Windows 98 system tweaking

From the archive: Rick wrote this for cablenut.com in January 2001 and revised it that spring. It is reproduced from the Internet Archive with light edits for readability. Some tools and links it mentions no longer exist.

Retro only: these tips are for Windows 98 on period hardware. Back up SYSTEM.INI, MSDOS.SYS and CONFIG.SYS before editing, and don’t apply any of this to a modern PC.

Swap file

1. Right-click My Computer → Properties → Performance → Virtual Memory.
2. With less than 64 MB of RAM, let Windows manage virtual memory.
3. With 128 MB, a 256–384 MB swap file works well. I have 256 MB and run a web server, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Outlook Express and Winamp, so I use 256 MB.
4. If you have two drives or partitions, put the swap file on the one without Windows. Best case: a whole drive just for paging.
5. Set the minimum and maximum to the same value so Windows doesn’t waste time resizing the file. 128–512 MB is a good range.
6. Reboot.

File system

1. In the same Performance tab, click File System.
2. Set “Typical role of this computer” to Network server.
3. Read-ahead optimization can be raised to a 2 MB buffer with a small registry tweak.

SYSTEM.INI

Run sysedit and open the SYSTEM.INI window. For the disk cache, I found the best values were:

[vcache]
MinFileCache=8192
MaxFileCache=8192
ChunkSize=512

Then add these under [386Enh]:

[386Enh]
DMABufferSize=64
LocalLoadHigh=1
PageBuffers=32
MinSPs=16
MaxBPs=1024
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 makes Windows lean on the page file less, at the cost of free physical memory. Use it only if you have plenty of RAM (256 MB or more). Save in sysedit, and remove the lines if you change your mind.

Faster boot: MSDOS.SYS and CONFIG.SYS

MSDOS.SYS lives in the root of your boot drive and is usually read-only and hidden, so turn on “show all files” and clear the read-only flag first. The original article listed the boot options to add under its [Options] section, and the matching CONFIG.SYS entries, in screenshots that sadly weren’t preserved. All of these tweaks need a restart.

Want more? Microsoft’s TweakUI PowerToy has tons of hidden options for the file system and the Windows interface.

Rick (Cablenut)