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How to speed up Windows 98
How to speed up Windows 98
| How to speed up Windows 98 |
| Posted By: DJNafey | Date Added: 30-10-2005 01:29 AM | Views: 7024 |
When your PC was brand new and had just Windows 98 or Windows 98 Second Edition (98SE) running on it, or after you formatted your hard disk and had only installed Windows 98 / 98SE, your “free system resources” were somewhere between 88% and 95%. However, over time, you install more and more programs and updates, install additional hardware and services like broadband, get spyware on the PC that loads silently as soon as Windows starts, etc., etc. and your system can get very slow.
My target for a Windows 98 system running optimally is 85-90% free system resources. Get below 80% and you’ll notice the difference. Get below 70% and you’ll really feel that it’s running slower than it used to. Get as low as 50% or less and Windows will start displaying errors, saying that it can’t open any more programs or run any more services such as anti-virus scans because “the system is low on resources”. Unfortunately, there is no single thing that you can do that will get it back to how it was when it was new apart from wiping everything off the hard disk and starting from scratch with a re-installation of Windows. However, the good news is that each of the many steps are very straightforward and can be performed without in-depth technical knowledge. You just need someone to tell you what the steps are and that’s the point of this article.
At various stages of this article, we will show you how to check the level of free system resources. If you reach a level that you are happy with, you can stop there. If you want to make your system run as efficiently as possible, work through to the end of the article.
First of all, let’s see how bad things really are. Reboot the PC and, as soon as Windows has finished loading, check the free system resources. This is done by right-clicking the My Computer icon on the desktop (or going into Windows Explorer and right-clicking the My Computer icon at the top of the tree), then selecting Properties from the context menu and checking the value that is quoted for the Free System Resources on the General tab.
Check against my guide above to get an idea of how badly your system is running. If the free resources are very low, you might decide that it’s time to cut your losses, back up your important data / files and re-install Windows and just the programs that you really need on a “clean”, formatted hard disk. Make a note of the free system resources as “Resources Value 1”. We’ll need you to refer to this if you want to post a question in the D-A-L forum to ask us for assistance or advice.
Delete everything in the “C:\Windows\Temp” folder, either from My Computer or Windows Explorer. All of the items in your “C:\Windows\Temp” folder can be safely deleted. The reason that there appear to be some programs in there is because, when a program is installed, it writes various temporary files for the installation process into this directory. Once the installation process is finished (or after the next time you reboot), these files are supposed to be automatically deleted. For one reason or another (usually bad programming by the software author), sometimes they just get left behind and will never disappear unless you go into this folder and remove them yourself.
If you have a “C:\Temp” folder, delete the whole folder. This is a temporary folder that was created by a software installation program that should have actually placed its temporary files in your “C:\Windows\Temp” folder instead but it was badly programmed. Therefore, this folder is no longer required and can be safely removed.
Go into Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Internet Options. Click “Delete Cookies” and “Delete Files”. Click the “Settings” button - set the amount of space for Temporary Internet Files down to 2Mb.
Go into your Recycle Bin. If there's nothing in there that you still need, empty the Recycle Bin.
Reboot the PC and, as soon as Windows has finished loading, check the free resources. This will give you an indication of how much improvement has been made simply by carrying out these most basic of Windows maintenance tasks. Note down the free resources as “Resources Value 2”.
Run Scandisk from Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > System Tools. Make sure that it finishes. If a confirmation screen is displayed at the end, make sure that it says that Scandisk either found no errors or that it found errors and fixed all of them. If the confirmation screen reports that errors were detected and they were not all fixed, then run Scandisk again. Also check on the confirmation screen that there were no “bad sectors” detected. Make sure that you run Scandisk on all hard drives or each drive letter (partition) relating to your hard disk. For most PCs, this will be drive C: only.
Run Disk Defragmenter from Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > System Tools.
Reboot the PC and, as soon as Windows has finished loading, check the free resources. This will give you an indication of how much improvement has been made simply by carrying out the second level of basic Windows maintenance tasks. Note down the free resources as “Resources Value 3”.
Check each of the icons in your System Tray to see what is being loaded up automatically each time that Windows starts. The System Tray is the area at the bottom-right corner of your screen next to the clock. You will typically find icons for your anti-virus software as well as small programs such as Apple Quicktime, graphics card utilities, keyboard or mouse configuration programs, etc. that run in the background, consuming free resources without giving you much benefit. Hover the mouse over each icon that you are not familiar with and it will usually display a tooltip to tell you which program the icon is for. If you have any that you do not need to have running all the time, either right-click on the icon or double-click it and choose the option to exit the application or edit the settings for the application so that it does not start up the next time that Windows loads. Do not stop your anti-virus, anti-spyware or firewall software but do try to stop programs such as Apple Quicktime, Real Player (StartCenter) and hardware configuration utilities – these can be loaded later as required (which is usually very rarely or not at all).
Select the Start Menu > Programs > Startup folder. Are there entries in here that are starting programs that are not required? If so, right-click on each one and select Delete. If there is an entry for 'Microsoft Office Startup', you can also Delete that (don't worry, it doesn't stop Microsoft programs from starting up - it's a bit of a red herring).
Note down the free resources as “Resources Value 4”.
Reboot the PC and note down the free resources as “Resources Value 5”.
Go into Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel. Double-click the “Add / Remove Programs” icon. Browse through the list of programs that is displayed. All of these are programs that are installed on your PC. If you see an entry in the list for a program that you recognise and you no longer need, double-click it to run through the removal process. Seek advice from someone on the D-A-L forum or a competent PC technician if you want to remove any software that is listed here but you are not really sure what it is. If you see an entry for AOL version 8, 9 or 10 in the list, you should strongly consider removing it and installing an older version of the AOL Internet connection software or, alternatively, switching to a different Internet Service Provider (ISP). AOL’s is regarded as very bloated, which means that it is packed with lots of non-essential “bells and whistles” such that it is well-known for slowing down older PCs. Many performance problems have been solved on the D-A-L forums after we found out that the user had upgraded to a newer version of AOL software and we got them to go back to a previous version. There are various other programs available that will run poorly on all but the most modern PCs. For example, Norton Anti-Virus is excellent anti-virus software but an old Windows 98 PC will struggle to run the most recent versions.
Reboot the PC and note down the free resources as “Resources Value 6”.
That should have made a significant difference. If you are still suffering performance problems after completing all of these steps, you may have faulty hardware or need an upgrade in order for the PC to be able to cope with the software that you are currently running. Alternatively, your PC may be infected with a virus or spyware. In some cases such as these, running through all of the above steps cannot make enough of a difference and further, more technical action needs to be taken or the hard disk needs to be wiped and Windows need to be re-installed from scratch.
If you would like further advice from a member in the D-A-L forum, please post a messafe in the Windows 98 section of the forum, explaining in your message that you have run through this article. Importantly, please also quote each of the resources values, 1 through to 6, so that we can understand what has been done and how much of a difference each step made.
This article may not be copied or distributed in part or in full from this site and is copyright D24 Media Limited.
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