windows booster

[Weapon]

my friend has a really crap pc and he was just wondering what a good windows booster is?

[whatevah]

Originally posted by Weapon
my friend has a really crap pc and he was just wondering what a good windows booster is?

you didn't give any system stats, so...

my advice is to upgrade to a faster CPU (you can get an Athlon 800mhz for only $90 from tigerdirect), and more RAM..

more RAM always helps!

[whatevah]

forgot something..

there are a few software programs that will bost a systems perfomance slightly... but all they do, is manage the systems RAM, which Win95,98,ME don't do a good job of.

I'm running Win2K, and it does a great job... it's got a cool task manager, that will show me all the running processes, and how much memory and cpu usage they are using.

[Coolin]

Try making your swap file a fixed size.

First you defragment your hard drive.
Then you fix your swap file to whatever size you wish.
Then defrag again.

Try it. It worked for my old computer.

[Gayowulf]

best not to set it too small. If your friend had a ton of ram, it could totally be eliminated...

[Weapon]

Originally posted by Coolin
Try making your swap file a fixed size.

First you defragment your hard drive.
Then you fix your swap file to whatever size you wish.
Then defrag again.

Try it. It worked for my old computer.

what do u mean swap file? he has about 24 ram, pent 100, 1.2 gb piece of crap I would say, he said he is getting another comp in christmas but how knows....

[Gayowulf]

I would say there is nothing much he can do except wait till christmas.

A swap file is a space on a hard disk used as the virtual memory extension of a computer's RAM. Having a swap file allows the computer's operating system to pretend that it has more RAM than it actually does. The least recently used files in RAM can be "swapped out" to your hard disk until they are needed later so that new files can be "swapped in" to RAM.

[LastActionHero]

Some software which really help are

Cacheman - Manages your virtual memory and swap file settings and all. Must have for people with low powered systems.

X-Teq - For tweaking the registry for enhance performance.

Both can be downloaded form download.com

[polestar]

I found cacheman worked on my old pc - the hard drive buzzed like crazy most of the time but it made it noticeably faster.

[Weapon]

is there anyways to minimize it?

[LastActionHero]

minimize what? the hard disk noise?

It can't be unless you muffle your hard disk noise with something but that will heat up your hard disk if you place something on your hardisk to lower the sound.

[Coolin]

Some people think that you need to have cacheman running all the time. If you are one of those, here's news. You don't.

Therefore, you can just exit cacheman and still get the optimization that it gives you.

[meow]

You may find some utility that frees up RAM useful. The best working for me is FreeMem Pro. There is also a free version that works as well but isn't atomized. There's a trial for the Pro if your friend wants to check it out.
www.meikel.com/freemem

[Coolin]

Yep. Nothing beats FreeMem Pro. It beats other RAM Boosters every day.

However, I wouldn't suggest such a utility on a low RAM system because freeing up your RAM will slow down your performance.

[meow]

I've heard that argument before. I disagree though. I have a low memory system and it practically runs on FreeMem. Sad but true.

I believe the trick is to set it to free up small enough chunks at appropriate levels of remaining RAM. I've tried other "allocators" that don't have as many options and my poor puter has totally choked on them. Don't allocate too much at too law levels of remaining RAM because that will suck up what's left. Too little isn't good either since then it will work all the time. One needs to find the optimal settings. Then there's no need to spend hard earned money on buying new RAM.