. Please tell me a piece of software that explicitly requires the Themes service enabled.

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: 22 August 2008 - 09:22 AM

[jcarle]

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 22 2008, 11:19 AM, said:

As a matter of fact i had the SCSI controller disabled in the BIOS, but XP was still detecting it.

I think there's a higher chance that you didn't disable the right items in the BIOS more then there are that XP was detecting disabled items.

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 22 2008, 11:19 AM, said:

i ask what they run and only turn off a couple of things they really don't need, and also leave batch files for re-enabling them, named "click here if you have trouble with (wifi, lan sharing, blah blah blah).

I'm willing to bet if we interviewed any of those people, they'd pretty much say anything because they probably don't even know what they need or not in terms of windows components. I'm sure that if asked today they neither know what a batch file is nor do they remember where or what those icons you told them about are.

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 22 2008, 11:19 AM, said:

It's basically the same reason why people tune cars.

People tune their OWN cars, not their neighbour's. I don't walk around the neighbourhood trying to see if I can help one guy get an extra 2 miles a gallon on his drive to work. I'll help when something's BROKEN and I'll help repair it to it's original working state but that's nowhere near the same as what you're doing to other people's computers. People like cars because they open the door, they start the car and they drive. People want to do the same with they computers. People want to be able to go to the store, buy a webcam, plug it in and talk to their grandkids on MSN. They do NOT want to sit at their computer and get frustrated because their webcam doesn't install or doesn't work because of some service that you thought was wise of you to disable since they "didn't need it".

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 22 2008, 11:19 AM, said:

Honestly, i had to disable more than half of Vista 64's "features" (retail copy, not pre-tweaked in any way) to have it feel right. I kept Aero (actually Aero and DX10 are the only reasons i run Vista), but disabled all its animations and stuff. And then i found myself doing half of my stuff in a 32-bit XP VM, because just about everything except Crysis, Opera and Solitaire, crashes under Vista. And no, it's not due to my tweaking, i reverted to out-of-the-box configuration yet it still does the same.

Vista does a fine job of adjusting itself to your hardware configuration but it can't make miracles if you're running it on underpowered hardware. People such as yourself always want to have all the latest and greatest but don't want to invest in the hardware needed to run it properly. It's funny, on my machine, I run Vista 64 Ultimate that has more "features" then any other version of windows. On top of that, I usually multitask to the point where I have over a hundred something processes running simultaneously. Not to mention that while I'm doing all of that, I'm often doing things like transcoding DVDs in the background. Yet, even with all that going on, Vista is faster on my machine then XP was. You take a F1 driver, throw him into a Pinto and expect him to win the world cup.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

jcarle, on Aug 22 2008, 06:40 PM, said:

Th3_uN1Qu3, on Aug 22 2008, 11:19 AM, said:

As a matter of fact i had the SCSI controller disabled in the BIOS, but XP was still detecting it.

I think there's a higher chance that you didn't disable the right items in the BIOS more then there are that XP was detecting disabled items.

Fine, genius. BIOS shots coming right up. Point out what i did wrong.

jcarle, on Aug 22 2008, 06:40 PM, said:

I'm willing to bet if we interviewed any of those people, they'd pretty much say anything because they probably don't even know what they need or not in terms of windows components. I'm sure that if asked today they neither know what a batch file is nor do they remember where or what those icons you told them about are.

You know what, i was lying about the batch files. I rarely do things like that, and only do them to people who know what this stuff is about. And if you leave a big "CLICK HERE TO MAKE THAT WORK" icon, you can be sure everyone's gonna notice it.

jcarle, on Aug 22 2008, 06:40 PM, said:

People tune their OWN cars, not their neighbour's. I don't walk around the neighbourhood trying to see if I can help one guy get an extra 2 miles a gallon on his drive to work.

I don't walk around my neighborhood tweaking XP installs either. On the other hand, if someone asks me to, i do it.

jcarle, on Aug 22 2008, 06:40 PM, said:

Vista does a fine job of adjusting itself to your hardware configuration but it can't make miracles if you're running it on underpowered hardware. People such as yourself always want to have all the latest and greatest but don't want to invest in the hardware needed to run it properly. It's funny, on my machine, I run Vista 64 Ultimate that has more "features" then any other version of windows. On top of that, I usually multitask to the point where I have over a hundred something processes running simultaneously. Not to mention that while I'm doing all of that, I'm often doing things like transcoding DVDs in the background. Yet, even with all that going on, Vista is faster on my machine then XP was. You take a F1 driver, throw him into a Pinto and expect him to win the world cup.

