Optimizing your Windows PC

Conserving Random Access Memory (RAM)

As you install programs on to your computer, many of them will want to run every time your computer is turned on. Others, such as Real Player, or MSN Instant Messenger want to be on all of the time.

This can obviously be a waste of RAM and of system start up time. The best strategy is to attempt to eliminate as much of them as possible, and keep only those you are unable to part with. This page will show you how to hunt down these memory hogs and crush them. After you have done this, you will most probably notice a significant speed increase, providing you were low on RAM to begin with.

Step 1 - The System Tray

The section of the Task Bar located in the bottom right portion of your deskop (to the left of your system clock), is what is commonly referred to as the system tray. This is where memory resident programs, that are nice enough to make themselves visible, reside. Their icons allow you to modify their properties and launch the program when necessary.

Programs which commonly reside in this tray are MSN Instant Messenger, Real Networks Real Player, Mirabilis/AOL ICQ, to name only very few.

If your system tray is loaded with icons, you have a problem on your hands. To prevent these programs from running all the time, right click on their icon and try to find their properties. In that dialog box, there will probably be an option somewhere to disable automatic start-up. If you can't find such an option anywhere in that program, you can still prevent the application from starting up using another one of the methods described below.

Step 2 - The Autoexec.bat file

Back in the days of MS-DOS, the autoexec.bat file used to be the only way a program could load itself into memory at system startup. And hence, it was extremely easy to free up memory. Although things have changed since then, and Windows 95 or higher, no longer even require an autoexec.bat file to run properly, there are still some old programs that may have placed their start-up in this file.

To easily check your autoexec.bat, choose Run from the Start-Up menu, and type 'Sysedit' (without the quotes). You will then see a few windows. Select the one titled autoexec.bat and take a look at what's in there. Each line in this file, gets executed every time your computer is turned on, as if someone was at the console actually typing these commands by hand. If you see lines such as 'c:\progra~1\mcafee\start.exe', it's most probably a program that you can disable without too many repercussions. To disable a line temporarily, type 'rem' at the beginning of the line, and then save the autoexec.bat file. Then try restarting your system to see if you notice any difference. If not, this application was probably unecessary, and you have successfullly freed up some memory by disabling it.

Repeat this process for any suspicious lines in this file, until you are satisfied.

Step 3 - The win.ini file

In Windows 3.1 (Windows 95's predecessor), the only way a Windows based program could start-up automatically when you launched windows, was to place itself in the win.ini file. Like the autoexec.bat file, new programs won't start up this way, but you may still have some 16-bit Windows 3.1 applications, that are starting up this way.

To verify this, choose Run from the Start-Up menu, and type 'Sysedit' (without the quotes). This time select win.ini, and scroll down until you get to the line 'run = '. Every application specified on this line, will start up automatically with windows. To diable them, delete the reference to it's location.

For example, if you see 'run = c:\games\pacman\res.exe;c:\progra~1\word\startme.exe', then res.exe and startme.exe are two programs that are starting up with your computer. To remove both of them, modify that line so that it reads 'run =', and then save the win.ini file.

To be safe, write down somewhere what the line said before saving any changes, so as to be able to restore the original file, if any errors occur in the future.

Step 4 - The StartUp folder

Most of you are probably familiar with the StartUp folder. It is simply a folder, situated in the Start Menu, that gets special treatment from Windows. Any shortcut placed in this folder, is automatically runned on start up.

To prevent an application which uses this method to start up from doing just that, simply place it's short cut somewhere else (such as the Recycle Bin, or as I like to do, in a special 'Start Up Disabled' folder.

You can get to this folder by selecting Start>Settings>Taskbar, right clicking on the start menu and then selecting 'Explore'or going through My Computer and into the Windows folder.

Step 5 - The Windows Registry

The Windows Registry Editor - Run folder

The final way a program can make itself start up with your system, it to place a reference pointing to it in the windows registry. This method is similar to the win.ini file, except instead of being stored in a *.ini file, the reference is stored in the for of a registry key.

To access the registry select Start>Run, and then type 'regedit'.

On the left side of the screen, you should see a file structure. Follow the following path to get to the run section:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER >
Software >
Microsoft >
Windows >
CurrentVersion >
Run

Here you should see a few registry keys, which you can delete as you wish. Deleting a particular registry key should prevent the specified application from starting up automatically.

You should however be warned that editing the System Registry is a dangerous practice and can lead to many problems. But I wouldn't worry too much; I've been editing the Syystem Registry for a long time, and have never had a problem.

Next Page:
Increasing the Speed of your Processor (Overclocking)
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Removing the Windows wait time
Preventing Windows from resizing the swap file
Removing useless animations and sounds
Save disk space