10 Windows XP Performance Tweaks For Optimizing Performance of MegaScenery, Flight Simulator 2004 and Your Overall Computing Experience. A lot of people purchase and install MegaScenery and are disappointed with the results. They ordered this hyped up scenery that when they try it doesn’t give them the results – as advertised. Their MegaScenery doesn’t display properly, the get the “blurries” where the full resolution scenery does not come into view fast enough. Often they blame it on MegaScenery…. but the real culprit is a poorly tuned and far from optimized PC. Flight Simulator 2004’s scenery display engine does have its shortfalls when running scenery as demanding as MegaScenery but when you perform these tweaks below (in combination with tips supplied with MegaScenery) you can overcome these limitations. However, not only do you improve your performance of MegaScenery, but also your overall performance of Flight Simulator 2004 and overall computing experience. A computer does need to be tuned to optimize its performance. Out of the box, Windows XP does not give you a fully tuned operating system and is wrought with settings that bottleneck performance. Follow these Tweaks below and you will have a finely tuned system that gives you blazing performance. The first 8 tweaks do not cost you anything and are just a few changes you can make from within Windows. The final 2 tweaks involve you spending a little bit of money but are well worth the investment. Three Warnings and recommendations Before you perform these steps, please: 1. Ensure that you are familiar with REGEDIT. Incorrectly using Regedit could damage your Windows registry and leave your system unbootable and unrecoverable. If you are not confident using Regedit, have a friend who is confident perform these tweaks for you. 2. Back up any important data. These tweaks are tried and tested but if something goes wrong you could leave your system unbootable. 3. If you are unsure of what you are doing – get a technician or friend who is sure of what they are doing to perform these tweaks. Firstly – Be Running the NTFS File System Firstly, however, we’ll assume your hard disk is operating NTFS (New Technology File System). If your system came bundled with XP then it most likely is. If you upgraded your previous version of Windows to Windows XP, then your file system may still be using the FAT32 file system. If it is then you need to convert it to NTFS. While this will convert your hard disk to NTFS however your cluster size will not be optimized. Converting your hard disk from FAT32 to NTFS gives you 512 byte cluster sizes which is 1 not the optimum and will give you less than optimum hard disk performance since 512 byte clusters result in higher hard drive overhead. The recommended cluster size is 4096 bytes. If your hard disk is not using this cluster size then you should reformat your system using this cluster size which is the Windows Format default cluster size. Alternatively Partition Magic will let you change your cluster size for an already formatted hard drive without requiring a reformat. If you do not want to go through a complete reformat but do want to convert to NTFS if you are running FAT32 then go to the Command Prompt – START => All Programs => Accessories => Command Prompt. To confirm which file system you are running at the C: prompt type CHKDSK. The first line will tell you which file system you are running. If you are running FAT32 then to convert to NTFS enter the following: CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS The conversion will take about 30 minutes. Repeat this for other hard disk volumes you may have e.g. D: drive or E: drive. We suggest that before you do the Convert process that you search for this in your Windows Help and Support option and read any documentation relating to Converting a FAT32 drive to NTFS and the implications of converting to NTFS. Secondly – Ensure that your NTFS File System Cluster Size is 4096 Bytes. See the conversion process in the above section. If you convert a disk from FAT32 to NTFS you will need a utility such as Partition Magic to change your cluster size to 4096 byte cluster sizes. If you are freshly formatting a hard drive – select cluster size as 4096 bytes. Once you have successfully set up your hard disk as NTFS – prepare for these Tweaks that will boost your system performance – Out of Site! Here We Go! Tweak #1 – Disable Last File Access Stamping By default, every time Windows XP reads a file, its stamps the file with the date and time of last access. Whilst it can serve a purpose, it is generally not required for everyday computer use. It hogs resources by writing to a file each time it is accessed. So every read operation is also accompanied by a write operation of a few bytes. To turn this off go to the command prompt: At the command prompt enter the following: FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 1 2 If you ever want to turn it back on again simply retype the command replacing the 1 with a 0 (zero). Reboot your computer. Tweak #2 – Turn Off Windows Indexing While it’s great for finding files faster when you are doing a search, Windows file indexing is always working in the background indexing files and thus contributing significantly to hard disk overhead. It is not worth the performance decrease it causes. To turn it off go to Control Panel => Add/Remove Programs => Windows Components. Then deselect Indexing Service. Or Go to START=> RUN – then type in services.msc. Scroll to Indexing Service and select disable. Tweak #3 – Increase Your File System Cache WARNING - DO NOT USE THIS TWEAK IF YOU ARE USING AN ATI VIDEO CARD. IT COULD LEAVE YOUR SYSTEM UNBOOTABLE. On a typical high end system such as a 2.4 GHz Pentium a hard disk will transfer data at around 30-40 MegaBytes per Second. That’s pretty fast! How would you like hard disk transfer bursts of around 1 GigaByte per second? You can achieve this easily using any version of Windows as it’s already part of the file system… that is file caching where data that has been read from the hard disk remains in memory so that if it is required again before it is flushed from the cache it reads directly from the cache for these super fast data access rates. That’s right it is already part of the file system but the recommended default setting (the setting you might already be using) is not necessarily the best. The default setting in Windows is to allocate more memory to programs and less to the file cache but this is wasting precious memory that could be used for file caching instead of not being used at all. If, for example, you are running a 512 Mb RAM, and you have a program or two loaded, you have around 300 MB that isn’t being used AT ALL. It’s being reserved partly for file caching and partly for any programs you might load with the priority being for any programs you might load. It will not allocate all of that memory to the file cache and it is VERY RARE that you would use all of that memory for programs. So you could either waste that memory and have degraded system performance or you could use that memory for file caching. USE IT FOR FILE CACHING! After you make the change below, you will notice after you reboot and start using your system greatly reduced hard disk access for both read and write operations which is where the biggest bottleneck in computing is. Performance benefits of this tweak are seen no matter how little RAM you have but are more pronounced with the more RAM you have. We suggest no less than 512 Mb and 1 Gigabyte is better. 3 Perform the following: CONTROL PANEL => SYSTEM => ADVANCED => PERFORMANCE => SETTINGS => ADVANCED => MEMORY USAGE. • Change the option from Programs to System Cache. • Reboot your computer. Tweak #4 – Increase CPU Priority This will increase the CPU priority for programs running in the foreground. E.g. Your Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. • Run Regedit • Find This Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl\ Set the Win32PrioritySeparation to 38 DECIMAL (or 26 HEX) Tweak #5 – Launch Folder Windows In Separate Process This tweak does not only apply to folders but also programs. Basically when you run a program it gets its own memory allocation. It also gives you a much more stable system. Programs run faster but it does also utilize more RAM. Set the "Launch folder windows in separate process" setting by opening the "My Computer\Tools\Folder Options\View -and tick the "Launch folder windows in separate process" box. Window XP will open any new window (including program) in its own memory and in separate process priority. (increase stability and speed but use much more RAM than before). Tweak #6 Defrag Your System Hard Disk Fragmentation is a contributor to slower performance. We suggest a regular defrag of your system. A Weekly schedule is a good one. Windows XP has a built-in defragger or you can opt for a third party product such as PerfectDisk (www.raxco.com ), Diskeeper (www.diskeeper.com ) or O&O Defrag V8 (www.oo-software.com ). Each of these defraggers have their own competitive advantages over the other. The best defragger to use if you are using MegaScenery is O&O Defrag because it does perform one ideal type of defragmentation that clearly does improve MegaScenery performance.