ms xp myths.docx
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Requirement Myths
4GB RAM Issue
Myth - "Windows XP does not support 4GB of RAM"
Reality- "On any 32-bit Operating System (not only Windows), you only have access to 4GB of
address space by default. A 32-bit Operating System can actually handle 4GB of memory. The issue is
the way in which the hardware allocates memory for its own resources. The hardware needs to
allocate memory space to use for things like the PCI bus, BIOS, the video card and others. It
allocates this from the address space presented to it, which is not necessarily the same as the
amount of physical RAM installed. Also of note, it allocates this memory from top to bottom. The
problem is, when you have 4GB of RAM installed, the amount of physical memory installed is the
same as the address space. If you have 4GB RAM, and the hardware needs to allocate a large chunk
of memory for its own use, and it does this from top to bottom, the memory that is blocked off startsat 4GB and allocates downwards. So, the final amount of RAM the OS will be able to see is the
difference. This is because when it actually allocates for the physical RAM in the system, it has to skip
the chunk that was blocked off by the hardware. Since a 32-bit OS can only see 4GB, the rest of the
RAM is invisible because it is above the 4GB barrier. By using the /PAE switch, you enable the OS to
see above this barrier, and you can see all of your RAM, sometimes. The real problem comes back to
hardware. The OS can only handle whatever resources are shown to it by the hardware BIOS. If the
hardware does not support a large enough addressing range, then it simply won't report anything
above that so the OS is in the dark. If the hardware supports 36-bit PAE Intel Extensions or the AMD
equivalent, and you use an OS that supports PAE, you should be able to enable both and see all of
the RAM."
-Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM?(Jeff Atwood, Software Developer)
-Memory Management - Dude where's my RAM??(Windows Performance Team)
-Why can't I see all of the 4GB of RAM in my machine? (Raymond Chen, Microsoft Software
Engineer)
Notes - Windows XP Home and Professional limit physical address space to 4 GB for driver
compatibility reasons. To use more than 4 GB of RAM you will need to get Windows XP Professional
x64 Edition which supports up to 128 GB of RAM.
-Service Pack 2 Functionality Changed: Memory Protection Technologies(Microsoft)
-Exploring Windows XP Professional x64 Edition(Microsoft)
DOS Game Compatibility
Myth - "You cannot run DOS games on Windows XP."
Reality- "Many MS-DOS-based games will run on Windows XP and acommunityout there is
dedicated to smoothing the way. MS-DOS was a 16-bit platform. Windows 95 meshed 16-bit and 32-
bit code with MS-DOS at its core. Most 16-bit MS-DOS based programs would work fine on Windows
95. Windows 95, 98, and Me were all based on the same core technology (called kernel). Windows XP
is based on a completely different kernel. It's built on code that was introduced in Windows NT,
evolved into Windows 2000, and was enhanced for Windows XP. The Windows NT kernel doesn't haveany MS-DOS components in it at all-it's a pure 32-bit beast. It includes a 16-bit emulator and a
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command prompt mode that looks like MS-DOS. MS-DOS-based games don't have the friendly
installers found in the Windows 9x-based games. You should install MS-DOS-based games from a
command prompt. One of the trickiest parts of making MS-DOS-based games to run on Windows XP
is getting the sound to work. Succeeding at getting your ancient games up and running on Windows
XP can be as rewarding as playing the game itself!"
Notes - If all else fails you can always try the -DOSBox DOS Emulator.
-Getting Older Games to Run on Windows XP(Joel Durham, Windows XP Expert Zone)
-Run Older Programs on Windows XP(Microsoft)
-Troubleshooting MS-DOS-based programs in Windows XP(Microsoft)
NTFS Game Compatibility
Myth - "NTFS is not compatible with games."
Reality- "Your normal software and games could not care less what file system they are being stored
on. As long as it's supported by the operating system you are using, there will be no problem. With
NTFS, however, permissions can play a factor in whether a game runs correctly or not. If you don't
have access to a particular file that's needed by the software, it's not going to work. This is different
than when a file is stored on FAT32, and is probably responsible for the mistaken belief that a game,
or other software, must be compatible with NTFS. This is another good reason to familiarize yourself
with the file and folder permissions in NTFS."
-Using FAT32 and NTFS on the same system(AnandTech)
Notes - There are limitations to the FAT32 file system that can affect certain games, such as a
maximum file size of 4GB.
-Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP(Microsoft)
System Requirements
Myth - "Windows XP requires a high end PC to install and run."
Reality- "Windows XP can be installed on surprisingly low system requirements contrary to popular
opinion. With the average life cycle of a regular PC being roughly 4-6 years, just about any PC beingused today can run Windows XP. The following requirements are Microsoft's "official" minimum
system requirements which I have tested to work fine with the exception of only
64 MB of RAM(performance is poor). Increasing your RAM to 128 MB would be the only upgrade I
would strongly consider as my absolute minimum Windows XP system requirements."
233 MHz CPU (300 MHz Recommended) *
128 MB Recommended (64 MB of RAM minimum supported, limits performance and some features) *
1.5 GB of available hard disk space *
Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
* Actual requirements will vary based on your system configuration and the applications and features
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dosboxhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/dosboxhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/dosboxhttp://www.md4pc.com/questions/83.htmhttp://www.md4pc.com/questions/83.htmhttp://www.md4pc.com/questions/83.htmhttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/appcompat.mspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/appcompat.mspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/appcompat.mspxhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/314106/en-us?spid=1173&sid=globalhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/314106/en-us?spid=1173&sid=globalhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/314106/en-us?spid=1173&sid=globalhttp://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.aspx?i=94http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.aspx?i=94http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.aspx?i=94http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.aspx?i=94http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314106/en-us?spid=1173&sid=globalhttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/appcompat.mspxhttp://www.md4pc.com/questions/83.htmhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox -
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you choose to install. Additional available hard disk space may be required if you are installing over a
network.
Notes - Again 128 MB of RAM is recommended as the minimum, since below that disables some
features, reduces prefetching benefits and reduces overall performance. Anyone who claims Windows
XP will not work with these settings has never actually installed Windows XP on this hardware. Older
systems generally benefit from faster hard drive performance (5400 RPM to 7200 RPM, 40 conductor
IDE cables to 80 conductor ect...) and faster Internet Connections (Dial-up to Broadband) before
upgrading the RAM and so forth. Adding more RAM is almost always a good idea but it is important to
understand what exactly you are trying to improve. The most common complaints on older systems
are loading times and Internet Performance. Windows XP will work fine for basic Office, Email and
Internet use. Many do not realize how lowOffice 2000orOffice XP'sSystem Requirements are either.
These are the minimum requirements for Windows XP NOT any third party software you choose to
use. The system requirements for any third party software must be met to use that software
properly.
-System requirements for Windows XP operating systems(Microsoft)
-XP Requirements(Optimize Guides)
^ TOP
Reliability Myths
Defragmenting wears out your Hard Drive
Myth - "You can wear out your hard drive if you defragment too often."
Reality- "Not true. The truth is, your drive is going to work much harder if you never defrag at all! It
is a common misconception that defragmentation is stressful to disk drives. In reality, fragmentation
results in many more disk accesses. Here is an example: If you have a file that is fragmented into 50
pieces, and you access it twice a day for a week, that's a total of 700 disk accesses (50 x 2 x 7).
Defragmenting the file may cost 100 disk accesses (50 reads + 50 writes), but thereafter only one
disk access will be required to use the file. That's 14 disk accesses over the course of a week (2 x 7),
plus 100 for the defragmentation process = 114 total. 700 accesses for the fragmented computer
versus 114 for the defragmented computer - the benefits are obvious."
