Pc configuration Tips

7. 
   Click OK,
   
8. 
   Click Apply if changes have been made,
   
9. 
   Click OK,
   

10. 
    Close Internet Explorer (all instances/tabs),
    
11. 
    Open Internet Explorer and check that the Proxy Server is no longer checked. Most often you will notice that it is not checked because you should now be able to access the Internet…...your home page should open!
    

RAM or computer memory was discussed in the section Hardware, RAM. However, computers have another type of memory that uses the hard drive. It is called the Page File and is often referred to as Virtual Memory or the Swap File. The Page File is usually (the default) found on the root directory of the system drive, or c:\PageFile.sys.

We all know someone who has to have every program they would use in a month open all at the same time…..in case they have to use it. Many PC’s do not have enough RAM to support opening all those programs and having many files open in each. That is where the Page File comes into use.

The Page File is given its name because Windows manages a process that swaps out Pages from RAM when not needed and writes them to the hard drive…..to the file PageFile.sys. When needed, the Pages, or blocks of information, are swapped out with other Pages in RAM not being used. This process used to be called Pagination, but now is simply referred to as Paging or Page Flipping.

On older PC’s with very little RAM I would first recommend upgrading the RAM to the maximum amount supported by the motherboard. This will have the most dramatic increase in PC performance. However, if RAM cannot be added due to budget or motherboard limitations, you can optimize the use of the Page File. There are several ways to do this.

1. 
   Move the PageFile.sys to another internal, physical drive.
   

Do not put the PageFile.sys on another partition on the system drive, a USB drive, or Flash Drive. The performance degradation will be obvious. An older PC will give you errors, including the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. Also, if for some reason the external drive becomes disconnected, your PC will likely crash and any unsaved data will be lost.

To move the Page File using Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307886

To move the Page File for Windows Vista:

1. 
   Open System,
   

1. 
   Classic Mode: Right-click on Computer (Desktop icon),
   
2. 
   Start Menu Mode: Start button, Right-click on Computer,
   
3. 
   Control Panel: Start button, Settings, Control Panel, double-click on System icon.
   

2. 
   Click on Advanced system settings (upper left),
   

3. 
   Under Performance section, click on Settings…,
   
4. 
   Click on Advanced tab,
   

5. 
   Click on Change…,
   
6. 
   Uncheck Automatically manage paging file size for all drives,
   

7. 
   Click on C: if that is your System Drive, where the operating system is installed,
   

If you do have another internal hard drive proceed:

8. 
   Click on No paging file,
   
9. 
   Click Set,
   

10. 
    Click Yes,
    
11. 
    Click on a drive letter for another internal drive. My laptop has a Recovery Partition, drive D:. I do not recommend moving a Page File to a partition on the same drive as the system partition but for purposes of this demonstration I am going to ignore my own advice. I would click on D:,
    
12. 
    If I click on System Managed Size, then click on Set, the following window appears:
    

It appears there is not enough space on my D: drive, or that partition, for a System Managed Page File.

If you do not get the message above skip the remaining steps and click OK, click OK, click Apply, click OK, and then click OK. If you have saved all your data, click on Restart Now, otherwise click on Restart Later.

Otherwise proceed:

13. 
    Click OK,
    
14. 
    Click on C: drive in above drive listing,
    
15. 
    Click on System Managed Size,
    
16. 
    Click on Automatically manage paging file size for all drives (make sure checkbox is checked),
    
17. 
    Click on OK,
    

18. 
    Click on Apply,
    
19. 
    Click on OK,
    
20. 
    Click on OK,
    

21. 
    If you have saved all your data, click on Restart Now, otherwise click on Restart Later.
    

2. 
   Move PageFile.sys to the front/beginning of the hard drive.
   

The only utility I know that will do this is UltimateDefrag by DiskTrix. Norton SystemWorks used to do it but I stopped using Norton (now Symantec) products years ago when I got a virus downloading virus definitions and they wanted $35 for technical support to fix the issue. I use a lot of Freeware utilities and pay very little attention to software I would have to pay for. Most people could not afford a PC if they had to pay for all the utilities to cover shortfalls in Microsoft Windows. I do however pay for products like SnagIt and a few others that I couldn’t live without (another story).

If you look hard enough there is an older version of UltimateDefrag that was Freeware. I have not used it since getting my laptop. It is on my To Do list to see if it has any issues with Windows Vista.

3. 
   Change the PageFile.sys size from dynamic to static.
   

During this process, RAM and the PageFile.sys are resources that Windows must manage. The dynamic nature of the Page File means that it is a resource that must be constantly managed. This process of dynamically sizing the Page File uses resources and thus places a burden on performance.

