performance issues on Win98 machine

You may have a lot of other temporary files that are not physically in Temp..

Do a search for and delete all of the following:
~*.*
*.tmp
and delete everything found under Temporary Internet Files (or Cache if you are using Netscape)

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The other thing you might want to do, is backup all your data, and freshly formating your hdd and reinstalling the OS. Over the years, programs installed/uninstalled tend to accumulate in the registry and are never really entirely removed. That could bog down the system startup as well.

A reload is never an acceptable answer. You microsoft people blow me away. I still can't believe that Microsoft has conned everybody to use their junk o/s that constantly makes you reboot and reload when you get the slightest problem. Maybe in mycase this is the only way out, but it's the last resort, and if I have to wipe my box, I'm not putting another Microsoft product back on it. I'll run anything before I'll do that. Yes, I'm a VMS bigot. Thanks so much for trying to help me though.You are right that the registry is full of garbage. I looked through it a few nights ago and programs that have been gone for a year or two are still in the registry. Anna777 - flame is toward Redmond, not you..

There are two unrelated issues here so I will deal with them separately.

Bad system performance could be caused by a multitude of reasons, but for starters, check these out:

1. The next time you boot up, enter your BIOS (usually by pressing the DEL key) and check that the disk cache and video caches are turned ON.

2. When Windows loads, go to the Control Panel/System/Device Manager, find your hard disk under Disk Drives, click on it and select Properties. Go to the Settings tab and seeif DMA is enabled. If not, enable it (ignore the warning messages).

There are plenty more to check but these will do for a start.

Page loading when browsing the web is a separate issue as this depends on your connection, not your computer performance.

Back up your Registry first, then go to START/RUN and type REGEDIT. Work your way down to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/VXD/MSTCP. Click on EDIT/NEW/STRING VALUE and call it DefaultRcvWindow. Now click on EDIT/MODIFY and enter 64240. Again click on EDIT/NEW/STRING VALUE and call it Tcp1323Opts, then click on EDIT/MODIFY and enter a zero. You will need to reboot after these modifications but should see a vast improvement in both performance and speed thereafter.

You Penguins crack me up. I run a PII 400MHZ, 320MB RAM, box with dual Oss (Windows ME and 2000). I have not had to rebuild or reload either OS in the last 2 years. My two kids, wife, and I all use this box for everything from online educational courses to Mechwarrior 4. I also use a cable modem connection to a router with firewall and print server. I have another PC running ME connected in another room and I connect my work laptop to the network every night. I run 2000 on the laptop and remotely manage 8 servers and 120 users over a VPN connection. I would guess that your problems are registry related but I have no idea why, I use FixIt and it cleans out my registry garbage just fine. Most people have problems with Windows becausethey are not very familiar with the OS...or they just like to complain.

I feel your pain and frustration in relation to re-installing Windows.

However, it is likely the "best" option to improve performance.

I am trying to avoid this on my W98 machine, but have concluded that I have no other "realistic" choice.

There are a couple of things that happen over time that slow things down.

1. Extra fonts: Each installed font uses some system resources. If you can identify un-need fonts, and uninstall them, this will help.

2. System files: Over time, youbuild up extra, un-needed, and obsolete system files (DLLs). Some of these also use up system resources.

3. (The "BIG" Problem) The Registry grows every time you install, update or access software.
The registry tools in Fix-It (I use it myself)do a decent job of identifying and correcting "errors" in the registry.
However, none of the tools that I have tried clean out the "bloat" that builds up over time.

Change hardware, there will be leftover keys in the registry from the old hardware. Since the files the keys are linked to were not deleted, Fix-It won't identify that there is an error.

Un-install, or upgrade software, the same thing happens.

Microsoft itself, creates updated keys for security fixes without deleteing theold keys.
Some updates add a new subkey to the old key that points to the new key.

So, blame Microsoft, blame bad software, blame poor un-install programs, the fact is Windows needs to be purged every so often in order to keep performance at an aceptable level.

Some peers have posted that they re-install Windows every 6 months!!!
Realistically, Windows 9X has about a 2 year run life for the "average" user.
The more you swap hardware and software, the more often you need to wipe the drive, and re-install Windows.

Chas

If Windows doesn't work you must just not know what you're doing. Everybody knows MS is *famous* for their reliability, security and performance. Heck...I sometimes go a WHOLE DAY without rebooting it.

;)

/sarcasm mode off

I have a couple of questions here...is it *just* internet speed that is poor, or is it system performance in all things? If it's across the board, I'll leave a few "performance tuning" links at the end of this post.