- Myth No. 4: You can wear out your hard drive if you defragment too often (Diskeeper)
Windows 95/98/ME vs XP Reliability
Myth - "Windows 95/98/ME is as reliable as XP."
Reality- "Windows XP is 10-30 times more reliable then Windows 95/98/ME. Windows XP Professional
is built on the proven code base of Windows 2000, which features a 32-bit computing architecture,
and a fully protected memory model. Windows XP offers several enhancements that make it the most
reliable version of Windows yet: Application Compatibility, Compatibility Mode, Improved Device and
Hardware Support, Shared DLL Support, Shutdown Event Tracker, Windows Driver Protection, Device
Driver Rollback, Windows Installer, Auto Update, Dynamic Update, Windows Update, Shadow Copy
Integration with Backup, Last Known Good Configuration, Automated System Recovery, System
Restore Enhancements, Error Messaging and Product Support, Online Crash Analysis,"
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- Windows XP Professional ran over 30 times as long without encountering problems as those running
Windows 98 SE.
- None of the Windows XP Professional systems had a single application or operating system failure
during the test period.
- None of the Windows 2000 Professional Gold systems had a single application or operating system
failure during the test period.
- Reliability Improvements in Windows XP Professional (Microsoft)
- Windows XP Reliability Study (eTesting Labs)
- Windows XP: The Rock of Reliability (Microsoft)
^ TOP
Optimization Myths
Also known as "Bad Tweaks" these are frequently recommended and included in various tweaking
programs claiming to improve performance. You will not find them supported with documented
reproducible testing but rather anecdotal claims. In each case they either do absolutely nothing or
even worse, actually hurt performance. For optimizations that work use the Optimize XP guide.
Key
= No Effect on Performance
= Reduces Performance
= Improves Performance
= Causes other Problems
AlwaysUnloadDLL (Disable DLL Caching, Force XP to unload DLLs)
[HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] "AlwaysUnloadDLL"
Myth - "Enabling AlwaysUnloadDLL frees up more memory and improves performance."
Reality- "Adding this Registry Key in Windows 2000 or XP has no effect since this registry key is no
longer supported in Microsoft Windows 2000 or later. The Shell automatically unloads a DLL when its
usage count is zero, but only after the DLL has not been used for a period of time. This inactive
period might be unacceptably long at times, especially when a Shell extension DLL is being debugged.
For operating systems prior to Windows 2000, you can shorten the inactive period by adding this
registry key."
- Debugging with the Shell (Microsoft)
- Problems after you install WinZip version 6.3 or 7.0 (Microsoft)
Clearmem
Myth - "Running Clearmem improves performance by freeing up memory."
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457035.aspxhttp://whitepapers.zdnet.co.uk/0,1000000651,260059554p-39000404q,00.htmhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490859.aspxhttp://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html#tophttp://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html#tophttp://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/OptimizeXP.htmlhttp://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa969286.aspxhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/196480/en-ushttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/196480/en-ushttp://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa969286.aspxhttp://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/OptimizeXP.htmlhttp://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html#tophttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490859.aspxhttp://whitepapers.zdnet.co.uk/0,1000000651,260059554p-39000404q,00.htmhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457035.aspx -
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Reality- "Microsoft's Clearmem, the memory-consuming test tool, is a simulation tool that lets
developers measure the minimum working set for a process and to help system administrators isolate
cache bottlenecks on servers. Clearmem was originally found on the Windows NT Resource Kit 4.0 CD
and can now be found on the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. It allocates and references all
available memory, consuming any inactive pages in the working sets of all processes (including the
cache) and effectively clears the cache of all file data. As Clearmem increases its working set the
working sets of all other processes are trimmed until they contain only pages currently being used
and those most recently accessed. This reduces the performance of all running applications every
time you run this by reducing their amount of available memory, forcing them to needlessly page and
causing any cached file data to have to be reread from disk."
- Chapter 12 - Detecting Memory Bottlenecks (Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Resource
Guide)
- Chapter 15 - Detecting Cache Bottlenecks (Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Resource Guide)
ConservativeSwapfile
System.ini [386Enh] ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
Myth - "Adding ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 to the System.ini file improves performance."
Reality- "The System.ini and Win.ini files are provided in Windows XP for backward compatibility with
16-bit applications (MS-DOS-based programs). They have no effect on the Windows XP paging file
settings which are stored in the Registry. This setting only effects Windows 95/98 operating systems.
The default setting for ConservativeSwapfileUsage is 1 for Windows 95, and 0 (zero) for Windows 98.
On Windows 98 systems you can set ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 under the [386Enh] heading of
the System.ini file causing the system to behave as Windows 95 does, at some cost in overall system
performance."
- INFO: The Windows 98 PageFile_Call_Async_Manager Service (Microsoft)
- Tools for Troubleshooting (Windows XP Professional Resource Kit)
- Why 16-bit DOS and Windows are still with us (Raymond Chen, Microsoft Software Engineer)
DisablePagingExecutive Low Memory Systems, or High Memory Systems
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"DisablePagingExecutive"
Myth - "Setting DisablePagingExecutive to 1 improves performance by preventing the kernel from
paging to disk."
Reality- "DisablePagingExecutive applies only to ntoskrnl.exe. It does not apply to win32k.sys (much
larger than ntoskrnl.exe!), the pageable portions of other drivers, the paged pool and of course the
file system cache. All of which live in kernel address space and are paged to disk. On low memory
systems this can force application code to be needlessly paged and reduce performance. If you have
more than enough RAM for your workload, yes, this won't hurt, but then again, if you have more than
enough RAM for your workload, the system isn't paging very much of that stuff anyway. This setting
is useful when debugging drivers and generally recommended for use only on servers running a
limited well-known set of applications."
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- DisablePagingExecutive (Microsoft)
- Virtual memory vs. paging and all that (2CPU.com)
- Yet another silly set of Windows tweaks (Ed Bott, Author: Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out)
Disk Defragmenter - Built-in
Myth - "The built-in Disk Defragmenter is good enough."
Reality- "This statement would be true if the built-in defragmenter was fast, automatic, and
customizable. Unfortunately, the built-in defragmenter does not have any of these features. The built-
in defragmenter takes many minutes to hours to run. It requires that you keep track of fragmentation
levels, you determine when performance has gotten so bad you have to do something about it, and
then you manually defragment each drive using the built-in defragmentation tool."
Notes - The Disk Defragmenter tool in Windows 2000/XP is based on the commercial version of
Diskeeper. The version that is included with Microsoft Windows 2000/XP provides limited functionalityin maintaining disk performance by defragmenting volumes that use the FAT, the FAT32, or the NTFS
file system. The XP version offers some improvements over the 2000 version but still has the
following limitations:
- It can defragment only local volumes.
- It can defragment only one volume at a time.
- It cannot defragment one volume while scanning another.
- It cannot be easilyscheduled without scripts or third party utilities
- It can run only one Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in at a time.
- Disk Defragmenter Limitations in Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server
2003 (Microsoft)
- Myth No. 1: The 'built-in' defragmenter that comes with Windows is good enough (Diskeeper)
Solid State Drives (SSD) - SSDs perform extremely well on random read operations, defragmenting
files isn't helpful enough to warrant the added disk writing defragmentation produces.
- Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives (Microsoft)
Dr. Watson - Disabling
[HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug]
Myth - "Disabling Dr. Watson improves performance since it is always running."
Reality- "If a program error occurs, Dr. Watson will start automatically but not before unless you
manually start it. Which means disabling Dr. Watson has no effect on system performance. Dr.
