Speed4Ever

Also, for a more in depth information, you might go here... http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/fastboot/download/fastboot-winxp.ZIP Thats the white papers on fastboot. This document might have the most specific information we're going to find at MS Tell me what you think of it.

Quote: Answer my last question first in my last post please, (I understand you think that my fix of adding files to Speedisk's exemption list would NOT stop it from interfering with XP optimization) Because that is exactly what I use here, & you know that from above, I add files to its "DO NOT TOUCH THESE FILES" in Speedisk's list for that! I never said you couldn't. I said the average person would have to be smoking some good stuff to go through all that, when the program should be doing it anyways. I mean, we're talking thousands of files here. And to add to the frustration, the files in layout.ini are dynamically changing from time to time (as you add or delete programs, files, etc.) I dont even know if I would do it one time, much less several times over the course of a few weeks. ;( Thats not optimization, thats smoking some good stuff To me, theres only three feasible options here. 1) Do it your way and edit SD according to layout.ini. 2) Disable XPs optimization routines and let SD run the show. 3) Find a defragger that already ignores the layout.ini files. To me, I could do ok with #3, I could maybe live with #2, but for #1, uh uh, not for me. And you'd have a tough time convincing anyone else of that. Your method works. I never denied that. But wheres the logic in it? A defrag program should be designed to *SAVE* you time, not waste it. And when you have to spend time making up for a function that the software should ALREADY HAVE, thats wasting time, when its performed by practically every other defragger out there. Alex, you pride yourself on being a tweaker, and making your computer run smoothly. Why do you do this? I would have to assume because you want your computer to run as fast as it can, as smooth as it can, and as reliable as it can. Why? So you can perform fast, and save time. At least I think thats why. Please tell me if I'm mistaken. #1 is not tweaking. Its wasting time IMHO. 'Nuff said about that... As for the lack of "specific technical" information, right at the moment, thats the best I could find. The info may somewhere deep in technet or something, but I havent found it yet. And not for the lack of trying I might even be in the XP Resource Kit, but I dont have one yet, and may not for several weeks. For right now, the best I can do is what I gave you, plus the Greg Hayes posts in the NG's. His info is probably more helpful than MS's But I do believe that the information in tose pages I gave you answered pretty much all the questions we had before (with the exception of "Specific Mechanics"). If your looking for source code, we might be waiting for awhile.... Your turn...

Ok...I found some info from Greg Hayes from Raxco in the MS Newsgroups. This might help a bit... "PerfectDisk will NOT disable the automatic defragmentation that Windows XP is doing every 3 days - Microsoft "frowns" upon that in regards to 3rd party defraggers... You can disable this via a registry key - HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/OptimalLayout. Look for a DWORD key called EnableAutoLayout (may not be present - if not you will need to add). If the value of this key is set to 0, then the "partial" defrag will not run. Please note that if you disable the partial defrag that Windows XP is doing every three days, application launches could eventually get slower and you may notice a slowdown in system performance (compared to systems where the layout is being performed). - Greg/Raxco Software" P.S.- I'm assuming Greg doesnt mind me reproducing this post, as it is public info, and I assume he would want this info to be known to those who want it. Unfortunately, I cant contact him. This at least explains how to shut the damned thing down, but I'm not so sure its a bright idea to

Quote: * On GHayes, PLEASE, DO Bring him in here too! I tried, but he has PM and Email disabled, so I cant It looks like he hasnt posted in awhile, so he may have (temporarily I hope) abandoned the board, or he's just too busy. I might try and dig him up in the MS XP Newsgroups. He usually pops up there...

