CAUTION1:  make sure your motherboard is on the list of supported chipsets for IAA !!

CAUTION2: if you have a laptop, even if it is on the list of supported chipsets - with version 2.3 for some unknown reason, Intel yanked support for mobile devices !!  You will have to install version 2.2.2 instead, which at the time of this writing (Nov 2004) is still available on their website.

The Intel Application Accelerator is a great program, released by Intel, that will boost the performance of a user's system by optimizing the flow of information between the CPU and the storage devices. This improvement is accomplished by replacing the storage drivers that come with Windows XP with drivers that are optimized for their motherboards. According to Intel, the Application Accelerator will eliminate the data storage system bottleneck on the motherboard, which will allow the CPU to be more efficient and will speed up various aspects of the system.

On top of the bottleneck solution, which improves system performance, the Application Accelerator claims to increase application and even game performance because it will increase the speed of disk inputs and outputs. In other words, the applications and games can read and write data faster.

Additionally, the Application Accelerator is optimized for the Intel Pentium 4 processor, and it therefore uses new high-speed Pentium 4 extensions to accomplish the high speeds. On top of this, the Application Accelerator also promises to decrease your boot time. This seems to be a by-product of the elimination of the bottleneck and faster disk reads.

But that's not all. The Intel application acceleration also includes 48-bit logical block addressing. That means that you can use hard disks larger than 137GB. In addition, the Application Accelerator will automatically detect and optimize the transfer modes of your storage devices as high as possible to ensure that your hardware is running at top speed.

The Intel Application Accelerator seems almost too good to be true. Did I mention that this utility is free too? Intel has made some very bold claims about their application. Are these claims true? Find out by reading the next section.

The Application Accelerator program actually works as promised. Searching the Web, you will find hundreds of success stories for users that have installed the Application Accelerator with very good results. Users have reported their applications starting up twice as fast as before, and having many seconds shaved off of their boot time.

Unfortunately, the Intel Application Accelerator will only run on certain systems, and your system must meet the strict requirements for it to run without causing problems. After all, the reason why it works so well is because it can optimize the storage driver to work at peak performance for a specific motherboard.

Basically, your PC must meet the following three different qualifications:

1. Your PC must be running an Intel CPU: the Pentium II, III, IIII, as well as the Celeron-based processors and Xeon series of processors. Sorry, AMD users.

    

2. You must have the Intel Chipset Installation Utility installed, if your chipset requires it. Visit www.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/inf.htm to view a table of motherboard chipsets that need to be installed. It your motherboard requires it to be installed for the system to correctly identify your chipset, visit http://downloadfinder.intel .com/scripts-df/Product_Filter.asp?ProductID=816 to download a copy.

    

3. The last qualification to use the Intel Application Accelerator is that you must have a supported motherboard chipset. Refer to Table 11-2 to see what chipsets are supported.

Tip: If you do not know what kind of chipset your motherboard has, Intel has a free utility that will detect your chipset and display the model number for you. Visit www.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/chipsetid.htm to download a copy of this utility. If your chipset is not listed, then check the Intel Application Accelerator Web site.

Table 11-2 Intel Application Accelerator Compatibility

 

Chipset	Support
440	Not Supported
810	Supported
810E	Supported
810E2	Supported
810L	Supported
815	Supported
815E	Supported
815EM	Not Supported
815EP	Supported
815G	Supported
815EG	Supported
815P	Supported
820	Supported
820E	Supported
840	Supported
845	Supported
845E	Supported
845G	Supported
845GE	Supported
845GL	Supported
845GV	Supported
845PE	Supported
848P	Not Supported
850	Supported
850E	Supported
852GM	Not Supported
852GME	Not Supported
855GM	Not Supported
855GME	Not Supported
860	Supported
865G	Not Supported
865P	Not Supported
865PE	Not Supported

Also, if your chipset is not currently supported, there is always the chance that someday Intel might add support.

Caution: If your chipset is listed as not supported and is also listed on the Intel Web page as not supported, installing the Application Accelerator on your computer will result in big problems. Doing so will screw up your computer so much that it will not boot.

Additionally, Intel Application Accelerator has been confirmed by Intel to work with Windows XP SP1 Home/Pro. Windows XP SP2 Home/Pro has not yet been officially confirmed to work on supported Intel hardware but it is still worth giving it a try. Just make sure that you are using system restore to make backups so that you can easily revert to your previous settings.

The Windows paging file, also known as the swap file and virtual memory, is very important to the operation of the operating system. Providing a critical memory feature by allowing the operating system to use more random access memory (RAM) than the computer actually has allows users to use more robust programs without having to upgrade their memory.