Watson (Drwtsn32.exe) for Windows is a program error debugger that gathers information about your
computer when an error (or user-mode fault) occurs with a program. Technical support groups can
use the information that Dr. Watson obtains and logs to diagnose a program error. When an error is
detected, Dr. Watson creates a text file (Drwtsn32.log) that can be delivered to support personnel by
the method they prefer. You also have the option of creating a crash dump file, which is a binary file
that a programmer can load into a debugger. This is valuable information to help troubleshoot asystem problem, thus it makes no sense to disable Dr. Watson."
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/3d3b3c16-c901-46de-8485-166a819af3ad1033.mspx?mfr=truehttp://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?t=10062http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1298http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;227463http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;227463http://www.diskeeper.com/diskeeper/myths/Built-In-Defrag.asphttp://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspxhttp://www.diskeeper.com/diskeeper/myths/Built-In-Defrag.asphttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;227463http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;227463http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1298http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?t=10062http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/3d3b3c16-c901-46de-8485-166a819af3ad1033.mspx?mfr=true -
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Notes - Programs errors should be addressed and not ignored by making sure you are using the latest
non-Beta version of the application that crashed and apply all patches that are available from the
developer of the application. This can also be a warning sign something is wrong or misconfigured
with your system. Use the Diagnose XP Guide to help troubleshoot the most common causes of
system problems.
- Description of the Dr. Watson for Windows (Drwtsn32.exe) Tool (Microsoft)
- How to disable Dr. Watson for Windows (Microsoft)
FAT32 vs. NTFS
Myth - "The FAT32 file system is faster/better than NTFS."
Reality- "NTFS provides performance, reliability, and advanced features not found in any version of
FAT. NTFS features: Built-In Security, Recoverability, Alternate Streams, Custom File Attributes,Compression, Object Permissions, Economical Disk Space Usage using a more Efficient Cluster Size
and Fault Tolerance. Windows XP comes with NTFS 3.1 which includes even more advanced features
such as: Encryption, Disk Quotas, Sparse Files, Reparse Points, Volume Mount Points. None of which
is available with FAT32."
- NTFS vs FAT (NTFS.com)
Performance
"NTFS is built for speed with impressive disk I/O performance on large volumes (Over 400 MB). NTFS
uses a binary tree structure for all disk directories, which reduces the number of times the system
has to access the disk to locate files. This system is best for large directories, and NTFS easily
outperforms FAT32 in these situations. In addition, NTFS automatically sorts files in a folder on the
fly. NTFS gains an edge over FAT32 by using relatively small disk allocation units (cluster sizes) for
NTFS volumes. Smaller clusters prevent wasted disk space on volumes, especially those with
numerous small files. Because NTFS uses small clusters better and has a more efficient design, its
performance doesn't degrade with large volumes, in contrast to FAT's."
"NTFS is generally believed to be slower than FAT. However, with a correctly created NTFS volume,
NTFS performance optimizations, and improved disk defragmentation, NTFS performance (including
the extra "journaling") is equivalent to FAT on small disks and is faster than FAT on large disks.
FAT32 performance is further reduced for volumes larger than 32 GB in two areas:
- Boot time with FAT32 is increased because of the time required to read all of the FAT structure. Thismust be done to calculate the amount of free space when the volume is mounted.
- Read/write performance with FAT32 is affected because the file system must determine the free
space on the disk through the small views of the massive FAT structure. This leads to inefficiencies in
file allocation."
- NTFS vs. FAT (Windows IT Pro Magazine)
- Overview of FAT, HPFS, and NTFS File Systems (Microsoft)
- Windows XP and Storage (Microsoft)
Gaming Performance
"The numbers show...not much difference. In fact, the only test that doesn't show near-perfect parity
is PCMark04, and the difference between the results on the two file systems is less than two percent.HDTach's read and access tests, which respectively measure how fast data can be read from the drive
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and how quickly the drive can locate data, were nearly identical. More importantly, the gaming tests
showed nary a difference in all-important frame rates between the file systems and the cluster sizes.
Based on the uniformity we experienced, we highly recommend that users of Windows XP take
advantage of the NTFS file system. Its gaming prowess matches that of FAT32 and it boasts a healthy
line-up of advantages over its opponent."
- More Gaming Muscle: FAT32 or NTFS? (Joel Durham, Windows XP Expert Zone)
Reliability
"NTFS is a reliable file system. When storing data to disk, NTFS records file I/O events to a special
transaction log. If the system crashes or encounters an interruption, NTFS can use this log to restore
the volume and prevent corruption from an abnormal program termination or system shutdown. NTFS
doesn't commit an action to disk until it verifies the successful completion of the action. This
precaution helps prevent corruption of an NTFS volume. NTFS also supports hot-fixing disk sectors,
where the OS automatically blocks out bad disk sectors and relocates data from these sectors. This
housecleaning happens in the background. An application attempting to read or write data on a hot-
fixed area will never know the disk had a problem."
- NTFS vs. FAT (Windows IT Pro Magazine)
- Working with File Systems (Microsoft)
FAT32 vs. NTFS - Converting
Myth - "Converting FAT32 volumes to NTFS instead of formatting them will reduce performance by
forcing a 512 byte cluster size."
Reality- "Windows XP CONVERT creates the best possible cluster size according to the existing FAT
format. On NTFS volumes, clusters start at sector zero; therefore, every cluster is aligned on the
cluster boundary. For example, if the cluster size was 4K and the sector size was 512 bytes, clusters
will always start at a sector number that is a multiple of 4096/512 for example, 8. However, FAT file
system data clusters are located after the BIOS Parameter Blocks (BPB), reserved sectors, and two
FAT structures. FAT formatting cannot guarantee that data clusters are aligned on a cluster boundary.
In Windows 2000, CONVERT handled this problem by forcing an NTFS cluster size of 512 bytes, which
resulted in reduced performance and increased disk fragmentation. In Windows XP, CONVERT
chooses the best cluster size (4K is the ideal)."
Notes - The FAT32 file system does not use a default cluster size smaller than 4 KB. The maximum
NTFS default cluster size under Windows XP is 4 KB because NTFS file compression is not possible on
drives with a larger allocation size.
- CONVERT.EXE in Windows XP chooses the best cluster size (Windows IT Pro Magazine)
- Default cluster size for FAT and NTFS (Microsoft)
- Description of Default Cluster Sizes for FAT32 File System (Microsoft)
- How NTFS Works (Microsoft)
Free Idle Tasks
Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
Myth - "This will free up processing time from any idle tasks and allow it to be used by the foreground
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application."
Reality- Idle tasks do not use up any resources unless the system is idle and not being used. The
Task Scheduler service will check if the computer is in an idle state every 15 minutes. The computer
is considered to be in an idle state if there is 0% CPU usage and 0% disk input or output for 90% of
the past fifteen minutes and if there is no keyboard or mouse input during this period of time. The
system cannot be running on battery power either. Any user input marks the end of the idle state.
Windows schedules some maintenance tasks when the system is idle and running on AC power. Other
third-party programs and services may be running during system idle time also. To optimize system
performance and reliability, Windows XP is designed to automatically run system maintenance tasks
during system idle time:
- The Disk Layout task (every 3 days)
- The System Restore task
- The Help Services and Data Collection task
The command Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks sole purpose is to allow benchmarks
a simple way to force any pending idle tasks to be executed immediately, without having to wait alengthy period of time.
- Benchmarking on Windows XP (Microsoft)
- Task Idle Conditions (Microsoft)
- Windows XP does not enter standby after the exact period that is configured in the Power Options
profile (Microsoft)
Hiberfil.sys - Deleting
Myth - "It is necessary to delete the Hiberfil.sys before defragmenting."
