gHacks technology news » speed up http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:24:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Windows Boot Timer http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/05/windows-boot-timer/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/05/windows-boot-timer/#comments Mon, 05 May 2008 08:34:03 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=4009 What is your PC’s boot time ? I bet you cannot answer that question exactly, I know I was not able to until I discovered the Windows application Boot Timer which measures the boot time of a computer with an Windows operating system. The time measured is the time between the appearance of the Bios screen to the first file that is loaded in Windows.

Boot Timer is currently only compatible to Windows NT, Windows XP and Windows XP 64-bit editions but the author promises to make it compatible to Windows Vista in future updates. To use Boot Timer simply double-click the executable and the application will automatically display a popup after the next computer restart that displays the boot time of the system.

This is a great utility for users who want to optimize their boot time.There are several possibilities to reduce the boot time of a PC. I do not want to get into all of them but here are a few tips on how to reduce the boot time:

boot timer

Got any more tips, let me hear them !

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/05/windows-boot-timer/feed/ 15 Check and Compress the Registry http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/18/check-and-compress-the-registry/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/18/check-and-compress-the-registry/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:05:48 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/18/check-and-compress-the-registry/ The Windows registry is growing with every piece of software and system changes and never gets reduced again on its own. While this is not a problem for most users it could become for users who make lots of changes to their system. A huge registry is slowing down system load which is actually the number one reason why a user should check his registry from time to time and compress it so that it system load time gets reduced again.

Windows already has a tool in place that can compress the registry again and restore the compressed registry. Restoring the registry can only be done before Windows is loaded which means that this has to be done using a boot disk of some sort or another way to boot into DOS.

Before you go all crazy you could check to see if it makes sense to compress the registry and restore it. To do that you need to use the following commands using the command line in Windows: (press return after each line)

pushd %windir%\system32\config
reg save HKLM\Software software.hiv
reg save HKLM\System system.hiv
dir software
dir software.hiv
dir system
dir system.hiv

Compare the sizes of software and software.hiv & system and system.hiv. It probably makes sense to restore the files if the difference is larger than one Megabyte for software and larger than 400 Kilobyte for system. Please note that you need to perform the commands in DOS.

reg restore HKLM\Software software.hiv
reg restore HKLM\System system.hiv

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/10/18/check-and-compress-the-registry/feed/ 6 Speed up Open Office http://www.ghacks.net/2007/08/18/speed-up-open-office/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/08/18/speed-up-open-office/#comments Sat, 18 Aug 2007 06:31:19 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/08/18/speed-up-open-office/ My biggest complaint that I have when using Open Office is the speed of the application. It loads terribly slow for instance and it only topped by the time GIMP needs to startup. Way to slow to edit a document quickly in my opinion. The guys at Zolved found a way to speed up Open Office by editing a few settings in the software’s settings.

I was a bit skeptical at first but soon found out that the changes would indeed speed up Open Office tremendously. Start Open Office and click on Tools > Options. This should open the configuration. Click on Memory in the left menu and change the following settings:

  • Number of Steps: 30
  • Use for Open Office: 128
  • Memory per Object: 20
  • Number of Objects: 20

speed up open office

Click on Java in the left menu afterwards and uncheck Use a Java Runtime Environment. Click OK and restart Open Office to see how fast it is now. That’s really a difference.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/08/18/speed-up-open-office/feed/ 20 Check if you Firefox speed tweaks are still active http://www.ghacks.net/2007/08/16/check-if-you-firefox-speed-tweaks-are-still-active/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/08/16/check-if-you-firefox-speed-tweaks-are-still-active/#comments Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:56:04 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/08/16/check-if-you-firefox-speed-tweaks-are-still-active/ I recently read an article about Firefox tweaks that would speed up page loading time by changing several settings in the about:config dialog. I knew those tweaks but decided to take a look if my settings were different from the ones mentioned in the article.

I found out – to my big surprise – that I was running Firefox with the default settings and not the tweaked settings. I had the feeling that Firefox was running slower than before after the latest update but I was not able to determine the cause, until now that is.