The paging file can be thought of as a large file on the hard disk that is a collection of system memory used by open applications and operating system components. As more and more applications are started, the amount of free space in the system memory, the RAM, decreases and can eventually be completely used up. When a user starts a program and the RAM used is full, the operating system still loads an application into memory. Before it can do that, it must first make room, and so it pushes a page of low-priority memory out of the RAM and into the paging file.

The exact method that the system uses to decide what programs will stay in the physical RAM and what programs will go is unknown. However, there are several paging file hacks that will help you optimize your computer's use of the paging file. With the help of hacks to the System Registry, you can prevent certain files from being pushed into the paging as well as completely disabling the paging file.

Disabling the paging file

Users of computers with a large amount of RAM have the ability to stop the operating system from pushing any data out into the paging file. This will allow for the faster memory management and memory access that is physically possible for your RAM. Reading and writing directly to the RAM is always significantly faster than having to use the page file. Reading and writing to the paging file requires multiple steps and that takes time. Moreover, reading from the hard drive is nowhere as fast as reading from the RAM.

If your system has a large amount of RAM, over 1 gigabytes, then you can consider disabling the paging file. If you have less than 1 gigabyte of RAM, do not even consider disabling the paging file or else you will be running into problems.

What can happen if you disable your paging file? If you have enough RAM, then nothing. But if you do not have enough RAM, then if you run a large program such as Photoshop and are working on a large image, you will run into "out of memory" errors and the application will crash, causing you to lose all of your work. This is a pretty extreme example, but it can happen.

Basically, stick to the 1 gigabyte minimum and you will have no problems. But be aware that if you ever choose to run some memory-intensive applications, such as rendering a two-hour 3D movie, you could run out of memory easily.

So, now that I have warned you, you are ready to follow these steps to disable the paging file:

1. Enter System Properties, either by right-clicking the My Computer icon on the desktop and selecting Properties or by doing the same to the My Computer icon in the Start Menu.
2. Once the System Properties window has loaded, click the Advanced tab and then click the Settings button under Performance, as shown in Figure 11-4.
3. Once you are in the performance options, click the Advanced tab again.
4. Click the Change button that is located under the Virtual Memory section.
5. This will load the Virtual Memory screen. Locate and select the No Paging File radio button, as shown in Figure 11-5, under the Paging File Size for Selected Drive section.
6. Click the Set button and then click OK three times and you are finished. After you reboot, your page file will be disabled.

Feel free to delete the pagefile.sys file from your hard drive after you reboot to claim some extra few hundred megabytes of free space.

If you do not have enough RAM to disable the paging file completely, follow the directions in the next section to adjust the size of the paging file for best performance.

The size of the page file can automatically be set by the system or it can be set by the user. In some situations, having the page file managed by the system is a good idea, but in others, it is better to manage the paging file yourself.

The biggest argument for setting the paging file size and limit manually is to eliminate the growing on the page file when it is set by the system. When the system is managing the size of the paging file, it will monitor the size of the file and will then automatically make it larger when it is needed. This causes two problems. First of all, it causes a noticeable delay for all applications running on your computer because the computer has to expand the paging file and this is a hard disk–intensive operation. Secondly, allowing the system to grow and shrink the paging file causes fragmentation errors.

For the sake of having enough speed, your page file should not have any file fragments. In the next section on defragmenting, you will learn exactly how to do this. But before the defragmentation can be successful, the page file needs to have a constant size. If the page file will be growing frequently, and because the defrag utility has no clue by how much, it cannot put the file in a place on the hard disk so that it will never get fragmented, as is the case when you set the page file manually to Constant Size.

Setting the paging file to a constant size does have some disadvantages. For example, the lost disk space taken up by the paging file can be as high as 1 gigabyte. Additionally, when you set the maximum paging file size manually, you are setting a limit that your computer can never go above. Should you run some extremely memory-intensive application and your limit is too low, your paging file will fill up and you will be out of luck.

The previous example is why setting the correct paging file size is so important. A real easy way to calculate the maximum size of your page file will be to take the recommended size of the page file from the Virtual Memory Settings window, as shown in Figure 11-6, and multiply it by 2.5. If you are having problems finding where your computer states the recommended size, perform the following steps for changing the paging file to a constant size, because this value is on the same screen as that on which you will be working.

Now that you are ready to optimize the paging file to a constant size, follow these steps:

1. Get inside the System Properties again. Do so by right-clicking one of the My Computer icons that is either in the Start Menu or the desktop and selecting Properties.