By changing from Windows Managed to a set size, where the minimum and maximum sizes are equal, Windows no longer has to manage this resource and performance overall increases.

This applies if your Page File is on the system drive or you have moved it to another internal drive.

To change the Page File to a static file size:

1. 
   Open System,
   
   1. 
      Classic Mode: Right-click on Computer (Desktop icon),
      
   2. 
      Start Menu Mode: Start button, Right-click on Computer,
      
   3. 
      Control Panel: Start button, Settings, Control Panel, double-click on System icon.
      

2. 
   Click on Advanced system settings (upper left),
   

3. 
   Under Performance section, click on Settings…,
   
4. 
   Click on Advanced tab,
   

5. 
   Click on Change…,
   

6. 
   Click on Automatically manage paging file size for all drives to make sure it is UNCHECKED,
   
7. 
   Click on Custom Size,
   

Windows XP specific

To summarize these and other articles:

You should first add as much RAM to your PC as possible. RAM is significantly faster than virtual memory (using your Page File).

If you have Windows XP (or earlier):

Less than 2 GB RAM or less, your Page File should be 2.5 x RAM.

Greater than 2 GB RAM, your Page File should be 1.5 x RAM.

I know the 2.5 multiplier above differs from much of the literature but my reasoning is related to the software possibly installed. As Windows XP matured, better hardware became available and software versions were available that took advantage of each.

If you installed Windows XP or any software on a computer that barely met the minimum hardware requirements then you may even need to exceed the 2.5 multiplier mentioned above.

If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7:

You Page File should be at least 1.5 times the amount of RAM in your PC.

I have 4 GB RAM in my laptop, although 4 GB is not what is actually available. The following Knowledge Base article from Microsoft discusses this:

8. 
   Since I have 4 GB RAM, for both the Initial Size and Maximum size, enter 6144 (1.5 x RAM),
   
9. 
   Click Set,
   
10. 
    Click OK,
    
11. 
    Click Apply,
    
12. 
    Click OK,
    
13. 
    Click OK,
    
14. 
    If you have saved all open files, click Restart Now…..otherwise click Restart Later and close Control Panel/System window.
    

No matter what size you set the Page File to because Windows seems to

override it and create a larger Page File. You can get an idea or RAM usage and Page File size/usage with another Freeware Favorite called MemInfo.

4. 
   Defragment the PageFile.sys.
   

If you use Windows XP, a Freeware program by Microsoft Windows Sysinternals, called PageDefrag will defrag your PageFile.sys and other system files before they load during the boot process. The worst I have seen is a PageFile.sys in over 5000 fragments. The performance gained from defragging was quite remarkable.

Please note that before using the PageDefrag utility it would be wise to defragment your hard drive first……and use a good tool to do it. I use MyDefrag which is a freeware tool also listed in my Freeware Favorites. One note of caution, uncheck the box for installing Scripts during the install process. Unfortunately it installs two scripts that I feel contradict one another and overburden your PC, thus adding unnecessary wear and tear on your hard drives. For more on defragmentation of your hard drives, see Microsoft Windows, Defragmentation. I also explain my reasoning for not using the default Scripts…..I do use their Scripts however. I am still researching this as of the release of version 1.0 of this document.

Remember this tip: in order to defrag your Page File, a large contiguous area on your hard drive must exist in order to move the Page File to one fragment/file. If you have not defragmented your hard drive, the chances are very small that enough space exists to move your Page File to create one fragment/file.

Using the PageDefrag tool on the PageFile.sys file using Windows Vista requires a little bit more effort than it should. The PageDefrag tool available from Microsoft Sysinternals does not work on the PageFile.sys under Windows Vista as it did under Windows XP despite their claims that it runs on Windows XP and higher. I guess we have different definitions of “runs”. In retrospect, it does run on Windows Vista, it just doesn’t work as it did for Windows XP! That is unless they forgot to document something. Through trial and error I have discovered how to get it to work and my explanation follows.

Under Windows Vista, the PageDefrag program from Sysinternals will defrag certain system files but will not defrag the PageFile.sys or the hibernation file. You will see a “Fail” message for each of these two files. Windows Vista must designate the two files as “system” files earlier in the boot process than it had under Windows XP.

The question on how to get it to work under Windows Vista, and I am only guessing it also applies to Windows 7, was first posed to me in an on-line user group for Excel (off topic subject). I was thinking about the process and it hit me……when does Windows Vista designate a file as a “system” file keeping it from being defragmented? How does Windows Vista know what is a “system” file?