Reality- "The Hiberfil.sys is a file to which the system's physical memory is written during
hibernation. On resuming from hibernation, the BIOS reads Hiberfil.sys to restore the state of the
computer to its pre-hibernation state. Because the location of the Hibernate file is determined very
early in the startup process, it cannot be moved. It can, however, be defragmented safely at startup
using a commercial defragmenter such as Diskeeper or the freeware utility PageDefrag."
- How Disk Defragmenter Works (Microsoft)
- PageDefrag (Windows Sysinternals)
Solid State Drives (SSD) - Hiberfil.sys is written to and read from sequentially and in large chunks,and thus can be placed on either HDDs or SSDs.
- Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives (Microsoft)
IOPageLockLimit
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement] "IoPageLockLimit"
Myth - "Increasing the IOPageLockLimit will lock more memory for exclusive access by the kernel,
improving performance."
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/benchmark.mspxhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa383561.aspxhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/899975/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899975/http://www.diskeeper.com/diskeeper/home/profeatures.asp?pe=6&RId=778http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc778290.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc778290.aspxhttp://www.diskeeper.com/diskeeper/home/profeatures.asp?pe=6&RId=778http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899975/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899975/http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa383561.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/benchmark.mspx -
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Reality- "Indeed, it does do this but only in an RTM Windows 2000 machine. It does absolutely
nothing in Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 and up, and absolutely nothing in Windows XP. This makes it
effectively useless, since no one in their right minds would be running RTM Windows 2000. The RTM
kernel references IoPageLockLimit. The SP1 kernel does not. Neither do any subsequent editions of
the kernel; neither does the XP kernel in any of its incarnations."
- Killing a Myth or Three (MSFN)
IRQ14=4096
System.ini [386Enh] IRQ14=4096
Myth - "Adding IRQ14=4096 to the System.ini file improves performance."
Reality- "This is a made up nonexistent command that does absolutely nothing. The System.ini and
Win.ini files are provided in Windows XP for backward compatibility with 16-bit applications (MS-DOS-based programs). They have no effect on any Windows XP settings or 32-bit applications which are
stored in the Registry."
- Tools for Troubleshooting (Windows XP Professional Resource Kit)
- Why 16-bit DOS and Windows are still with us (Raymond Chen, Microsoft Software Engineer)
IRQ Priority
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl] "IRQ8Priority"
Myth - "Adjusting the Priority of IRQs especially IRQ 8 improves system performance."
Reality- "IRQs don't even HAVE a concept of "priority" in the NT family; they do have something
called "IRQL" (interrupt request level) associated with them. But the interval timer interrupt is already
assigned a higher IRQL than any I/O devices, second only to the inter-processor interrupt used in an
MP machine. The NT family of OSes don't even use the real-time clock (IRQ 8) for time keeping in the
first place! They use programmable interval timer (8254, on IRQ 0) for driving system time keeping,
CPU time accounting, and so on. IRQ 8 is used for profiling, but profiling is almost never turned on
except in very rare development environments. Even if it was possible it doesn't even make sense
why adjusting the real-time clock priority would boost performance? The real-time clock is associated
with time keeping not CPU frequency. I would not be surprised if this originated in an overclockingforum somewhere. This "tweak" can be found in most XP all-in-one tweaking applications. This is a
perfect example of why they are not recommended."
- Debunking the "Speed Up your Windows XP Box with IRQ Prioritization" Myth (WXPnews)
LargeSystemCache
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement]
"LargeSystemCache"
Myth - "Enabling LargeSystemCache improves desktop/workstation performance."
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Reality- "LargeSystemCache determines whether the system maintains a standard size or a large
size file system cache, and influences how often the system writes changed pages to disk. Increasing
the size of the file system cache generally improves file server performance, but it reduces the
physical memory space available to applications and services. Similarly, writing system data less
frequently minimizes use of the disk subsystem, but the changed pages occupy memory that might
otherwise be used by applications. On workstations this increases paging and causes longer delays
whenever you start a new app. Simply put enable this on a file server and disable it on everything
else."
Notes - "System cache mode is designed for use with Windows server products that act as servers.
System cache mode is also designed for limited use with Windows XP, when you use Windows XP as a
file server. This mode is not designed for everyday desktop use. When you enable System cache
mode on a computer that uses Unified Memory Architecture (UMA)-based video hardware or an
Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), you may experience a severe and random decrease in performance.
For example, this decrease in performance can include very slow system performance, stop errors, an
inability to start the computer, devices or applications that do not load, and system instability. The
drivers for these components consume a large part of the remaining application memory when theyare initialized during startup. Also, in this scenario, the system may have insufficient RAM when the
following conditions occur:
- Other drivers and desktop user services request additional resources.
- Desktop users transfer large files.
By default LargeSystemCache is disabled in Microsoft Windows XP."
- LargeSystemCache (Microsoft)
- Things to consider before you enable System cache mode in Windows XP (Microsoft)
Launch folder windows in a separate process
Myth - "Enabling Launch folder windows in a separate process improves performance."
Reality- "Use this setting if your computer frequently crashes, and you are trying to minimize
problems or troubleshoot. Be aware, however, this process uses more memory and that doing this
could slow down the performance of your computer."
Notes - Windows XP is a very stable operating system and should never Lock-up (freeze), display
Blue Screen Stop Errors or Randomly Reboot. These are all warning signs something is wrong ormisconfigured with your system. Use the Diagnose XP Guide to help troubleshoot the most common
causes of system problems.
- Change folder views and behavior (Microsoft)
NTFS is Fragmentation Free
Myth - "The NTFS File system does not get fragmented and Defragmenters are unnecessary."
Reality- "Even though NTFS is more resistant to fragmentation than FAT, it can and does stillfragment. The reason NTFS is less prone to fragmentation is that it makes intelligent choices about
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where to store file data on the disk. NTFS reserves space for the expansion of the Master File Table,
reducing fragmentation of its structures. In contrast to FAT's first-come, first-served method, NTFS's
method of writing files minimizes, but does not eliminate, the problem of file fragmentation on NTFS
volumes."
- Fragmentation and Defragmentation (PC Guide)
Paging File - Clearing at Shutdown
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement]
"ClearPageFileAtShutdown"
Myth - "Clearing the Paging File at Shutdown improves performance."
Reality- "Enabling this will clear the Window's paging file (Pagefile.sys) during the shutdown process,
so that no unsecured data is contained in the paging file when the shutdown process is complete. Ifyou enable this feature, the shutdown time will be increased. Some third-party programs can
temporarily store unencrypted (plain-text) passwords or other sensitive information in memory.
Because of the Windows virtual memory architecture, this information can be present in the paging
file. Although clearing the paging file is not a suitable substitute for physical security of a computer,
you might want to do this to increase the security of data on a computer while Windows is not
running."
- How to Clear the Windows Paging File at Shutdown (Microsoft)
Paging File - Disabling
Myth - "Disabling the Paging File improves performance."
Reality- "You gain no performance improvement by turning off the Paging File. When certain
applications start, they allocate a huge amount of memory (hundreds of megabytes typically set aside
in virtual memory) even though they might not use it. If no paging file (pagefile.sys) is present, a
memory-hogging application can quickly use a large chunk of RAM. Even worse, just a few such
programs can bring a machine loaded with memory to a halt. Some applications (e.g., Adobe
Photoshop) will display warnings on startup if no paging file is present."