2. Next, click the Advanced tab and click the Settings button under the Performance section.

3. On the Performance Options window, click the Advanced tab and then click the Change button under the Virtual Memory section.

4. This will bring up all of the page file settings. Once this information is shown, you will want to modify the custom values so that the initial and maximum sizes are the same. Enter in the value that you calculated in these two boxes, as shown in Figure 11-7. If you have not yet calculated what your size should be, you will find the recommended size on the bottom of this window, as was shown in Figure 11-5.

5. Click the Set button and then click OK three times to close all of the windows and save your settings.

Once you restart, you will be using the new constant size paging file. You are now ready to run your defragmenter to defragment the paging file to ensure optimal performance.

Be aware: The method that I use to calculate the size of the constant paging file is a very conservative approach. I figure it would be better to be safe than sorry. The method of calculating the size is an effective one. However, if you feel the need for more free disk space, feel free to play around with the calculation, such as only multiplying the recommended amount by 2 or maybe even 1.5. Although if you do that, keep in mind that you will be increasing your chances of maxing out your paging file.

The paging file can be placed all over your machine. If you really wanted to, your PC could move it to one of those keychain USB thumb drives that use a compact flash card. Although this would be insane because compact flash cards are extremely slow compared to hard drives, it is possible.

If you have multiple hard drives in your system, and I am not talking about multiple partitions on the same drive, you may see a performance increase if you move your paging file off the main system drive.

In order to do this, you will have to hack the System Registry and delete a reference to a key so that this feature will not be loaded. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open up the Registry Editor by clicking the Start Menu and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the text box and click the OK button.
2. Once the Registry Editor has loaded, expand the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key.
3. Next, expand Software and then Microsoft.
4. Locate Windows and expand that as well.
5. You will want to be editing the main system files, so expand CurrentVersion.
6. Because this feature is a feature of the Windows component known as Explorer, expand the Explorer key.
7. Next, you will want to modify the remote computer settings, so expand the RemoteComputer key and then expand the NameSpace key to show all of the features that are enabled when you browse to a remote computer.
8. In the NameSpace folder you will find two entries. One is "{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}" which tells Explorer to show printers shared on the remote machine. The other, "{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}," tells Explorer to show remote scheduled tasks. This is the one that you should delete. This can be done by right-clicking the name of the key and selecting Delete.

Tip:
If you have no use for viewing remote shared printers and are really only interested in shared files, consider deleting the printers key, "{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}", as well. This will also boost your browsing speed.

Once you have deleted the key, you just need to restart and the changes will be in effect. Now your network computer browsing will be without needless delays.

Disabling a specific protocol
Now that you have the list of installed and active protocols on your screen, you are ready to disable a protocol. To do so, just click the check box to remove the check. Then click the OK button and the protocol is no longer active on the network adapter.

I highly recommend that you disable all protocols except for the TCP/IP protocol (also referred to as the Internet Protocol). Doing so will optimize your adapter for speed and security

Be aware that if you remove the Client for Microsoft Networks protocol and the file-sharing protocol, you will no longer be able to share your files. Additionally, you will no longer be able to connect to remote computers to view their shared files.

Also keep in mind that if you have multiple adapters in your machines, such as a wireless adapter, a wired network adapter, and a dialup modem, you will have to repeat the preceding instructions for each adapter.

Almost every computer user has different Internet connection conditions. Some users have very high-speed connections, while others have slow connections. Some users have high-speed connections using cable-based technologies, while others have high-speed connection through DSL-based technologies. On top of these differences, some are located farther away from their local network switching station than others and have a higher latency (delay) on their connections because of the distance the data has to travel. All of these different connection conditions make every user unique.

The TCP/IP protocol settings can be optimized for best speed under each of these situations. By default, Windows XP has these settings set in a "one size fits all" approach. As I mentioned earlier, Windows has to be abstract in certain areas because of its broad user base. Because of this approach, many users can fine-tune their settings to be optimal for their connection conditions. Doing so will optimize the data transferred so your network connection will be more efficient, leading to high speeds.

With a little help from some fine online tools and software programs, you can test your Internet connection and decide what needs fine-tuning. The process of tweaking your Internet connection is not always easy, but it is doable.

Caution: Before going any further, you are strongly advised to create a system restore point, so that if things go wrong, which is not very likely, you will have a backup.

The next step in the tweaking process is to get all of the software that is needed. The main software program that you will use is called CableNut, which is developed by CableNut Software and is available for free at www.cablenut.com. CableNut is a great program that allows users to edit their Internet settings easily. Visit their Web page and download and install the latest copy.

