hardware recommendations for ToEE

Ever looked at volume space or disk space in Windows Explorer or My Computer and see unexpected used space size and have no idea what folders the unexpected extra several hundred megabytes are contained in and located on the drive or disk? Would you like to know what the percent of used space is for a particular folder on a disk or volume? Would you like to see volume or disk or folder size information in a different way [size/allocated/percent or displayed all in KB or mixed MB/KB]?

TreeSize (freeware -=- small application, works fast)

Download using this link.
-> TreeSize Free V1.77

Every hard disk is too small if you just wait long enough. TreeSize Free tells you where precious space has gone to. TreeSize Free can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders. You can expand this folder in Explorer-like style and you will see the size of every subfolder. Scanning is done in a thread, so you can already see results while TreeSize Free is working. The space, which is wasted by the file system can be displayed and the results can be printed in a report.

687 KB - Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP

 

Do you think you have a virus or trojan on your computer?

Here are single-file executable scanning/cleaning/removal tools to download and use in normal mode or in safe mode [preferrably use safe mode] to clean your computer. These software tools will clean your computer for a total of upwards of about 200 of the historically most common viruses and trojans [and their variants].
* Together, these three scanning tools combined should cover the removal of over 90 percent of the viruses most common to home computers that have been infected by a virus.


McAfee Avert Stinger (Free)
-> Stinger

Avast! Virus Cleaner (Free)
-> Aswclnr

Panda PQremove (Free)
-> PQremove
* The link opens a non-English web page, but the file is the English version. Just close the web page after downloading.


You can write these scanning tools to a CDR disk and use them on any computer, especially if those computers do not have any antivirus software installed.
* It is estimated that about one-third of all home computers connected to the Internet do not have an antivirus program installed.

!!! Note: You can also run all three of these scanning tools at the same time - simultaneously rather than just consecutively. Plus, you can run these applications from a CD disk or from a hard drive.

 

Speaking of uninstalling and reinstalling ToEE and, or Windows, here is a helpful guide from Microsoft on how to use the Backup program, ntbackup.exe, included with Windows XP.

!!! If you have Windows XP, you already have Windows Backup and it is on the CD disk and FREE. (Check for installation instructions on this page if you need to install it.) You can choose what to backup and what not to backup using this software.

Here's a link to the Microsoft Tips & Tricks page for Windows XP Backup.
-> NTBACKUP.EXE -=- Windows XP Backup Made Easy

[EDIT] Hint: Make sure your computer is free of viruses and malwares before doing a backup of your datum and, or system files. Also, you might want to bookmark the Microsoft web page for reference and reading purposes.

 

Here is a free backup software [if you don't have Windows XP and don't like the backup program for your version of Windows...also, if you have Windows XP, I would suggest you use the Windows XP Backup because it is free and is a well written application].

!!! Note: The SyncBack Freeware looks like it could be a promising program. I have not tried it, myself, and I do not know how good it is or is not. I found it on CNET.

SyncBack Freeware V3.2.8.600 [1.72 MB]

Here is their description.
SyncBack is our freeware program that helps you easily backup and synchronise your files to: the same drive; a different drive or medium (CDRW, CompactFlash, etc); an FTP server; a Network; or a Zip archive.

Here is a link to download the program.
-> SyncBack

Here's what they say.
Our freeware is free for personal, educational, charity, government, and commercial use.

Here is a link to their published information for you to read if you wish to pursue using their software.
-> Tutorials and E-books

[EDIT] Hint: Make sure your computer is free of viruses and malwares before doing a backup of your datum and, or system files.

PS: They are supposed to have an improved version with the letters SE attached to the program name. The SE version is a pay for or buy version.

 

If you have Windows XP Home or Professional versions and you play ToEE and want to improve the performance of your computer and playing ToEE, ensure System Restore is disabled [turned off].

!!! System Restore is enabled by default. Disable [turn off] System Restore to improve the performance of your computer.

How To disable System Restore in Windows XP

Turn off (DISABLE) System Restore
To turn off System Restore, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the System Restore tab.
3. Select the Turn off System Restore check box (or the Turn off System Restore on all drives check box), and then click OK.
4. Click Yes when you receive the prompt to the turn off System Restore.
5. Close all open windows and reboot your computer.

 

If you have Windows Millennium and you play ToEE and want to improve the performance of your computer and playing ToEE, ensure System Restore is disabled [turned off].

!!! System Restore is enabled by default. Disable [turn off] System Restore to improve the performance of your computer.