Notes - "In modern operating systems, including Windows, application programs and many systemprocesses always reference memory using virtual memory addresses which are automatically
translated to real (RAM) addresses by the hardware. Only core parts of the operating system kernel
bypass this address translation and use real memory addresses directly. All processes (e.g.
application executables) running under 32 bit Windows gets virtual memory addresses (a Virtual
Address Space) going from 0 to 4,294,967,295 (2*32-1 = 4 GB), no matter how much RAM is
actually installed on the computer. In the default Windows OS configuration, 2 GB of this virtual
address space are designated for each process' private use and the other 2 GB are shared between all
processes and the operating system. RAM is a limited resource, whereas virtual memory is, for most
practical purposes, unlimited. There can be a large number of processes each with its own 2 GB of
private virtual address space. When the memory in use by all the existing processes exceeds the
amount of RAM available, the operating system will move pages (4 KB pieces) of one or more virtual
address spaces to the computer's hard disk, thus freeing that RAM frame for other uses. In Windowssystems, these "paged out" pages are stored in one or more files called pagefile.sys in the root of a
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partition. Virtual Memory is always in use, even when the memory required by all running
processes does not exceed the amount of RAM installed on the system. "
- If I have a Windows XP machine that has lots of memory, can I improve performance by removing
the pagefile? (Windows IT Pro Magazine)
- How to set performance options in Windows XP (Microsoft)
- RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile and all that stuff(Microsoft)
Solid State Drives (SSD) - Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential
writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well. In fact, given typical pagefile
reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there
are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.
- Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives (Microsoft)
Paging File - Moving
Myth - "Moving the Paging File to a different partition on the same drive improves performance."
Reality- "Moving the Paging File (pagefile.sys) to a different partition on the same physical hard
disk drive does not improve performance. Simply using a different partition on the same drive will
result in more head-seeking activity, as the drive jumps between the Windows and paging file
partitions. Even though moving the paging file in this case can have the positive effect of
defragmenting it, the loss in I/O performance out weighs any gains. It is better to simply defragment
the paging file using PageDefrag and keep maximum I/O performance by leaving the paging file
where it is with a single drive setup.
Notes - "If your PC has more then one physical hard drives you can enhance performance by putting
the paging file on a different partition and on a different physical hard disk drive. That way,
Windows can handle multiple I/O requests more quickly. When the paging file is on the boot partition,
Windows must perform disk reading and writing requests on both the system folder and the paging
file. When the paging file is moved to a different partition and a different physical hard disk drive,
there is less competition between reading and writing requests. However, if you remove the paging
file from the boot partition, Windows cannot create a dump file (Memory.dmp) in which to write
debugging information in the event that a kernel mode Stop Error message occurs. This could lead to
extended downtime if you must debug to troubleshoot the Stop error message. The optimal solution
is to create one paging file that is stored on the boot partition, and then create one paging file on
another partition that is less frequently accessed on a different physical hard disk if a different
physical hard disk is available. Additionally, it is optimal to create the second paging file so that itexists on its own partition, with no data or operating-system-specific files. By design, Windows uses
the paging file on the less frequently accessed partition over the paging file on the more heavily
accessed boot partition. An internal algorithm is used to determine which paging file to use for virtual
memory management."
Solid State Drives (SSD) - Paging file location on SSD drives is irrelevant since access time is
identical for every location on SSD drives.
- How to configure paging files for optimization and recovery in Windows XP (Microsoft)
- PageDefrag (Windows Sysinternals)
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Paging File - RAMdisk
Myth - "Putting the Paging File on a RAMdisk improves performance."
Reality- "Putting a Paging File in a RAM drive is a ridiculous idea in theory, and almost always aperformance hit when tested under real-world workloads. You can't do this unless you have plenty of
RAM and if you have plenty of RAM, you aren't hitting your paging file very often in the first place!
Conversely, if you don't have plenty of RAM, dedicating some of it to a RAM drive will only increase
your page fault rate. Now you might say "yeah, but those additional page faults will go faster than
they otherwise would because they're satisfied in RAM." True, but it is still better to not incur them in
the first place. And, you will also be increasing the page faults that have to be resolved to exe's and
dll's, and the paging file in RAM won't do diddly to speed those up. But thanks to the paging file in
RAM, you'll have more of them. Also: the system is ALREADY caching pages in memory. Pages lost
from working sets are not written out to disk immediately (or at all if they weren't modified), and
even after being written out to disk, are not assigned to another process immediately. They're kept
on the modified and standby page lists, respectively. The memory access behavior of most apps being
what it is, you tend to access the same sets of pages over time... so if you access a page you lostfrom your working set recently, odds are its contents are still in memory, on one of those lists. So
you don't have to go to disk for it. Committing RAM to a RAMdisk and putting a paging file on it
makes fewer pages available for those lists, making that mechanism much less effective. And even
for those page faults resolved to the RAMdisk paging file, you are still having to go through the disk
drivers. You don't have to for page faults resolved on the standby or modified lists. Putting a paging
file on a RAMdisk is a self-evidently absurd idea in theory, and actual measurement proves it to be a
terrible idea in practice. Forget about it."
- Microsoft Windows Internals, Fourth Edition (Mark Russinovich, Ph.D. Computer Engineering)
- Putting a pagefile in a RAM drive is a ridiculous idea in theory (2CPU.com)
Prefetch - /Prefetch:1
Myth - "Adding the /Prefetch:1 Switch to the startup path of a program's shortcut will decrease the
program's startup time."
Reality- It does not improve performance in any way. All it does is change your hash number - the
OS is doing exactly the same thing it did before, and just saving the prefetch pages to a different
file. Ryan Myers of Microsoft's Windows Client Performance Team writes: "The /prefetch:# flag
is looked at by the OS when we create the process - however, it has one (and only one) purpose. We
add the passed number to the hash. Why? WMP is a multipurpose application and may do manydifferent things. The DLLs and code that it touches will be very different when playing a WMV than
when playing a DVD, or when ripping a CD, or when listening to a Shoutcast stream, or any of the
other things that WMP can do. If we only had one hash for WMP, then the prefetch would only be
correct for one such use having incorrect prefetch data would not be a fatal error - it'd just load pages
into memory that'd never get used, and then get swapped back out to disk as soon as possible. Still,
it's counterproductive. By specifying a /prefetch:# flag with a different number for each "mode" that
WMP can do, each mode gets its own separate hash file, and thus we properly prefetch. (This
behavior isn't specific to WMP - it does the same for any app.) This flag is looked at when we create
the first thread in the process, but it is not removed by CreateProcess from the command line, so any
app that chokes on unrecognized command line parameters will not work with it. This is why so many
people notice that Kazaa and other apps crash or otherwise refuse to start when it's added. Of course,
WMP knows that it may be there, and just silently ignores its existence. I suspect that the "add/prefetch:1 to make rocket go now" urban legend will never die, though."
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- Debunking yet another bogus Windows tip (Ed Bott, Author: Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out)
- Misinformation and the The Prefetch Flag (Ryan Myers, Windows Client Performance Team)
Prefetch - EnablePrefetcher
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement\PrefetchParameters
] "EnablePrefetcher"
Myth - "Setting any value higher then 3 to EnablePrefetcher will improve performance."
Reality- The Prefetcher component in Windows XP is part of the Memory Manager, and helps to
shorten the amount of time it takes to start Windows and programs. This is a new feature in Windows
XP which improves application load times and Windows boot times automatically. The slower your
system and the larger an application, the more Prefetching helps. Even high end systems benefit from
prefetching with large, slow loading applications, such as large games. By default Prefetching isenabled in Windows XP and already configured optimally. The following list describes the different
possible values for the EnablePrefetcher registry key.
0 = Disabled
1 = Application launch prefetching enabled (Will cripple Window's boot times)
2 = Boot prefetching enabled (Will cripple all application load times)
3 = Applaunch and Boot enabled (Optimal and Default)
By default the Prefetcher is set to a value of 3 in Windows XP. Values such as 4, 5, 6 ect... do not
exist and are thus useless. Leave this at the default value of 3 which is already optimal for maximum
performance on both Windows XP Boot and initial application launches.