Ok, heres what I got. Its kinda long, but I'll try to keep it as short as possible... This page explains Boot file optimization... http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/techinfo/planning/performance/startup.asp "Improvements to the Boot Loader Improvements to the boot loader and to a number of key drivers have made them much faster. Registry initialization is also faster, and many manufacturers have dramatically reduced the time taken by their BIOS prior to running the operating system. I/O Can Be Overlapped with Device Initialization Using Windows® 2000, each disk input/output (I/O) may require the disk head to move to some new location and the disk to rotate to some degree. The result is that typical desktop disks can only complete 80 I/Os to100 I/Os each second. Laptop disks are often even slower. This poor I/O rate lengthens the boot time considerably for Windows 2000. Windows XP improves this poorly organized I/O process by “prefetching” much of the operating system at the same time that devices are being initialized. In this way, the I/O can be overlapped with the device initialization process. The effect is that code being executed, and data that must be read during the boot, can be scattered about the disk with no perceptible effect on startup time performance. Dynamic Determination of Code and Data Needed During Boot By observing successive boots of the system, Windows XP can dynamically determine the code and data needed for the boot and can optimize the placement of these files on the disk. When the computer boots, Windows XP can issue large I/O requests that can be handled efficiently with high throughput. Moreover, the operating system can find opportunities to issue these requests so that they will overlap in time with device detection and initialization. This is done in a way that will not add to the overall boot time. This allows for subsequent processing to occur with the operating system substantially resident in memory, and dramatically decreases the time needed for the system to boot." -------------------------- This page explains application optimization... http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/techinfo/planning/performance/runtimeperf.asp "The Process Application startup requires the operating system to find sufficient memory resources for the new program and program code, and for data to be read in from the disk. Windows XP watches each launch of the application so that it will know how much memory will be required and what will be needed from the disk. The mechanism is the same as that used to achieve fast boot and logon. The speed with which an application is launched will usually depend on the amount of I/O necessary and the efficiency with which the I/O is handled. Predicting the I/O Required In ordinary demand paging, small amounts of text or data are fetched from all over the disk. Poorly organized I/O causes a lot of time to be lost due to disk seeks and rotations. By watching each launch, Windows XP is able to accurately predict the I/O that will be needed and issue hundreds of requests at a time. These requests are sorted, allowing them to be processed without extra seeks and rotations. With the required code and data already in memory, the application can start without having to wait for the next missing piece to arrive from the disk. File access patterns in the application launch are used to periodically optimize the layout of files on the disk; improved layout decreases seek time and provides for even faster launch and faster continuing use." ------------------------- Doesnt this clearly (maybe not clearly ) show two different functions at work? Quote: The registry entries above show it booting up & moving files in its very name. Why else is it called BootDefrag then? I dont know anything about something called BootDefrag per se... Heres my Registry keys... [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg Then it has the subkey [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction] Both keys have separate "enable" REG_SZ keys. Wouldn't this also explain two separate functions? Whats your take on this?

Now that would make sense.... The SBLive drivers have never quite been up to par in W2K/XP.

An IRQ_LESS_OR_NOT_EQUAL BSOD would almost certainly be a driver issue, although which driver is causing it is the question... Does the fortissimo 2 have XP drivers now? Could also be video drivers also. Also, make sure the video card isnt sharing IRQs... Sorry, this sounds like the standard shpeel, but those are pretty much the causes of this paticular BSOD. Hope it helped.

Driver works fine here, no issues...

I'm confused...Are you saying you changed the pagefile to 192? Otherwise I dont get what your trying to say here... Just got the game myself, and gotta say it Rules!!! But it takes a sh@tload of memory to run it. On my setup, I typically run with 120 MB RAM used with my startup apps, etc. But after playing RTCW for about an hour, it will have shot up to around 500 MB RAM used during the game. Of course I've got the RAM to use, but its a RAM hungry game! Try different Video drivers, possibly even sound card drivers if your mot updated. Also, do you see any errors in the event log?

I'd lay odds its the Geforce drivers. I couldnt tell you which one's to try first, The GF2 MX cards seem to be real tempermental sometimes. Other things to try is making sure the card isnt sharing IRQs with any other device. If so, then move the conflicting card to a different PCI slot and try then. Also, if your running a VIA or AMD motherboard, try upgrading the AGP miniport. Hope this helps.

ThC 129, I kinda know what your talking about, although I cant remember the last time I used the W2K user control panel. I always used Computer Management myself (Still do ) AFAIK, theres no way to change the User CP in Control Panel.

WInDVD and PowerDVD are pretty much the only ones worth mentioning. They both cost the same, but IMHO, PowerDVD runs better. Which package do you have now? Oh, and heres a hint: If you have Windvd2000 or PowerDVD versions 3.x, they *should* run on an XP clean install, but people seem to have problem running them on upgrades when they were installed on the former OS. My advice, is to clean install ALWAYS! Theres too many things that can go wrong on an upgrade. I know, that doesnt help you right now. Sorry I dont have any workarounds with this, but maybe someone else might have another solution for you.. For what its worth, I hoped this helps you a little.