Look at my sig, first computer. Do you think that is underpowered for Vista Ultimate 64? I don't have money for Raptors, but shouldn't a 3.5GHz dual core and 6GB RAM be enough? I'll get an E8400 soon and will take it over 4GHz, maybe that will be better. But other than this CPU upgrade i really haven't got money for Raptors, SSDs or the like. I REFUSED to upgrade to Vista till i got the extra 4GB RAM, i ran XP SP2.

I don't multitask to the point that i have 100 processes open (i suppose more than half of that are Windows processes in your case) but i do run a few BIG apps at the same time (Photoshop + Sound Forge + XVI32 on 20-200MB files), and 3 virtual machines. They work fine, but stuff like AVIPreview or VirtualDub (even the x64 version) or OllyDbg crash mysteriously, so i run them in the XP 32 virtual machine, which is considerably slower.

I didn't say Vista 64 is slower than XP. With all that RAM (and yes it is dual channel, 2x 1GB + 2x 2GB) it runs faster than XP 32-bit which would only be able to see half the RAM anyway, however it's much more buggy.

Edit: Here are the BIOS shots from my dual-PIII. If you'd kindly show me what i did wrong, i would really appreciate that.

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: 22 August 2008 - 11:14 AM

[Poolsharkzz]

Wow-whee, Zow-whee!!!

Sorry guys, I am on a different time zone than most, so I tend to get behind in all this discussion - Sooooooooo exciting!

For the record - Yes, we are all "professionals" here, some more than others - this is a very "healthy debate" - with different points of view - which is good - keeping an eye on the temperature is indeed quite prudent - keep sharing - but keep that in mind...

I agree with Th3_uN1Qu3 - older systems are fine - if you know how to take care of them. I ran for 9 years with Win ME on a Intel Celeron 633 Mhz with 256mb PC 100 Ram and a 14 Gig Hard Drive that I orginally purchased in 1998 with Win 98 - it did okay - a few BSOD evey now and then, lock ups, crashes, and the like that was all part of having Win ME - and Yes - super-tweaked and tuned for max performance and speed!

"Remove the entire A/C system from the car" - That would be like removing the spare tire out of the trunk - come on, now! I think you stretched that quite a bit farther (say from New York to LA) than I usually go - or tweak - or remove - for that matter...

Besides, do you really NEED the A/C system? No!

Do you really need the A/C system in a car for it to run properly? No!

By removing the entire A/C system from the car, will the car be a little bit lighter and thus you might get a little better fuel economy? Yes!

Would I remove the entire A/C system from the car without the owner's permission?

Do you see where I am going with this? You not compairing apples to apples.

All Operating Systems since Win 98 come "out of the box" with dial-up settings as the default internet connectivity settings standard - check it out next time...

MTU, TTL, MaxConnectionsPerServer, MaxConnectionsPer01Server, etc. - if I have DSL or a Cable broadband connection, I would want my system setup to handle such.

How about simply removing the registry key that calls out to the network looking for any shared folders or printer? Or changing the system's memory usage settings from "Programs" to System Cache"? Or removing most of the Visual Effects, DNS errors caching, enable smooth scrolling, Clear Type, and a whole hosts of things...

Properly tuning up an engine is a far cry from removing the entire A/C system.

nLite/vLite - Don't use them, I know very little about them, and don't see the need for them, and was never part of the original topic. At a later date, maybe I'll research.

"EVERY time I nlited my system or started tweaking services, something broke"

Again, I have to agree with Th3_uN1Qu3 - read the service descriptions - learn about them and what they do and how they fit together into the bigger picture.

* Microsoft has this amazing website stocked full to the rafters with all kinds of data that pertains to services, the registry, drivers, updates, Kbs, - the whole ball of wax...

Do you need the website address? It's www.....

Spelling it with a $ just proves your lack of education - Do you really want to go there? I really hope not - it would be quite silly on your part - you need to think about what you say before you say it - you will make yourself look like a fool...

Just because you cannot recognize what "Micro$oft" means does not give you the right to throw a punch...

Computers 101 - It's an "old school" saying in certian circles, meaning that at the time because Micro$oft was rolling out a new OS, what, every 6 months it seemed?, it would get expensive to keep up - and it did for some - and some got angry - thus the dollar sign.

Half way down the page: http://en.wikipedia....itical_spelling

Not too common to see it spelled that way any more - My hope was that there were a few "old schoolers" here at the forum.

"You want proof that there's nothing wrong with XP as it is?" Nobody said nothing was wrong with a default install setup of XP - nobody.