Low Memory Systems - Recommendations to disable Prefetching on low memory systems (128 MB
- 512 MB) is based on the fallacy that portions of application code are preloaded into memory before
the application load is initiated during Windows startup. This is completely false and is spread by
people who do not understand how Windows XP Prefetching works. The slower the system the more it
will benefit from Prefetching. 64 MB systems will suffer due to insufficient RAM, reducing but not
eliminating Window XP's prefetching benefits. 128 MB is the recommended minimum for optimal
prefetching performance.
Boot Performance - Recommendations to set the EnablePrefetcher value to 2 to improve boot
performance is based on the fallacy that portions of application code are preloaded into memory
before the application load is initiated during Windows XP startup. This is completely false and isspread by people who do not understand how Windows XP Prefetching works. Only the files used
during boot will be Prefetched. The Prefetch folder is not a cache. Windows XP will boot in the exact
same amount of time with either value 2 or 3, the only difference with 2 is that now all of your initial
application launches will not be Prefetched and thus load slower. The default value of 3 in no way
negatively affects Windows XP boot times. Leave the value at 3 for optimal Windows XP boot and
initial application launch times.
- Disabling Prefetch (Microsoft)
Solid State Drives (SSD) - SSDs that perform adequately on random reads and do not have glaring
performance issues with random writes or flushes can benefit from having prefetching disabled. Some
first generation SSDs had severe enough random write and flush problems that ultimately lead to diskreads being blocked for long periods of time. With prefetching enabled, performance on key scenarios
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was markedly improved.
- Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives (Microsoft)
Prefetch - Folder Cleaning
Myth - "Deleting the contents of the Prefetch folder improves performance."
Reality- Deleting the contents of the Prefetch folder will reduce application launch and windows boot
time performance. Every time you delete an application's Prefetch (.PF) file you will cripple that
application's load time the next time you go to launch it. Even though Windows XP will simply re-
create that application's Prefetch (.PF) trace file, that application's optimal load time will not be
restored until after the second time you launch that application and the system has been able to go
idle and fully run the prefetch optimization. Windows XP automatically cleans the Prefetch folder down
to the 32 most used Prefetch (.PF) trace files when the folder reaches 128 files so they do not
needlessly consume space. This cleaning is only done when the system has gone idle. Prefetch (.PF)trace files are not a cache and are not preloaded into memory upon windows startup. They are never
even accessed until you launch an application. Only one Prefetch (.PF) trace file per application is
created. There is never ANY reason to delete these files.
Laptop Users - Windows XP will not execute idle tasks when running on battery power and thus
cannot fully optimize prefetch performance and clean the folder (if necessary). You can manually
force this to run by going to "Start", "Run", Type Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks.
This can take 10-15 minutes to run but no notification will be given when it is finished. You will notice
increased hard drive activity while it is running wait until this stops. If you frequently run only on
battery power it is recommend to do this once a month.
Malware/Viruses - Some people irresponsibly recommend cleaning this folder due to possible
Malware/Virus infection. Malware/Viruses can place an infected file(s) in any folder and the Prefetch
folder is no different. Do these same people recommend deleting the contents of the Windows folder
because it is a popular location to find an infected file(s)? Of course not, you simply clean or delete
the infected file(s) not the contents of the folder. This Myth got started due to the indiscriminate
nature of the Windows Prefetcher, which will Prefetch any executable file that you load or loads during
Windows start up. Thus it is quite common on an infected machine to find a Prefetch (.PF) trace file in
the Prefetch folder with the same name as an infected executable. These files are NOT
Malware/Viruses. They are there to improve the load time, in this case ironically, of the Malware/Virus
but do not contain any infected code. Once the associated infected executable is deleted, these
Prefetch (.PF) trace files do nothing and will eventually automatically be cleaned by Windows.
Corrupted Files - Some people claim that Prefetch (.PF) trace files can get randomly "corrupted" and
thus they need to be periodically deleted. Files do not get "corrupted" unless something is wrong with
your computer. Any file corruption is a warning sign something is wrong with your system.
Overclocking, using defective components like Memory and hard drives and using FAT32 instead of
the superior NTFS file system are common causes of file corruption. NTFS is very resilient to file
corruption as compared to FAT32. When storing data to disk, NTFS records file I/O events to a special
transaction log. If the system crashes or encounters an interruption, NTFS can use this log to restore
the volume and prevent corruption from an abnormal program termination or system shutdown. NTFS
doesn't commit an action to disk until it verifies the successful completion of the action. This
precaution helps prevent corruption of an NTFS volume. NTFS also supports hot-fixing disk sectors,
where the OS automatically blocks out bad disk sectors and relocates data from these sectors. This
housecleaning happens in the background. An application attempting to read or write data on a hot-fixed area will never know the disk had a problem. Thus the solution is fixing the cause of the file
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx -
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corruption.
CCleaner - Finally the useless, performance slowing cleaning option "Old Prefetch data" was moved
to the advanced section and is now not selected by default. Never select this option for cleaning as it
will increase application and Windows load times. This option removes Prefetch files that are a few
weeks old based on the NTFS last access date. Since Windows XP already cleans this folder at 128
entries, this is a useless option that will only reduce system performance. You should never delete a
Prefetch file for any installed application since that would cripple it's load times. Just because a
program was not used in a few weeks does not mean you want it to load as slow as possible when
you do decide to use it. If you disable the NTFS last access date stamp then this option will delete the
whole contents of the Prefetch folder after a few weeks, which will cripple Windows Boot and all
application load times. The Prefetch folder is also ridiculously small so cleaning Prefetch files before
the 128 limit will reclaim next to no disk space. This option clearly needs a warning to prevent people
from unknowingly hurting their system performance. Anyone who claims this should be cleaned for
ANY reason does not understand how Windows Prefetching works.
- Beware of Bogus XP Advice (Ed Bott, Author: Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out)
- CCleaner Cripples Application Load Times (Popular Technology)- Misinformation and the The Prefetch Flag (Ryan Myers, Windows Client Performance Team)
- One more time: do not clean out your Prefetch folder! (Ed Bott, Author: Microsoft Windows XP
Inside Out)
- Tip of the day: Don't clean out the Prefetch folder (Ed Bott, Author: Microsoft Windows XP Inside
Out)
QoS
Myth - "Disabling QoS will free up the 20% bandwidth reserved by QoS."
Reality- "There have been claims in various published technical articles and newsgroup postings that
Windows XP always reserves 20 percent of the available bandwidth for QoS. These claims are
incorrect. As in Windows 2000, programs can take advantage of QoS through the QoS APIs in
Windows XP. 100% of the network bandwidth is available to be shared by all programs unless a
program specifically requests priority bandwidth. This "reserved" bandwidth is still available to other
programs unless the requesting program is sending data. By default, programs can reserve up to an
aggregate bandwidth of 20% of the underlying link speed on each interface on an end computer. If
the program that reserved the bandwidth is not sending sufficient data to use it, the unused part of
the reserved bandwidth is available for other data flows on the same host."
- Windows XP Quality of Service (QoS) enhancements and behavior (Microsoft)
RAM Optimizers/Defragmenters
Myth - "Increasing the amount of available RAM using RAM Optimizers/Defragmenters improves
performance."