If it's just in using the Internet, then I wouldtry a few things. Reboot in Safe Mode with Network support and see if that makes a difference (another device/driver interfering with your communications). Disable any network protocols you don't need. Delete and re-install your NIC and TCP/IP stackfrom scratch. Take a look at traffic on your LAN with a packet sniffer (Ethereal is free and good - www.ethereal.com ). Look for errors (CRC, etc) and time outs. See if you can spot what's causing the delays. You can also use ping or tracert and seewhat kind of response times you're getting outside of using your Web Browser (in case the browser itself is a part of the problem). Do you get good performance on another machine using the cable modem? I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a network issue rather than a base system performance issue.

I'd download Si-soft Sandra. It can do all kinds of system and performance evaluation and give you feedback to speed up the computer.

http://www.3bsoftware.com/downloads/sandra.html

Now here are some tuning links.

http://www.speedguide.net/Windows/index.shtml

http://www.windows-help.net/windows98/tune-34.shtml

http://www.geocities.com/~budallen/98performance.html

Hope you find something helpful here. Good luck!

Anna777 - I always appreciate your comments and willingness to help. I learn new stuff all the time, and I appreciate the new things I've learned from you and the others in this group.

I think some people just enjoy installing the OS. There's nothing wrong with that. Personally I prefer to find out what's wrong and try to correct it. I've screwed up my PC so bad, so many times. But, up to now, (knock, knock) I've been able to finda way to get it back up and running. One of my drives has neer been formatted since win 3.11 and the current system it's in runs just fine for a PII350.

Anyway speaking of drives,

I don't think anyone asked about the amount of space on your drive. Often the slowness occurs after the swap file gets bloated and/or there's not enough disk space to allow for proper caching. With 256MB of ram you should at least have 1 1/2 that much space available and really to be sure double. So if you've got less than 256MB of free space that may be slowing things down.

Look and see how large the swap file is if it's too big delete it so windows will create a new one in your case probably about 40-60MB.

One thing to do is boot to DOS (not a prompt) and delete the swap file all together. The file is win386.swp. It's either in the Windows folder or at the root of the drive.

Delete the file and reboot. Windows will create a new file upon restart.

Point value changed by question poster.

As RCOM pointed out, Windows 9X needs room on the hard drive for it's sway file and virtual memory. Many people don't partition their drives and so, the drive fills up reducing the amount of free space Windows O/S has to utilize for swap and virtualmemory. I think others here who have worked with Windows all partition their drives where the O/S in on the C:> drive with ample free space to allow for updates and service packs. All other programs get install in another partition.I myself, runningWindows 2000 have 6.5 GB for my C:> drive of which the O/S takes up 3.4 GB (that's with all the security updates, service packs, drivers, Direct X, Windows Media player and other sundry junk. The rest, including Office 2000 goes into my D:> . Another thing to look at is your hardware itself. Your Packard pentium 333 with 256 MB memory isn't gonna run like Pentium 800 or an Athlon 950 with 256 MB of memory and with the new DDR memory, those I mentioned are slow in comparison to a Athlon XP or Pentium 2.0 Ghz with DDR memory (or Rambus). You also didn't mention what Graphics card you use (built in which shares your physical memory with your processor) or a PCI/AGP card. All these play a role in overall system performance. I also agree with one of the other's who answered this question and that is Norton Systemworks. I use it and it's kept my Windows ME,W2K, machines running without a hitch for over two years now. (NO REINSTALLS).

when you say "performance is terrible"
can you be more specific ?

for example: From the moment it is switched on
till you see the desktop how many seconds do you have to wait ?

can you show us the content of your
autoexec.bat, config.sysfiles ?

do you have the TEMP,TMP variables set ?

how much free disk space on each drive do you have ?

what is the value of vcache ?

how many programs are running at any given time on the task bar ?

what is enabled/disabled in BIOS ?
what internet browser do you use ?

do you use a virus checker ?

. . .

shell i go on ?

Thanks everybody so much - I'm still working
through all these:
Answer #1) Anna - Thanks for the idea on the ~*.*
I didn't know about those... After all the feedback
I see you are right that I'll eventually need to reload
the o/s.
Answer #2) Great ideas, I did these as you asked.
THANKS!!
Answer #4) Thanks - very helpful - I appreciated
your thoughts a lot!! I already run Ad-Aware, and
I'll check out MemTurbo.
Answer #5) - love the sarcasm - working through your
suggestions.
Answer #6-8) I haven't gotten to all these yet.
Thanks - I'll try to download Norton, and see
what I can do to replace this box. THANKS
Thanks everybody!

Can't boot the machine - I've ordered a replacement. thanks everyone for trying to help me.

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