If booting for the first time does Windows know which files are “system” files? I guessed no, Windows does not and that led me to the following answer and solution to the question posed…..how do you defrag your Page File in Windows Vista if it is designated as a “system” file? The answer is, you move the file to a non-system drive or partition and it will defragment. However enough contiguous space must exist for it to be in one fragment. For my laptop, the only other drive was a partition on my only internal hard drive, the system drive, drive C:, where Windows Vista was installed.

Remember earlier I mentioned that it is not good for optimal performance to have your Page File on a partition of your system drive. If you have one hard drive, the Page File should reside on the system partition. Not to worry! My solution is only temporary. If it worked moving the Page File to a separate partition, because Windows has yet to designate the Page File as a “system” file, then it should defragment by moving it back to the C: drive, my system partition. When moved back to my system partition, during the boot process it would not be designated as “system” file until after Windows Vista booted, but not before.

Therefore, after moving the Page File back to my C: drive, the Page File should defragment the first time I reboot. It did! I of course had defragmented my D: drive before moving the Page File to it, and I then defragmented my C: drive after moving the Page File to the D: drive. I defragged the C: drive to ensure enough contiguous space existed for the Page File when I moved it back. I also only created the bare minimum size Page File (200 MB) on my D: drive. When I rebooted after moving the Page File back to my C: drive, it was reported that my PageFile.sys was in 1 fragment!!!

5. 
   Clear the PageFile.sys before shutting down.
   

The solution for this requires you to edit the Windows Registry. Something I do not recommend unless you REALLY, REALLY know what you are doing. When editing the Windows Registry, you could delete the wrong item, delete something by mistake, accidentally enter a space or wrong character, etc. The list is long but the result can still be catastrophic.

An excellent Knowledge Base article from Microsoft discusses how to do it and also provides a link to a file that makes the appropriate changes to the Windows Registry for you:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314834

BACKUPS AND SYCHRONIZATION

First of all one has to define backup. Backing up your computer is completely different from backing up your data. Thus, I will discuss them separately.

SYSTEM BACKUPS

Backing up your computer is not an easy process. I use Acronis TrueImage Home (not their most current version). I like it because I can create an entire image of my laptop hard drive and at my discretion create an incremental backup. I only perform an incremental backup if I install new software, make significant changes or at least on a monthly basis. I have two external hard drives I use for my “system” backups.

Every year, around January, I do a complete system backup. Throughout the year I perform incremental backups. I use the two external hard drives to alternate each year. I keep last year’s backup in my safe deposit box. I often have both in my safe deposit box and get the current “system” backup if I plan to do an incremental backup.

I do not use Windows Backup because it was not a very good solution in early versions of Windows. I started using Acronis and due to my comfort level and the learning curve I have used it ever since.

DATA SYNCHRONIZATION vs. BACKUPS

I have lost enough important data over the years that I have become very redundant. Aiding my redundancy has been the steady drop in cost and the increase in size of hard disks. I have backups of backups. In all, I have 3 external data backup drives. One external hard drive I use for backing everything up to every day. Another is what I back my daily up to at least once a week. The third external hard drive I rotate with my second data backup and keep in my safe deposit box.

If I go on vacation or out of town on business I leave one of them with a friend or at work……somewhere away from my computer. I do take one with me however when I travel.

I do not use Windows Backup for a myriad of reasons. Backup software is proprietary and is only good if you have the software with which you backed up your data with. For example, if you use Windows Backup and Restore, or other type backup software, and your PC dies. You must fix and then reinstall Windows and your backup software to be able to access your backup files.

What I do instead is use synchronization software. In essence, my data backups are external hard drives with the exact same folder structure and files as they exist on my internal hard drive. I have tried a lot of Freeware and actually paid for some early versions of others.

However, what I use now is Freeware from Microsoft, a product called SyncToy. It is also listed in my Freeware Favorites. SyncToy was originally a Windows XP PowerToy but has since been upgraded to use the Synchronization Framework capabilities built into the .NET Framework. It is free and very easy to use. To be more specific, I use the Echo method of synchronization. If I rename a file or folder, move a file or folder, or delete a file or folder, those changes are echoed on my backup drive. In essence, after syncing up, what I see on my internal hard drive is exactly what I see on my external hard drive.

Why do I prefer synchronization over backing up? As previously mentioned it is the proprietary aspect of backup software. If my PC dies, with data synchronization my data files are readily available. I can take my external hard drive and plug it into any computer and know exactly where all my files are. I do not have to worry (initially) about fixing my computer, reinstalling the operating system, reinstalling the backup software and then restoring my backup files.

The argument could be made that if you had two computers you would have the backup software installed on both. However, that would require paying for two licenses (if you didn’t use Windows Backup and Restore) and still having to go through the process of restoring the files.