Reality- "RAM Optimizers have no effect, and at worst, they seriously degrade performance. Although
gaining more available memory might seem beneficial, it isn't. As RAM Optimizers force the available-
memory counter up, they force other processes' data and code out of memory. Say that you're
running Word, for example. As the optimizer forces the available-memory counter up, the text ofopen documents and the program code that was part of Word's working set before the optimization
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000024.htmlhttp://www.populartechnology.net/2005/10/ccleaner-cripples-application-load.htmlhttp://blogs.msdn.com/ryanmy/archive/2005/05/25/421882.aspxhttp://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000743.htmlhttp://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000619.htmlhttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q316666http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q316666http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000619.htmlhttp://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000743.htmlhttp://blogs.msdn.com/ryanmy/archive/2005/05/25/421882.aspxhttp://www.populartechnology.net/2005/10/ccleaner-cripples-application-load.htmlhttp://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000024.html -
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(and was therefore present in physical memory) must be reread from disk as you continue to edit
your document. The act of allocating, then freeing a large amount of virtual memory might, as a
conceivable side effect, lead to blocks of contiguous available memory. However, because virtual
memory masks the layout of physical memory from processes, processes can't directly benefit from
having virtual memory backed by contiguous physical memory. As processes execute and undergo
working-set trimming and growth, their virtual-memory-to-physical-memory mappings will become
fragmented despite the availability of contiguous memory."
- The Memory-Optimization Hoax (Mark Russinovich, Ph.D. Computer Engineering)
- The Truth about Windows Memory Optimizers (Bitsum Technologies)
RegClean
Myth - "It is safe to use Microsoft's RegClean."
Reality- "The RegClean utility is no longer supported by Microsoft and has been removed from allMicrosoft download sites. This was done for legitimate compatibility reasons with certain applications
and Operating Systems. The RegClean utility was originally supplied with Microsoft Visual Basic
version 4.0 for Windows. The last version of RegClean was 4.1a (build 7364.1) released on March 13,
1998 (RegClean.exe is dated December 30, 1997). During this time the latest Operating Systems
were Windows 95 OSR2.1 and Windows NT 4.0. Windows 98 was not released until June 25, 1998.
Compatibility with any Operating System besides Windows 95 and NT 4.0 was never substantiated,
especially Windows XP. It is very dangerous to run a Registry Cleaner that was never certified to run
on your Operating System since removing the wrong Registry Keys can break Applications and the
Operating System. RegClean breaks functionality in the following Applications:
- Microsoft Access 2002 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Excel 2000 Standard Edition
- Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Office 2000 Developer Edition
- Microsoft Office 2000 Premium Edition
- Microsoft Office 2000 Professional Edition
- Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition
- Microsoft Office 2000 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Office Access 2003
- Microsoft Office Access 2007
- Microsoft Office Basic 2007
- Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003
- Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007- Microsoft Office Excel 2003
- Microsoft Office Excel 2007
- Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003
- Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
- Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
- Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
- Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
- Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
- Microsoft Office Professional 2007
- Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003- Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/41095/the-memory-optimization-hoax.htmlhttp://www.bitsum.com/winmemboost.asphttp://www.bitsum.com/winmemboost.asphttp://www.windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/41095/the-memory-optimization-hoax.html -
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- Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007
- Microsoft Office Project Standard 2007
- Microsoft Office Publisher 2003
- Microsoft Office Publisher 2007
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007
- Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003
- Microsoft Office Standard 2007
- Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003
- Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003
- Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007
- Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007
- Microsoft Office Visio Standard 2007
- Microsoft Office Word 2003
- Microsoft Office Word 2007
- Microsoft Office XP (Setup)
- Microsoft Outlook 2000 Standard Edition
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Visual InterDev 6.0 Standard Edition - Microsoft Word 2000 Standard Edition- Microsoft Windows Media Player
This issue occurs for any Microsoft Windows Installer product on which the program's installation
state is set to Installed on First Use."
- Errors that the RegClean utility finds after you install Microsoft Office (Microsoft)
- PRB: Grid DTC Error "An Object Has Failed To Load" in Visual InterDev (Microsoft)
- When you try use Windows Media Player 11 to play a digital rights management (DRM)-protected
media file (Microsoft)
- Windows Media Player Error When Playing Packaged Media (Microsoft)
Registry Cleaners
Myth - "Registry Cleaners improve performance."
Reality- "A few hundred kilobytes of unused keys and values causes no noticeable performance
impact on system operation. Even if the registry was massively bloated there would be little impact
on the performance of anything other than exhaustive searches."
- Registry Junk: A Windows Fact of Life (Mark Russinovich, Ph.D. Computer Engineering)
Registry Defragmenters
Reality- "Unlike Registry Cleaners, defragmenting the registry can improve performance. Paging and
Registry file fragmentation can be one of the leading causes of performance degradation related to
file fragmentation in a system. It is only recommended to use the free program PageDefrag or a
commercial defragmenter like Diskeeper to defragment the registry."
- PageDefrag (Windows Sysinternals)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299958http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222546http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925705http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925705http://support.microsoft.com/kb/234332http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2005/10/02/registry-junk-a-windows-fact-of-life.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspxhttp://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2005/10/02/registry-junk-a-windows-fact-of-life.aspxhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/234332http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925705http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925705http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222546http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299958 -
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SecondLevelDataCache (L2 Cache)
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement]
"SecondLevelDataCache"
Myth - "Adjusting the SecondLevelDataCache Registry value to match your CPU's L2 Cache size
improves performance."
Reality- "Some third-party sources have erroneously reported that modifying the
SecondLevelDataCache registry entry can enhance system performance. The second level (L2) cache
is recognized by the operating system and is fully utilized regardless of the setting of this parameter."
Notes - "SecondLevelDataCache records the size of the processor cache, also known as the secondary
or L2 cache. If the value of this entry is 0, the system attempts to retrieve the L2 cache size from the
Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for the platform. If it fails, it uses a default L2 cache size of 256
KB. If the value of this entry is not 0, it uses this value as the L2 cache size. This entry is designed as
a secondary source of cache size information for computers on which the HAL cannot detect the L2cache. This is not related to the hardware; it is only useful for computers with direct-mapped L2
caches. Pentium II and later processors do not have direct- mapped L2 caches.
SecondLevelDataCache can increase performance by approximately 2 percent in certain cases for
older computers with ample memory (more than 64 MB) by scattering physical pages better in the
address space so there are not so many L2 cache collisions. Setting SecondLevelDataCache to 256 KB
rather than 2 MB (when the computer has a 2 MB L2 cache) would probably have about a 0.4%
performance penalty."
- Detailed Explanation of SecondLevelDataCache (Microsoft)
- Optimizing Your Memory Configuration (Microsoft)
Services - Disabling
Myth - "Disabling certain Services improves performance."
Reality- "Disabling certain Services actually reduces performance."
DNS Client Service - "The overall performance of the client computer decreases and the network
traffic for DNS queries increases if the DNS resolver cache is deactivated. This effectively reduces
Internet Performance for sites you have previously visited and puts an unnecessary load on your
ISP's DNS server."
Task Scheduler Service - "Disabling the Task Scheduler completely cripples Windows XP's Boot
and Application Load times by preventing Prefetch (.PF) trace files and the Layout.ini file from being
created or updated."
Notes - Disabling other unnecessary services in general has only one affect on performance and that
is reduced Windows XP boot times.
- Disabling Unnecessary Services? A Word to the Wise (Windows Performance Team)
- How to Disable Client-Side DNS Caching in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (Microsoft)
- Performance-oriented Windows tweaking (AnandTech)
- Windows XP: Kernel Improvements Create a More Robust, Powerful, and Scalable OS (MarkRussinovich, Ph.D. Computer Engineering)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/183063https://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/core/fnec_evl_fhcj.mspx?mfr=truehttp://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2008/11/18/disabling-unnecessary-services-a-word-to-the-wise.aspxhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/318803/en-ushttp://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=1678445&enterthread=y&arctab=yhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/12/XPKernel/http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/12/XPKernel/http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=1678445&enterthread=y&arctab=yhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/318803/en-ushttp://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2008/11/18/disabling-unnecessary-services-a-word-to-the-wise.aspxhttps://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/core/fnec_evl_fhcj.mspx?mfr=truehttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/183063 -
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Set CPU Priority 26 (Priority Tweak, Win32PrioritySeparation)
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl] "Win32PrioritySeparation"
Myth - "Setting this value to 26 gives a boost to the priority of foreground applications."