Once you have downloaded CableNut, you are ready to start getting information to use with the program. The first value that you will need to calculate is the latency of your connection when it is active. To do this, you will use the trace route command built into Windows XP. Follow these steps to get the latency value to use for your connection:

1. First, open up a Command Prompt window. This can be done by clicking the Start Menu and selecting Run. Then type cmd in the text box and click the OK button.
2. Once Command Prompt is loaded, you are ready for the next part. Because you will need to test your connection when it is active, you will need to find something large to download that will run the duration of the test, which will be approximately 30 seconds. I recommend that you head over to www.microsoft.com/downloads and find some huge file, such as the .NET SDK framework, which is over 100,000 KBs. For the test, you want a file big enough so it will be downloading throughout the whole test. Those of you on a dialup connection can pick a much smaller file than those on a high-speed connection.
3. Once you have your download test file picked out, start the download and switch back to the Command Prompt window. In that window, type tracert www.tweakxp.com. During the test, you will see many times displayed in milliseconds. After the test finishes, pick the highest time, as shown in Figure 11-12. This is the number that you will use as your latency. Also, feel free to cancel the download after the test is finished.

Now that you have the latency value calculated, you are ready to enter this information into a great online CableNut settings calculator written by Joe Zeiler, who is one of the talented moderators at the TweakXP.com support forums. Open up your Web browser and visit www.j79zlr.com/cablenutXP2k.php (the URL is case-sensitive!), then follow these steps to get the values to enter into CableNut:

1. Once you have opened up the site, the first part of using the settings calculator is to select your connection type from the drop-down box.

2. Next, you will have to do a little research and find out exactly what your upload and download speeds should be for your Internet connection. I had to contact Comcast, my ISP, to find out the exact values, because the values are not always advertised. Once, you get those values, make sure that they are in kilobits per second and not kilobytes per second (KB= kilobytes; Kb= kilobits), then enter them in the corresponding text boxes on the Web page.
   
   
   

3. Enter the latency value that you calculated earlier into the latency text box on the Web page and then click the Calculate button.
4. After you hit the Compute Settings button, scroll down and you will see the values that were calculated. Now, you are almost done. Continue scrolling down until you see a button labeled CCS File Generator under the Cablenut setting files section. Click that button and a new window will pop up with some text in it. Make sure that you have any pop-up blockers disabled when you are using the calculator.
5. Use the mouse and select all of the text and numbers that are displayed in the pop-up window. Right-click the mouse and select copy to copy all of the text on the page to the clipboard.
6. Now open up Notepad from the Accessories folder. In the blank Notepad window, paste the contents of the clipboard by right-clicking the white background and selecting Paste.
7. Once Notepad is displaying the information that you copied from the pop-up window, all that is left is to save the file in the CableNut format. To do this, click the File menu bar item and select Save As. Then in the Save As Type drop-down box, select All Files. Key in myCableNutSettings.ccs in the file name text box. Specify the Save location, such as the desktop, and click the Save button.

You are now finished with the calculations that will optimize your Internet connection. That wasn't too hard now, was it?

Now that you have created your CableNut settings file, or will be using the 56K settings file, you are ready to start using CableNut. Follow these steps to import the new optimized settings into your system:

1. Start up the CableNut application by opening the Start Menu and browsing to the CableNut folder and selecting the adjuster application.
2. When CableNut has loaded, click the File menu bar item and select Open Custom Settings File. Navigate to where you saved your settings file, or if you are a 56K user, use the file that is on the companion CD, called 56K_CableNut.ccs, and then click the Open button.
3. Now you will see the information boxes for all of the different parameters filled with your connection-specific information, as shown in Figure 11-13. The last step is to click the Save to Registry button and you are finished. After you click the Save button, reboot, and your new settings will be in effect.

   

   Caution:
   According to www.j79zlr.com/cablenutXP2k.php, some of the CableNut settings can cause problems for a small amount of DSL customers. If you are experiencing network problems after optimizing your connection, use System Restore to revert to your last restore point. You may try the settings again, but blank out the MaxNormLookupMemory, MaxFreeTcbs, MaxHashTableSize, and FastSendDatagramThreshhold fields before applying. If you continue to have problems, or if you have problems with the directions and still want to optimize your connection, a great forum to get help on this topic is at www.broadbandnuts.com, or feel free to visit the support forum at www.tweakxp.com/

This is an optional component for speed-up, and if you are not a power user - fuggetaboutit !!  See the my XP Services page for details.