I thought Shui-Che Lim's articles, "Tools of the Trade: Overhauling WIN95," were fantastic, and I have implemented many of the author's suggestions. However, I have a question regarding his suggestions for the swap file partition.

In Part II the author suggests assigning your swap file to a partition that is on the innermost portion of the hard disk, saying that "by specifying the last partition for your swap file, you will guarantee that it is located on the innermost tracks of your hard disk and will therefore access the fastest." However, this seems counter-intuitive to me because, at constant rotational speed, the segments on the outer tracks of a hard disk would be passing by the drive head at a faster speed than those on the innermost tracks. In fact, Tom's Hardware Guide's Hard Disk Guide(www.tomshardware.com/hdd.html) says "transfer rate is higher when data is read or written to the outer parts of a disk"

Could the author expand further on this point? I'm guessing that the distinction turns on the difference between "access speed" and "transfer rate"--but I would like some further information on why the innermost tracks of a hard drive are better suited for the swap file than are the outer tracks. Thank you.

Mark,

Hard disk drives are constant angular velocity (CAV) devices. This means that the disk spins the same speed no matter where the read/write head is positioned on the drive. This leads to the effect that the rotational velocity is actually faster on the outer tracks. You're correct in saying that the difference would be data transfer rate vs. disk access time. Access time goes down on the inner tracks.

Have you ever noticed that disk utilities such as ScanDisk and Norton Disk Doctor which check the disk surface for errors seemingly speed up (the sector numbers flash by faster and faster) as they go along - especially towards the latter part of the drive? What you're seeing is the decreased access times on the inner portions of the disk. That's why you want to stick the swap file there.

If you use Norton Utilities, you can use the SpeedDisk program to arrange where certain files are found on the drive the improve performance. Norton Utilities is a great tool and I highly recommend its use. The boot sector and FAT are stored on the first track in a reserved range of sectors. After the FAT, directories are stored with their respective files.

Since directories are separated by disk real estate, the time it takes to get from the FAT to the root directories increases for directories further on the inside of the disk. Keeping the executable files near the respective directories allows them to be found faster since they are linked to their respective directories.

To improve performance, place folders first on the drive. They don't take up much space and this ensures that all the information for the directories are closest to the FAT. Folders that are used more often such as C:\WINDOWS, C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND; C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM, C:\WINDOWS\MSAPPS, C:\PROGRAM FILES should be placed first. The rest of the directories can be ordered in any way.

Next place all your executables after your directories. This places them relatively near the directories which refer to them, as well as the FAT, and also allows you to take advantage of the higher transfer rates at the outside of the disk. Files with .VXD, .INF, .EXE, .DLL, .OVL, .OCX, .COM should be included. I included virtual device drivers (.VXD) and Windows INF (.INF) files since they don't usually take up a lot of space, but by arranging them near the front of the disk help Windows load faster.

Finally, you should move all files that have a tendency to get modified a lot towards the end of the hard disk. Files with extensions .SHTML, .CHTML, .HTML, .HTM, .DO?, .XL?, .PPT, .TXT, .WRI, .JPG, .GIF, .BMP should be moved to the rear of the disk. Files that change often have a tendency to increase disk fragmentation. Note that the "?" used above is for wildcard characters.

You should also specify directories such as TEMP (usually C:\WINDOWS\TEMP), browser cache folder (C:\WINDOWS\TEMPORARY INTERNET FILES if you're using MS Internet Explorer), and also \Recycled\ to be placed at the rear of the disk. By not specifying the drive letter, all hidden recycle bin directories will automatically get moved to the end of their respective disk partitions. Contents of these file folders tend to change often as well, so it's a good idea to keep them away from the applications and data files Windows uses.

By using these strategies, you can take advantage of the performance characteristics of the hard disk, the Windows 95 OS, and also reduce the likelihood of disk fragmentation between defrags.

Sincerely, Shui-Che Lim

From Dan:

I enjoy reading your win95 for gamers tips. I have a question. How important is it to have system resources free on the performance tab?

I recently noticed that my computer said system resources 82% free. That was at start up, without any programs running. I was able to mess around and boost it up to 90% free at start up, but after I run a program, close it, it's back to about 85% or so. Is this a good indicator of system performance?

Thanks, Dan

Daniel,

There are two main types of resources that Windows 95 uses. These are GDI (Graphics Device Interface) and User resources. Essentially, this is a memory stack that Windows uses to track graphics images such as icons, windows, and running applications in system memory.