DEFRAGMENTATION

This discussion is about defragmenting data and non-system files. There are “system” files that are non-movable because “system” files in use cannot be moved because of the volatility it creates. For a discussion on defragmentation of “system” files see section Microsoft Windows, PageFile.sys.

In essence, defragmentation occurs when you save a file and fragments of the file are saved to multiple locations on your hard drive. How does that occur? As you save and delete files gaps or free space on your hard drive start appearing, all with different sizes. For example:

When a file becomes fragmented or broken into several files stored on multiple locations on a hard drive, the performance on your PC is affected. I have some Virtual Machines (VM’s) or Virtual Hard Disks (VHD’s) that are 26 GB in size and were in over 100,000 fragments. The performance was so bad that the VHD’s were almost impossible to use.

By defragmenting a file or a hard drive you increase the overall performance of the computer.

There are many programs or utilities for doing this. Windows has its own version but it provides very little options and worst of all, in Windows Vista it provides no progress bar to show where it is in the process. Very annoying!!!

I use several products because they each have options that I use for different purposes. I use Defraggler because it will analyze a hard drive and provide a list of all files that are fragmented. The list also provides the size of each file and how many fragments each file is in. I can then sort in ascending or descending order by file name, file size or the number of fragments. Once sorted I can chose all or click a check box to select a few for defragmentation. Clicking on a file in the list and scrolling down, I can hold down the shift key, click on another file name and any number of files will be highlighted. I then press the space bar and all files just highlighted are checked (selected). The checked or selected files can then be defragmented.

SmartDefrag also has some options I use it for. But the Freeware program I have using more often lately is MyDefrag. Why I like it is the scripts it provides for both system disks and data disks. Each disk type should be defragmented differently. One thing I do not like about it is the default tasks it schedules to run. To me they appear to work against one another and possibly create excessive wear and tear on your hard drive……I am still investigated this. For now, I have deleted the scripts and run the weekly scripts manually on a weekly basis.

Both Smart Defrag and Defraggler fail to defragment large files such as my Virtual Machines (VM). Also, MyDefrag doesn’t always completely defrag very large files even when contiguous space exists on the hard drive. However, MyDefrag does significantly decrease the number of fragments for very large files.

The best defragmenter I found for very large files is another tool by Microsoft Sysinternals called Contig. When I first had issues with my VM’s and needed to defragment them to increase their performance, Contig defragmented my 26 GB VM (100,000+ fragments) in just under 30 minutes. The only downside to Contig is that it is a command line utility, which creates a lot of typing and what you type has to be the exact syntax for the program to work.

The aforementioned defragmentation utilities are all Freeware and listed in my Freeware Favorites. I wrote a program in C#, called ContigUI (Contig User Interface). It is a graphical interface for using Contig. Currently version 1.0 (with source code) is posted and it only defragments one file. As time permits, and my learning curve, I am considering developing version 2.0 which will provide options for folders and drives. However, due to the options available in MyDefrag I may never decide to develop 2.0…..I am trying to determine if I would be wasting my time!

Please note: For external hard drives I almost always reformat them before using them. First and foremost is the fact that many come formatted as FAT32 drives. FAT32 is an older file system architecture and does not provide the security of NTFS. With NTFS you can set different permissions on any file, folder or drive. In addition to formatting as NTFS, I change the default formatting from 4096 bytes to 512 bytes.

In doing so there is some give and take. I gain more “real” disk space by reducing the “slack”. However, it takes much longer to defragment due to there being much more clusters to defragment…..8 times more (512 x 8 = 4096). A simple explanation follows.

A hard drive is divided into sectors…..the smallest unit of storage possible. The sector-size is defined during the low-level formatting of the hard drive. When formatting a hard drive it is divided into clusters. A cluster is a group of sectors and can only be occupied by one file. No two files can reside on the same cluster.

If you have a small picture that is only 10 KB in size and a 4 KB cluster size, the picture would occupy 3 clusters, or 12KB (4 KB = 1 cluster, 4 KB = 1 cluster, 2 KB = 1 cluster with 2 KB “slack”). However, in the third cluster, there would be 2 KB of “slack” because after the first 8 KB occupied two clusters, the remaining 2 KB of the file occupied a 4 KB cluster but didn’t use the full cluster. The space not used is called “slack” and is wasted space.

By formatting with a smaller cluster size you reduce the “slack” or wasted space on the hard drive. Imagine if you had formatted the drive with a large sector size. Each very small file occupies only a small fraction of a cluster, with the remaining “slack” wasted space. On large hard drives with many files, more space is wasted.

Below are the properties of a shortcut I have in a folder. It is a shortcut to a folder I keep my Code Samples in for future reference. Notice the difference in