Good to hear it! BTW, I just thought of something... XP doesnt have the "Press-F5-when-it-says-press-F6-to-change-to-Standard PC" option. It just seems to work alright in XP. Yeah, W2K was kinda "experimental" when it came to ACPI, but XP seems to smooth over the rough edges pretty good. Yeah, stick with what you have now if it works. Dont fix it

Good to hear that! Is your video card sharing IRQs with any other devices besides your AGP controller (if it is)?

Quote: My XP installation is now working fine as "ACPI Uniprocessor PC". If your having no problems in this configuration, whats the problem? Quote: But display adapter and USB is on the same IRQ. No matter what other people say, this could be (also by my own experience) a bad combination. Why is the OS that stupid This depends on the type of video card and motherboard. Some people can run this configuration just fine, while others may have problems. Typically, people will run into these problems with VIA motherboards. W2K and XP can only work with what the motherboard tells it. Because of the many different MB companies making all types of configurations and sometimes doing things their own way, the OS has to get these instuctions from the BIOS. Many times, there can be confusion because certain devices require their own IRQ. Also, IRQs may be shared on certain AGP/PCI slots due to various reasons (Like VIA boards ), but I wont get into that... Nevertheless, this isnt entirely (or at all) the OSes fault. Believe me, if W2K/XP were doing things on their own, you'd be in for worse problems . I'd say this problem (does a problem exist here? I forgot...) is attributed to the video card and/or the motherboard. There are some cases where certain combinations of devices and motherboards wont work right at all. It impossible to list them all, and practically none of them are blamed on the OS, unless it detects things incorrectly, which does happen in rare cases. I'd say, unless you start seeing problems, leave it this way. You probably wont have any problems switching slots with Activation. AFAIK, as long as you have the same device on the machine, WPA shouldnt have to give it a different ID#. Of course, I'm running on assumption here (I know, I know... ;( ), and could very well be wrong. Even so, you should have like six changes in a 120 day period before having to reactivate, so you should be safe. Hope this helps. EDIT: I forgot the other question ... Changing to Standard PC can help in some cases, especially if you have a Soundblaster Live card. But unless you can change IRQs in your BIOS, it probably wont help you as far as changing IRQs in Windows. AFAIK, you cant do this in Windows. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Its a hit or miss type of thing. Standard PC could make things better, could make things worse. Its almost impossible to tell in most situations. BTW, can you give us your computer specs, as detailed as possible. This could help a bit in determining a better answer to your question.

Quote: Because my initial method shown of turning off BootDefrag is when this all takes place, NOT during OS Operation in the GUI user shell... so Speedisk does its job just fine while it works. XP might shuffle that stuff ONLY at boottime & if they both move those files to the start of the drive, as I suspect they do for bootup speed? I'm not sure if I'm reading this right. Are you saying that XP only moves files during boot time? If so, unless I'm mistaken, your mistaken XP AFAIK doesnt move files during boot time. I cant exactly remember the explanation told to me word for word, but XP moves boot and app exe files during idle time when the computer is online, not during boot time. It essentially records what files are used at boot, and applications when they are opened. Then they are positioned wherever XP thinks it can find them the easiest. I might be wrong on some of this, or it could be explained alot better, but I think thats the jist of it. Now was this what you were talking about, or am I off here? EDIT: Wheres GHayes when you need him

jibberia, Please post your computer specs, the more specific the better.

Well, Option 1 seems like a viable idea. Just renamed Layout.ini to Layout.bak, and created a read-only empty Layout.ini. Its only been a few hours, so It'l probably take a few days to figure out if the read-only holds. I'll post back with results in a few days. Option #2...well, I'd like to have some of what your smoking ...Imputing all those entries is far more time consuming than the time wasted running on a fully fragmented drive . If you got the time to burn, I guess you could do it, but also need to take into account that Layout.ini is changed periodically if needed. Trying to find the new entries is just not feasible. I agree that Symantec could add this feature, but considering their past history, I doubt if they will (unless its added in NU 2003 ). I cant remember them EVER doing anything other than fixing bugs, or adding NAV virus updates, and such. I'm not holding my breath on that one. Not that this shouldn't be considered GLARING bug, but I just dont have the faith that I used to for Symantec. I'd love to eat crow if they did though

BTW... I may have answered one of my own questions... In the registry, theres [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg, which has enable Y/N, and then theres a subkey BootOptimizeFunction whcuh has the enable Y/N also. Are one of these for online defrag optimization, and the other for boot fragging, or is the whole key for boot fragging? Check it out, and reply your opinion, if you so please I'm really curious about this one... Thanks.