It is very important to keep both the GDI and User resources above 20%-25%. If either resource falls below this point, it increases the likelihood that Windows 95 will hang or crash. This is the last thing you want to have happen while playing any sort of game. Also, this has a tendency to introduce errors on your hard disk since Windows keeps many files open in memory and only update them as they are unloaded from memory or when Windows 95 is shut down.

To ensure that you maintain high GDI resource levels, limit the numbers of icons and other Windows 95 shortcuts to folders or applications on the desktop. Also, auto hide the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. By displaying the taskbar, anything that changes must be updated graphically, which will utilize GDI resources. If you're running other applcations that have control interfaces such as Norton Utilities' Norton System Doctor or the Office Bar for MS Office, you'll want to close these as well before you start any games.

User resources are used to track running applications. The more applications you have running, the lower your resource percentage. It is a good idea to close all unnecessary running applications or applets before you start any games since all these running programs steal CPU cycles from your system processor. Windows is a multitasking and multithreaded OS. All applications running share processor time, even though a higher percentage of processor time is usually allocated to the foreground (active) application.

Therefore, close down all other applications that are unnecessary before you run any Windows games. Close any running applications which show up on your Windows 95 taskbar. Also, check the Windows 95 system tray in the lower right corner. Use the RMB (right mouse button) and click on each icon. Programs that can be closed will have a "Close" or "Exit" option on the pop up menu. Close all applications running in the system tray, including antivirus software. If you don't care for displaying the system time, turn this off as well since this also interrupts the CPU at 1 second intervals to keep the time updated.

This may seem quite troublesome, but it's the tradeoff we make for using Windows as a gaming platform. You'll find that your games run faster and with fewer slowdowns or pauses if you do all these things prior to launching your favorite Windows 95 game.

Sincerely, Shui-Che Lim

Click to continue . . .

From Nathan

I am having problems with windows 95 setting the swap file to a = fixed size. I have a Pentium Pro 180mhz with 96 megs of EDO ram, so I set up a = 240 megabyte minimum and max size swap file on my D: partition ( I have = a 2.5gig harddrive split into 2.1 (C:) and 400mb (D:) partitions). = After doing this, program manager seemed to crash all the time. When I = switched back to allowing Windows to manage my virtual memory, the = problem disappeared. Any suggestions?

Nathan,

You wouldn't by any chance happen to be using Norton Antivirus 2.0 would = you? It seems that there is a compatibility problem with Norton = Antivirus 2.0 and Windows 95. It doesn't happen on all systems, but it = does happen enough that it has been reported extensively on Symantec's = Tech Support page. I'm not aware of any fix except to let Windows 95 = manage the swap file.

Also, if you happen to be using QEMM 9.0 in conjunction with Norton = Antivirus and Windows 95, Quarterdeck has also suggested that you = disable MagnaRAM special memory (Cacheback); and if this doesn't work = then you should also disable MagnaRAM altogether.

Just consider yourself unlucky and you'll need to just let Windows 95 = handle the dynamic sizing of the swap file. However, there are some = things that you can do to improve Windows management. First still stick = your swap file on it's own partition. Then if you're using Norton = Utilities, go through and optimize the swap file about once a week. = That will keep things in order and maintain the best performance = possible.

Sincerely, Shui-Che Lim

From Santana

Thanks

Generally, the fastest way to find any file is to open up your web browser and type a ? XXXXX where the XXXXX is what you're looking for. At least this works in Internet Explorer. What this does is to use the default search engine for your browser to do a search of web pages on the internet with the entry you're looking for.

Consider this a freebie... I've done the search for you and you can currently find RegClean 4.1a at this site. Enjoy.

http://www.winmag.com/win95/software.htm

Shui-Che Lim

From Ted St. Onge

I'm really enjoying the Win95 articles by Shui-Che Lim. I recently bought a new 2.1 GB HD. Besides space efficiency, would there be any performance benefits from using FAT32 on the new drive? My boot drive is FAT16 and I chose that for my new drive as well. I have my swap file on the last of three 680 MB partitions on the new drive and have it set at 160 MB for my 64 MB or RAM.

Regards, Wayne Theodore St.Onge

Ted,

FAT32 is inherently more efficient than FAT16 and you will find that it offers marginal, albeit measurable performance over FAT16. This may have something to do with the fact that data on hard disks does't necessarily fall neatly into 32K clusters.

Add to this fact that if your drive is fragmented, you'll force FAT16 to read lots of additional 32K clusters at the ends of file fragments. With FAT32 and 4K clusters, at most you're forced to read no more than 4K at the end of any file or file fragments.

However, just the additional hard disk real estate you get back from FAT32 (usually 20%-30%) is of much larger and measurable benefit.

Sincerely, Shui-Che Lim

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