PCTips Box

The Windows Vista Disk Defragmenter has been improved over the Windows XP version, but you can’t see or use all the best features unless you run it from the command line. By default the defrag tool only defragments files smaller than 64 MB, because according to Microsoft’s benchmarks, fragments of this size, which already consist of at least 16000 contiguous clusters, have a negligible impact on performance. If you still want to defrag files larger than 64 MB too, you need to use the -w switch mentioned below to defragment files of all size.

Disk Defragmenter does not defragment files in the Recycle Bin, or files which are in use. Disk Defragmenter will not degragment Bootsect dos, Safeboot fs, Safeboot csv, Safeboot rsv, Hiberfil sys, Memory dmp, or the Windows page file. Using the -b parameter will optimize these boot files. (more…)

This one is the best tweak for windows XP I ever found, and it works very well. With this tweak we will force windows to load kernel and drivers in memory.

Here is what you have to do :

1) Open the regedit tool (Start -> Run -> regedit.exe )

2) Use the navigation in the left and go to HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management (more…)

Windows places a file on your hard drive that it uses when your computer goes into hibernation mode. If you do not use hibernation mode, or your computer does not properly support it, you may want to disable hibernation and clear the file off your hard drive to free up some space (the file will use as much space as you have in physical memory, so if you have 1GB of RAM, it’s going to use 1GB of your hard drive space). (more…)

If you run a windows computer you’ll know like many others than after a while your system will in doubt start running slow. Most people will restart their computer to remove and idle processes. But if there’s a simpler way, why restart every time windows decides it doesn’t like you today?

1. Right click on an empty spot on your desktop and select New - Shortcut. (more…)

After the release of Firefox 2.0, the memory leak has become an even more notorious problem than before. On average, Firefox should take up no more than 80MB of RAM. Any more than that and you can consider yourself a victim of Firefox’s memory leak. I’m sure you’ve probably already seen a ton of guides on how to fix the memory leak problem in Firefox already. The reason why I’m writing another one on Vista Rewired is because none of those have worked very well for me. This one will be a little different because I’ve added a few of my ingredients in.

Just to give you a heads-up, this guide is going to be quite long but it’ll cover everything you need to know. (more…)

With so many different computer systems around now, many online memory shops like Crucial (www.crucial.com) and Kingston technology (www.kingston.com) offer to walk you through buying the correct chips for your particular system. As part of this process, you are usually asked to fill out an online form that specifies the make and the model of your computer, as well as the processor your machine uses. (more…)

The issue with either Windows XP or 32-bit Vista really isn’t the OS itself, but the legacy of the old IBM PC. The BIOS reserves a certain amount of memory for memory-mapped I/O. Still, even Win XP could “see” well over 3GB of RAM. It and 32-bit Vista do support something known as PAE (physical address extension), which allows applications written for PAE to use more than 2GB of memory.

However, Vista itself likes having more than 2GB of RAM. The reason is SuperFetch, the smart caching technology built into Vista. (more…)