Reality- "Yes this can but there is no need to edit the registry to do this. The GUI control for this is
built-in to Windows. Go to the Control Panel, System Icon, Advanced Tab, Performance - click
Settings, Advanced Tab, Processor Scheduling and select 'Programs'. By default, Windows puts a
priority on the foreground programs (20 Hexadecimal). Choosing the 'Programs' option (26
Hexadecimal) will result in a smoother, faster response time for your foreground programs. However,
if you have background services, such as printing or disk backup that run while you work and you
want them to respond faster, you can have Windows share processor resources equally between
background and foreground programs by choosing the 'Background services' option (18
Hexadecimal)."
- How to set performance options in Windows XP (Microsoft)
Set CPU Priority 38 (Priority Tweak, Win32PrioritySeparation)
[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl] "Win32PrioritySeparation"
Myth - "Setting this value to 38 gives a boost to the priority of foreground applications."
Reality- "People are confusing the Hexadecimal and Decimal value settings of this registry key. By
choosing the 'Programs' option in Windows XP this sets the value to 26 Hexadecimal = 0x00000026,
which is automatically translated to 38 Decimal = (38). This is shown as 0x00000026 (38) in the
registry. The Windows XP Registry Editor defaults to changing the Hexadecimal Value when you go to
modify a registry key. The problem is it is commonly recommended to change this value to "38" with
no mention of this being the Decimal value and instead the Hexadecimal Value is changed because it
is the default. This makes the key show 0x00000038 (56). This is not one of this key's functional
values and setting a bit field in Win32PrioritySeparation to values other than those shown in the table
will result in the Windows XP default value being used instead. Thus this does absolutely nothing."
Functional Values:
0x28 (0x29, 0x2A)0x18 (0x19, 0x1A)
0x24 (0x14)
0x25
0x26
0x15
0x16
- Master Your Quantum (Microsoft)
Superfetch
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308417#XSLTH3120121124120121120120http://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/archive/2006/03/04/543141.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/archive/2006/03/04/543141.aspxhttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308417#XSLTH3120121124120121120120 -
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[HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement\PrefetchParameters
] "EnableSuperfetch"
Myth - "Adding EnableSuperfetch to the registry improves performance in Windows XP as it does in
Windows Vista."
Reality- "This myth was started when the Inquirer irresponsibly ran a bogus letter without doing any
fact checking. Windows internals guru Mark Russinovich said this won't work, the "Superfetch" string
isn't even in the Windows XP kernel. You can confirm this yourself by checking with the Strings utility.
This makes it impossible for it to do anything since no "Superfetch" command exists. Windows cannot
execute a nonexistent command and will simply ignore it. Anyone who says this works is not only
lying but a fool."
- Inquirer "Superfetch" story is crap (Bink.nu)
- Strings (Windows Sysinternals)
System Restore - Disabling
Myth - "Disabling System Restore improves performance."
Reality- "System Restore does not cause any noticeable performance impact when monitoring your
computer. The creation of a Restore point also is a very fast process and usually takes only a few
seconds. Scheduled System Checkpoints (every 24 hours by default) are created only at system idle
time to avoid interfering with a computer during use."
- Microsoft Windows XP System Restore (Microsoft)
System.ini, Win.ini
System.ini [386Enh] page buffer=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
System.ini [386Enh] load=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
System.ini [386Enh] Download=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
System.ini [386Enh] save=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
System.ini [386Enh] back=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
System.ini [386Enh] search=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
System.ini [386Enh] sound=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
System.ini [386Enh] webcam=1000000kbps or 1000000TbpsSystem.ini [386Enh] voice=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
System.ini [386Enh] faxmodemfast=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
System.ini [386Enh] update=1000000kbps or 1000000Tbps
Myth - "Adding (made up command) = (imaginary number) to the System.ini or Win.ini file improves
performance."
Reality- "ALL System.ini and Win.ini so-called "Tweaks" are made up nonsense . They include
made up commands that do not exist followed by imaginary settings - thus doing absolutely nothing.
The System.ini and Win.ini files are provided in Windows XP for backward compatibility with 16-bit
(MS-DOS, Windows 3.x) applications. They have no effect on any Windows XP settings or 32-bit
applications which are stored in the Registry."
http://bink.nu/Article4556.binkhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897439.aspxhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997627.aspxhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997627.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897439.aspxhttp://bink.nu/Article4556.bink -
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Notes - These files are edited using the System Configuration Utility (Msconfig.exe) or Sysedit.
- Tools for Troubleshooting (Windows XP Professional Resource Kit)
- Why 16-bit DOS and Windows are still with us (Raymond Chen, Microsoft Software Engineer)
Temp Files - Deleting
Myth - "Deleting Temp Files improves performance."
Reality- Deleting temporary files does not improve application, gaming or system performance on
NTFS volumes. All it does is increase your available disk space. This is because performance does not
degrade under NTFS, as it does under FAT, with larger volume sizes. While AntiVirus, AntiSpyware
and general disk scan/search times can be reduced, these are not what people associate with
improved performance. Deleting the contents of your browser cache actually reduces performance for
previously visited web pages since they must be reloaded into the cache. This does not mean you
should not do this periodically for house cleaning reasons. Only that you should not expect improvedperformance from doing so.
NTFS - Maximum files per volume: 4,294,967,295
NTFS - Maximum files and subfolders within a single folder: 4,294,967,295
FAT32 - Maximum files per volume: 4,177,920
FAT32 - Maximum files and subfolders within a single folder: 65,534*
* The use of long file names can significantly reduce the number of available files and subfolders
within a folder.
Notes - "With the NTFS file system, small folder records reside entirely within the MFT structure, while
large folders are organized B-tree structures and have records with pointers to external clusters that
contain folder entries that cannot be contained within the MFT structure. The benefit of using B-tree
structures is evident when NTFS enumerates files in a large folder. The B-tree structure allows NTFS
to group, or index, similar file names and then search only the group that contains the file,
minimizing the number of disk accesses needed to find a particular file, especially for large folders.
Because of the B-tree structure, NTFS outperforms FAT for large folders because FAT must scan all
file names in a large folder before listing all of the files."
- How NTFS Works (Microsoft)
Windows 2000 vs XP
Myth - "Using Windows 2000 over Windows XP will improve performance"
Reality- Windows XP offers better performance than Windows 2000 so long as the recommended
Windows XP requirements are met regardless of the age of the computer. With
128 MB of RAMWindows XP is superior to Windows 2000 and all older versions of Windows. This
includes dramatically faster boot and resume times and highly responsive applications. Performance
only gets better with additional resources, particularly when you run memory-intensive multimedia
applications.
- Windows XP Performance (Microsoft)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457126.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/03/01/82103.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781134.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457057.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457057.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781134.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/03/01/82103.aspxhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457126.aspx -
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^ TOP
Security Myths
Cookies
Myth - "Cookies are Spyware."
Reality- "Cookies are not Spyware. It's grossly irresponsible for these Anti-Spyware companies to
treat cookies like Spyware. REAL Spyware is malicious, machine-hijacking junk that throw pop-ups on
your computer, resets your start page, and all sorts of other ugly tricks. A cookie is a text file that
has some non-personal information what banner ads h