I would suggest you take a look at the following settings as well and see if you are using Firefox with tweaked settings or the default ones. If the latter is the case I suppose you change the settings to the same values that I changed them to, again..

Type in about:config and filter the name network.http.pipelining. The default values are that network.http.pipelining is set to false and network.http.pipelining.maxrequests is set to 4.

If your settings are optimized network.http.pipelining should be set to true and network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to a value of 30, 32 or 34.

After that filter for browser.turbo.enabled. If no result comes up you don’t have that setting yet. Right-click the blank space and select New > Boolean from the menu. Name it browser.turbo.enabled and set it to true.

If you happen to make a mistake, e.g. create a String with the name browser.turbo.enabled, you can correct it by navigating to your Firefox profile folder and edit the prefs.js file by hand. Just search for the line and delete it. Close Firefox before you edit the file.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/08/16/check-if-you-firefox-speed-tweaks-are-still-active/feed/ 7 Speed up Hard Drives under Windows Vista http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/28/speed-up-hard-drives-under-windows-vista/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/28/speed-up-hard-drives-under-windows-vista/#comments Sat, 28 Apr 2007 18:35:44 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/28/speed-up-hard-drives-under-windows-vista/ The following article describes two ways of speeding up hard drives in Windows Vista. The first tip describes a way to speed up SATA drives and the second to speed up USB drives. Both options can be easily configured in the Device Manager. Advanced write caching features are supported by Windows Vista but not enabled by default. I’m not sure why Microsoft decided to disable the feature by default but it surely helps system performance to enable it. Just make sure you have an SATA drive installed.

So, open the Device Manger by either typing device in the search box of Windows Vista or typing devmgmt.msc from the command line. Go to the disk Drives tab and right-click the SATA drive and select Properties from the menu. Now select the Policies tab and check the box Enable Advanced Performance. You have to repeat the process if you have more than one SATA drive installed on your system

You have to perform almost the same steps to speed up usb drivers under Windows Vista. Open again the policies tab of the USB drive and select Optimize for Performance from the options there. This method has one little drawback, you need to Safely Remove the Hardware if you want to unplug the device from your system.

Both tips have been found at the How to Geek.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/28/speed-up-hard-drives-under-windows-vista/feed/ 0 How to Speed up CD and DVD burning http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/09/how-to-speed-up-cd-and-dvd-burning/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/09/how-to-speed-up-cd-and-dvd-burning/#comments Mon, 09 Oct 2006 07:44:42 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/10/09/how-to-speed-up-cd-and-dvd-burning/ Many users just buy blank CDs and DVDs without thinking much about the manufacturer who created them – most want it cheap which has the result that their system has to cope with different media. They notice that their system burns some CDs and DVDs faster without knowing why. Your burner might have the specification to burn DVDs with 8x speed but your burning software offers you only 4x. This article explains why that is the case and what you can do to never make this happen again.

The firmware of your burner has information on various manufacturers and their products including the maximum speed of the media. If a CD or DVD is used and no information can be found the burner will not use the maximum speed but a slower speed and increase that over time – this means of course that the process takes longer even though the burner and the blank disc are capable of faster speeds.

Fixing this is probably easy. The first step would be to make sure that your burner has the latest firmware installed; The firmware page collects and tracks firmwares of various burners, check them out. Make sure you read the instructions on that page before you proceed, your burner could stop working if the upgrade fails.

You should check the website of the manufacturer of the burner for firmware upgrades as well, it is always better to use the offical source if available.

If you can’t find an upgrade for your burner or the upgrade did not help in your special case you can do the following to speed up the process:

  • Make sure that your burner is connected correctly to your system, if it is possible make him secondary master.
  • Check the current transfer mode (DMA) of the burner. (Hardware Manager)

You can also check blank DVDs and CDs and find out which are best suited for your burner and purchase them from then on. DVD Identifier checks DVD and displays information about the manufacturer of the blank discs, nero cd speed does the same for CDs.

Once you know the manufacturer of the media and checked that you can burn with max speed you start buying only media from that manufacturer from then on. Please note that the name of the company on the blank media not necesarily reflects the real manufacturer.

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