How To disable System Restore in Windows ME

Turn off (DISABLE) System Restore
1. In Control Panel, click System.
2. Click the Performance tab.
3. Click the File System button.
4. Click the Troubleshooting tab.
5. Click the Disable System Restore check box.
6. Click OK, and then click Close.
7. Restart your computer when prompted.

 

User has a video problem with ToEE described as 'tearing'.
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The only issue I have right now is when I move the screen around, I see a lot of tearing. But when I stop and play its OK, only when I move the screen while the party is standing still.
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I suggested the following.

1. Try updating the Windows motherboard drivers [from the manufacturer website], first, which includes chipset + IDE + Accelerator + AGP interface drivers for your version of Windows.

2. Then update the video driver [from the manufacturer website].

 

If you are trying to gain performance improvement on your Windows XP computer, one thing you can also do is to change an advanced XP desktop feature.

1. Open Control Panel from the Start menu and choose "System".
2. Choose the "Advanced" tab.
3. Select the "Settings" button under the Performance section.
4. Check the "Adjust for best performance" box and click "Apply" and "Ok".
5. Reboot.

 

If you are comfortable with editing the registry in Windows XP, you can try these two changes to improve playing ToEE on your Windows XP computer.

-> !!! Editing the registry can be dangerous. If you do this wrong, you could have to reinstall Windows XP.

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1. Kernel Paging and Cache Tuning
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The "DisablePagingExecutive" entry in the registry prevents the kernel (the core of the XP OS) from being rolled out to the page file. The effect of this part of the tweak is to cause the OS to cache the OS Kernel and its entourage to RAM instead of to disk, which makes XP far more responsive.

The "LargeSystemCache" registry entry forces XP to allocate all but 4MB of system memory, that is system memory, not avaliable RAM, to the file system cache. The remaining 4MB of system memory is used for disk caching, though XP will allocate more memory if it is needed.

A modern hard disk will transfer sequential data to and from disk at up to 40MB per second, or even faster on some drives, but the LargeSystemCache tweak means that effective transfer speeds of 1GB per second or more can be obtained, depending on the amount of RAM in your system and its operating speed. This is achieved because the LargeSystemCache modification causes the OS to store data read from disk in RAM. It means that the OS is always using the optimum amount of RAM instead of leaving it untouched for future use that may or may not occur. Without this part of the tweak, 200MB or more of RAM in a typical 512MB machine goes completely unused.

Applications that do their own file caching do NOT need this tweak, for example - SQL Server or Internet Information Server (IIS) do not need this tweak.

Start regedit and navigate to the following key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\CONTROL\Session Manager\Memory Management]

* I do not know why the web page is placing a space between the O and L in \Control\.

Add these two lines, save the changes and reboot;

"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001

"LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001

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2. Processor Scheduling
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This part of the tweak is impossible to explain without getting into the technical ins and outs of binary values, bit pairs and bit masks. Suffice it to say, this part of the tweak forces short, variable length processor timeslices to be allocated to foreground processes three times more often than those timeslices given to background processes.

Start regedit and navigate to the following key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\CONTROL\PriorityControl]

* I do not know why the web page is placing a space between the O and L in \Control\.

Change the dword value of Win32PrioritySeparation, save the changes and reboot;

"Win32PrioritySeparation"=dword:00000026

NOTE: The Win32PrioritySeparation value of 26 is hexadecimal. this corresponds to 38 decimal. (The intial value may well be 00000002)

Applications that do their own file caching do NOT need this tweak, for example - SQL Server or Internet Information Server (IIS) do not need this tweak.

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Windows 2000/XP - Pagefile settings (best practices per Microsoft)

Note: If you are short on RAM, more paging occurs, which generates extra activity for your disks and slows response times for the system.
________________________________________

1. For Windows XP (only), have Windows select the best paging file size. Select System managed size.

!!! For Windows 2000, minimum and maximum pagefile sizes are set to values as there is no system managed size for Windows 2000, cf., 2A below.

2. The minimum and maximum pagefile settings are different for Windows 2000 and XP. Here are guides to setting minimum and maximum pagefile sizes.

- 2A. For Windows 2000, the minimum size needs to be 1.5 times the RAM installed and the maximum needs to be 3 times the RAM installed.
* For example, if you have 512 MB of total RAM installed, the minimum size should be 768 MB and the maximum size should be 1536 MB.