AlecStaar, Thanks for the reply. Now heres a counterpoint to your counterpoint ...plus another question... In my layout.ini file, theres approximately 4200 files in there... 8) ...Is it reasonable to enter all those files for SD to ignore? And, (I'm not sure about this, so I'd thought I'd ask...) is the online XP defrag optimization shut off using your procedure? If not, the layout enties could change often, requiring you to dig around for the new ones,etc... And another few questions ... Which do you think is more "optimized"? SD or XPs optimizations? And is it indeed worth the time spent on trying to work around something that Symantec should have programmed into SD in teh first place? (Believe me, I've sent more than a few emails to Symantec about this. I got the standard canned speech taht didnt even answer my questions ;( ...) The primary reason I'm even concerned about this is SD used to be a kick-a$$ defragger in W2K. Now its turned into a pain-in-the-a$$ in XP. Would it be *THAT* difficult for them to enable SD to simply ignore the files in layout.ini? Because it just doesnt seem feasible to have to enter several THOUSAND files into SD for it to do what it should be doing automatically... Personally, I think Symantec dropped the ball on this one, although many people probably dont even know about the XP optimization routine, so it doesnt even cross their minds. I'd love to get SD working correctly, as I bought the NSW package awhile ago, and cant return it (although I use NAV ) I just wish I knew then what I know now... Thanks for the replies, awaiting the next

BTW, Thought I'd just say Hi to everyone here (like I should have in my first post ) I've followed this Forum since I was in the W2K Preview Program, and there some excellent info I've found here. I just never got around to registering in the forums. I guess thats my loss ) Anyhoo, nice to finally participate in the groups. AlecStaar--I hope you dont take my previous post personally. I was just stating my opinion, as we all have one Take care.

AlecStaar, The only issue I would have with Speedisk and XP, is that SD apparantly doesnt adhere to the layout.ini files (which XP optimizes to make apps open faster). Also, XP tends to move the MFT and MFT freespace around when it wishes, according to its optimization algorithms. SD, on the other hand, throws this to the wind, and does things its own way. The end result is, they both negate eachother, and you end up with more disk activity in the long run, as XP reorganizes everything constantly, and SD takes that apart and lays everything its own way. In W2K, SD rules. But in XP, all they did was update SD to work in XP, and thats it. They even said this when NU was released: they didnt modify the functionality in SD one iota, other than making sure it just ran in XP. W2K doesnt have filesystem optimization algorithms to mess with, XP does. Perfectdisk and Diskeeper scan the layout.ini file, and ignore the files XP has optimized. SD doesnt AFAIK do this, as it doesnt follow the MS APIs. Unless theres a way to shut off XPs FS optimizing features, XP and SD dont look to get along to good. As for the rest of the NSW package, other than NAV 2002, the rest is useless or garbage. Windoctor is untrustworthy at best, disasterous at worst. The systemdoctor feature is worthless and slows you down. Practically everything in the systeminfo tool can be found elsewhere in XP if you look around. Diskdoctor, as mentioned above, adds absolutely nothing to XPs chkdsk function. Wipeinfo can be replaced by a number of freeware programs out there, not many, but a few that should work just as well. Unerase wizard may be ok for some people, but I've never had the occasion to use it, so its worthless to me (but thats my opinion, I'm sure it works fine, just kinda useless to me). Cleansweep is so-so. It sometimes locks up, and it still wont cancel out when you wish it to. This bug has been there for ages, and Symantec still hasnt fixed it yet. I wont say its bad, but sure aint good either. A number of free programs are also out there for cleaning out files and registry garbage, some doing a better job than cleansweep. All in all, NAV seems to be the only redeeming feature in NSW (unless you get the pro version, which has Norton Ghost, which is a great program). Theres too many features that are for all intents and purposes, can be achieved by XP or freeware progams. Now, on the other hand, if you wanted NAV and Ghost, getting the pro version *MIGHT* be worth your money, but thats questionable. If you dont need ghost, I would just go to the stand-alone NAV2002, and run, not walk, from Norton Utilities. Although it does seem to work well on some systems, its been known not to help much, or break, on many other systems. Just MHO. Take care.