* Update: The XPize & Vise Projects

"For $450 you'd get quite an upgrade (or an entire new computer even)."

Oh Yes - you are correct - I totally agree - a substandard, under-powered processor, very minimum amount of Ram that's under-quality, MAYBE last year's HD Drive model - weak speed, FSB, and storage capacity - weak Optical Drive: CD read / burn maybe, no DVD Burn, no HD, no Flat Panel Monitor included, crap Video Card, crap Sound Card, crap Graphics Card, crap Network Card, no Speakers, just a 101 keyboard, a roller ball Mouse and Pad - and a whole lot of spyware / trialware...

call eMachines today!

To purchase a home system to run Vista correctly and properly you will pay in Chicago anywhere from $950.00 - $1,250.00 plus tax complete - or for a couple of hundred more for a few "extras" - this is a far cry from simply a tune-up or an upgrade...

Foobar to the so-called "Minimum System Requirements" for Vista - I know better, so should you.

Again, we have another person posting who cannot take 5 minutes and read the very first post - or understand the reports given in the first post - HE CANNOT UPGRADE HIS SYSTEM - it would not be in his best interest to do so $$$$$ - wise, the hardware is too out-dated - he would have to purchase a brand new one.

I would not recommend this to anyone, especially when they have everything they need sitting right in front of them. Will I sell a memory upgrade for an older system? Yes! If it's possible to do. Here you cannot - read the first posts!

"Those specs are exactly what XP was originally designed to run on." Yes - XP - before SP1 - we are at SP3+, the key word is "originally" - today is a different story.

"I suggest you check again / DNS lookup from a web server" Okay - if I lived 100,000 miles away from that server - it's located two blocks away from my shop.

Never had any problems with slower page load times - whether I use my ISPs or OpenDNS - I use OpenDNS for proactive security reasons - please read and learn:

http://www.wildersse...ad.php?t=214446

My ISP isn't patched yet - still, I haven't noticed any difference in page load times.

"Wow... you charge people half the cost of a modern computer... to make their old computer slightly faster, if not more broken?" - Again, you really need to read ALL the posts before becoming part of the peanut gallery...

What I do to a system is nothing more that what has been described at this forum:

http://www.msfn.org/...Tweaks-f10.html

I have never had a customer come back into my shop and complain that their system is screwed up or "broken" as you put it. In fact, most of my customers are referrals - meaning they liked what I have done and are happy enough to tell someone else to use my services...

"Broken" TELL ME what I have broken? Describe in detail what I have broken for my review and our peers....

Can you? I doubt it. In fact, I know you can't. Case closed. Feeling a bit silly yet?

"Please tell me if I've been rude or off-topic" Your past that - which again shows that you have not read ANY of the past posts - or know what you're talking about.

"debunk several myths" Do I have to debunk the debunker again? Take a few minutes to READ the past posts! If you do not understand something - try learning!

"I tend to use this a lot lately... are you guys drunk?"

Th3_uN1Qu3, I couldn't have said it better! I have 1GB Ram in my system - I use only a little more than half at any given time - maybe 600mb max? Again - well, Th3_uN1Qu3 said it all!

"Do you think everything that Microsoft makes is perfect?"

Zxain, your response is the only thing you said last night that made any sense!

"Disable those "unnecessary" services" I have already discussed this - I am still looking for someone to answer whether his Uncle NEEDS any of the services I listed.

"is your browser that much faster at responding to your typing" Yes - because I installed a nifty little program called: Prio - Process Priority Saver

http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html

I have the base priority of iexplorer.exe set at "High" and believe it or not there is a very noticable performance improvement all around - try it sometime!

Besides, I use all my systems in a multitasking environment: for word processing, invoices, payroll, taxes, accounts receivable / payable and the like...

I bought my system to run the best it can - so why not improve on what Micro$oft did?

I agree with Mr. Snrub execpt for a few points:

1.) We are not talking about the "corporate world" or "workstations" - this is a home-based system hooked directly into the internet that is very weak on CPU processing power and the Ram itself - not the amount - but the quality...

Which is key here - and I have said this all along - less is sometimes more!

2.) Yes - some folks just take BlackViper's word for it without research - that is why I gave him "The Elder Geek's" website which has detailed explanations - check it out.

In closing, forget all of these posts for a minute and look at the title of the very first post:

"Trimming down a less than reliable XP system"

I've made my point.

poolsharkzz

This post has been edited by Poolsharkzz: 22 August 2008 - 02:28 PM