- 2B. For Windows XP, if want to set a defined minimum size and set a defined maximum size, the minimum size needs to be 1.5 times the RAM installed and the maximum needs to be 4.5 times the RAM installed [3 x 1.5 = 4.5].
* For example, if you have 512 MB of total RAM installed, the minimum size should be 768 MB and the maximum size should be 2304 MB.

 

Optimize Swapfile Performance (Windows 98/Me)

Note: If you are short on RAM, more paging occurs, which generates extra activity for your disks and slows response times for the system.
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On systems with larger amounts of memory, more than 128Mb, the hard disk based swap file is not needed as much. This tweak optimizes the use of the swap file on such systems. This causes Windows 98/98SE/ME using the swapfile to behave more like unto Windows 95 using a swapfile of which is not bad at all if you have 256 MB or more RAM installed.

Using notepad open the SYSTEM.INI file in your Windows directory.
-> Find the [386Enh] section and add a new line reading "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1".

Save the file and restart Windows for the change to take effect.

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Note: The entry in the SYSTEM.INI file would look like this.

[386Enh]
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

 

When you play ToEE on Windows XP AND you have to do things like leave System Restore active [enabled] and leave self-automatic updating proggies running in the background and leave antivirus enabled, then, this information is just for you.

Run the following Windows XP command, outlined below, from the Run box. Wait 20 minutes. Then, play ToEE.
________________________________________
(from) Benchmarking Windows XP
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The API ProcessIdleTasks can be called in one of two ways, from the command line or synchronously from a program. To call ProcessIdleTasks from the command line, use this syntax:

Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

When called from the command line, the ProcessIdleTasks work is done in the background asynchronously. It can take 10 to 15 minutes for idle tasks to complete. Task Manager will report processes running, and the disk will likely be active during this time.

The ProcessIdleTasks API takes no arguments and returns a standard Win32 error code. The definition is:

DWORD
ProcessIdleTasks()

The API itself is synchronous, so it wont return until the idle tasks have completed.
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[EDIT] What does this computer geek stuff mean [you wonder]? If you purposefully leave programs active and running in memory when you play ToEE (tsk-tsk, you bad gamer), run the above command as stated above. What is does is it forces any idle processes needing to complete to immediately run and be processed and terminate.

 

Microsoft Online Crash Analysis - Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool & Guide

!!! for your RAM memory installed

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

!!! (online web page) Windows Memory Diagnostic Users Guide
* This users' guide provides necessary information and step-by-step instructions that you can use to run Windows Memory Diagnostic. It is important to read the information and instructions in this guide before you use Windows Memory Diagnostic.

Sample run times - This table lists the time it takes for Windows Memory Diagnostic to run one test pass of the standard test suite.

Pentium II, 233 MHz w/ 128 MB RAM = 8 minutes, 32 seconds
Pentium III, 1 GHz w/ 256 MB RAM = 5 minutes
Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz w/ 1 GB RAM = 7 minutes, 25 seconds
Athlon XP 2000+, 1.67 GHz w/ 400 MB RAM = 4 minutes, 30 seconds

 

Make sure you did not miss any of the previous 6 posts on performance and tuning that you can implement or use, mostly on Windows XP, but also a little something for Windows 2000 and 98/ME.

 

tricks for Windows XP and 2000

improve hard drive access
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To speed up your hard disk speed we need to configure a buffer in memory to enable better handling of interrupts from the drive.
* This tip is only recommended if you have 256MB RAM or higher.

Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the Run command.

Expand the system.ini file window.

Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh].

Press Enter to make one blank line under the [386enh] header, and in that blank line type (or copy and paste) the following text.

Irq14=4096

Note: Irq14=4096 IS CASE SENSITIVE!!!

Click on the File menu, then choose Save.

Close SYSEDIT and reboot your computer.

Improvement will be noticed after the computer reboots.
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Whenever XP reads a file, it stamps the file with the date and time of the access. This feature has its place but is not required for normal use unless you rely on the date of last access for backup purposes. Timestamping a file that has just been read means that a write access has to be made to disk, so every time a read is executed, a corresponding write is also executed.

At the command prompt, enter the following then reboot;

FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 1

!!! To get this to work on Windows 2000, you might have to use regedit and do it the old fashioned way...see the additional information at the bottom of this post.

To turn timestamping back on, repeat the command but replace the 1 with 0.

Note: The old school reg hack for this trick should be...and should work on Windows 2000 Pro as well as XP.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
DWord value named "NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate" set it to "1" to disable
* I do not know why the web page is placing a space between the O and L in \Control\.