How to optimize performance with 128 MB of RAM?

[e_dawg]

Anybody have any ideas? My computer at work is an HP e-Vectra. P3-600, 128 MB of RAM, 7.5 GB Quantum Fireball lct15 4400 rpm ATA-66 HD running Win2k. The 7.5 GB is a single partition, formatted as NTFS with 512-byte clusters.

After suffering through excruciatingly slow multitasking performance using the computer "as is", i.e., without making any changes to it since it had been given to me, I now have administrator privileges on my user account and can make changes. Please help me optimize performance considering my 2 main limitations: 128 MB of RAM and a 4400 rpm HD.

I have already made some significant changes, but I need all the ideas I can get to make this corporate vomit box as tolerable as possible. Here are the changes i have made so far:

1. Pagefile Optimization (very important as there is much swapping going on with 128 MB of RAM) - made the pagefile static so as to reduce fragmentation and resizing overhead - 160 MB max and min, as well as moving it from the end of the disk closer to the middle... also defragged the swapfile itself (it was 2 fragments before... now it is 1)

2. Spring Cleaning of User Documents and Settings folders - cleared out the data files, user profiles, local settings, application data, temp internet files, etc. of all the previous users who have used the computer before myself... saved almost 2 GB of HD space (by getting rid of all the crap, the idea is that the slow seeking HD doesn't have to cover as much of the platter now that all the files I need are concentrated in the first 30% of the drive)

3. Removal of Unnecessary Programs - uninstalled and deleted directories of unused programs installed by previous users over the years... saved about 500 MB of HD space

4. Removal of Unnecessary Startup Items - removed various FastFind, Office Startup, RealPlayer, QuickTime, NAV, and various other TSR and startup type items... conserved about 10 MB of RAM usage and a few CPU cycles

What other things should I do? Is there a way to disable more services? I tried to disable Telephony, Remote Access Manager, and a variety of other services, but Win2k was unable to stop them nor disable them. I think I only managed to disable RIP and SNMP.

Any way to conserve RAM usage as I multitask? I remember with Win9x you could conserve RAM by reducing the size of the disk cache in the system.ini. When I had 64 MB of RAM with 98, I set the vcache to 8 MB or so... got me an extra 20+ MB of unused memory at times. W2k seems to steadily add to its system cache... sometimes using 80 MB for the cache. Seems kinda dumb when it then has to page 40 MB back out to disk to make room for something else when it could have saved it for programs in the first place.

Unfortunately, using Office or IE is a must, so that is not an option.

 

[Tea]

Pay some attention to your desktop. (You probably already did this, but just for the record.) Remove as many icons as possible. Turn "view as web page" off (big difference), select "classic" folder view, switch off "remember the changes to each folder", and finally, go into your screen properties and switch that animation crap off.

 

[Mercutio]

If you can possibly get away with it, turn off User and machine policies for the workstation. You'll still have to process domain GPs but every little bump helps.

Uninstall parts of office you aren't using. Particularly if someone makes you use Outlook, turn off "Use Word as an Email editor". Move outlook mail to PST files, and keep them reasonably-sized. I've noticed that much swapping happens when you multitask Outlook+700MB PST file with ANYTHING. I've no idea what the cutoff should be - I'm not an outlook person, but it's painful on 128MB.

Most of the services running on 2000Pro don't have a big impact on performance or RAM usage, but Ars Technica ran an article a year or so ago on which ones are safe to turn off.

 

[e_dawg]

Tea,

Very important suggestions... the basics. However, I did make those changes already (but neglected to mention them)... within 30 minutes of using that computer for the first time, as a matter of fact I am not using the "classic" folder view, however, as I am used to having the extra information in the margins... I guess I should learn to live without it as I cannot afford such luxuries on such a slothful PC.


Mercutio,

I cannot disable user and machine policies on my machine for several reasons.

Uninstalling parts of Office that are not currently being used would similarly not go over well the second said parts have to be reinstalled at a later date (which they undoubtedly will).

As for Outlook, I have never used Word as an e-mail editor and probably never will. I have a dozen local PST files and use them religiously, using the OST and server based files as little as possible. The general rule I was told was to keep each PST under 300-500 MB.

I actually love using Outlook as a standalone app. Unfortunately, when it is used in an Exchange mail environment on a slow system, it is not fun. Even still, I am not sure if I like the unstable Lotus Notes / Domino in a corporate setting any better. I would probably take Outlook / Exchange on a decently fast client/server infrastructure any day of the week.

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Thanks for your ideas, gentlemen. Keep them coming!

 

[e_dawg]

Okay, folks. I have finally tweaked my corporate vomit box to the point where it is now usable, 128 MB of RAM and 4400 rpm HD notwithstanding. Here's what I did on top of everything I did in the first post:

1. Set the Folder View to Classic View from View as Web Page as per Tannin's suggestion.

2. Increased Free memory by 7 MB by setting the following services to manual instead of auto start:

Alerter
Application Management
Carbon Copy Access Manager and Scheduler
Computer Browser
DefWatch (NAV)
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Distrubed Transaction Coordinator
Fax Service
Indexing Service
Messenger
Norton AntiVirusClient
Print Spooler
Remote Access Connection
Remote Registry Service
RunAs Service
RIP Listener
Server
Task Scheduler
Telephony
WMDM PMSP Service

Note that you will need to start the Print Spooler service manually should you need to print. That saves almost 3 MB of RAM, however, so I am willing to start it manually whenever I need to print. Disabling the Indexing Service also reduces the file system overhead of indexing all your files on a regular basis, increasing disk performance and reducing wasted CPU cycles.

3. Reduced NTFS overhead by disabling NTFS 8.3 name creation and last access logging:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurentControlSet\Control\Filesystem\NtfsDisable8dot3nameCreation
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystemNtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
Set both REG_DWORD values to 1

4. Disabled the OS/2 subsystem (as I hear Tannin in the background saying "Noooo!")

5. Improved W2k's caching and memory management scheme by installing OOSoft's CleverCache v4. Instead of letting W2k stupidly increase its system cache to upwards of 70 MB, using up what precious little physical memory that's left and causing unnecesary swapping to occur, CleverCache aggressively controls the system cache and conserves as much free physical memory as possible for applications, minimizing swapping. I was skeptical at first, believe me, but I don't think I could live without this program ever again. Mind you, I do not install it on my desktops, as I only feel it is useful on computers with limited RAM. When you have copious amounts of RAM, why not let Windows max out the system cache so as to minimize disk and network access? But with 128 MB of RAM, it is a godsend. I feel like I have done my part by clearing out all the crap to free up as much free physical memory as possible upon startup; CleverCache takes over from there, ensuring that swapping does not have to occur until it's absolutely necessary. http://www.oosoft.de/english/products/ooccpro/index.html

If I also set the Print Spooler service to manual, I only use 71 MB of RAM on startup and have 57 MB of free physical RAM to play with. I can run Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and IE together with practically no swapping at all. Acrobat will take things over the top and incur swapping, but this situation is far better than before, when I would use 90 MB of RAM on startup and W2k's crazy caching/memory management system would cause swapping with just 2 applications open.

 

[e_dawg]

As a side note, disabling NAV causes Outlook to run significantly faster. I don't know if it's a corporate edition thing, but the real-time e-mail scanner (rtvscan process) really bogs Outlook down far more than the e-mail protection feature of NAV 2001 (non-corporate).