This here is my first attempt at writing a review so bear with me. The subject in question is getting games to run faster on a machine running Windows 2000. Now I hear you ask, "why would I want to run my games in Windows 2000 ?" - simple, its far more stable being based on NT, is based around NT Networking technologies (for faster, easier and more secure internet/LAN gaming), and with a little tweaking can be as fast as Windows 98/ME.
Win 98/2000 Differences
Although at first glance the two operating systems look almost aesthetically identical, scratching the surface will reveal a world of difference, the reason for this being that win 98 is based on win 95 and 2000 is based on the NT series. This means that while many users will have an in-depth knowledge of tweaking windows 98, when they change over to 2000 they may well find themselves up a creek without a paddle. This guide is aimed at those users.
The Basics
Upon installing windows 2000, many people will have been wowed by the animated menus and the new sound effects. Unfortunately, while aesthetically pleasing, these options provide no extra functionality for the power/gaming user and can become tiresome, not to mention using up our precious system resources which will have a detrimental effect on gaming performance. To turn off the animated menus, open the Control Panel, open "Display", and move to the "Effects" tab. The boxes should be checked and unchecked as follows :
Change these to make a difference
The annoying and seemingly useless sounds can be turned off by again opening the control panel and opening "Sounds and Multimedia". On the sounds tab, use the "Scheme" pull down menu and select "No Sounds".
As with all Microsoft products there are hidden settings and things the average user will never see nor need to see. An example of this, and a basic fix, is disk logging. This is where the Operating System logs all of the Input and Output traffic zooming around your IDE buses. To turn off this feature, go to the start menu, click "Run" and type "CMD". Press Enter and then type "diskperf –n" (without the quotes). This will improve loading times for the games we want to run and will help to reduce any slow-down during the game where your computer's hard disk(s) are accessed. Other more obvious programs that are running can be found in the task bar. Closing these will be discussed later, as some may require a more in depth knowledge of processes.
I have left till last, perhaps the most basic of all speed increases ... having the latest driver sets. This is a very commonly overlooked problem and one which is so easily fixed. The most important updates are those for your Motherboard (make sure it includes the latest AGP driver), your Graphics Card (If you have an Nvidia chipset based card I recommend the Nvidia drivers), your Sound Card (often a Creative card) and last of all Direct X. Direct X however, poses a problem for windows 2000 users as we need a special NT based version of the program. At the time of writing the newest version is 8.1 final release, the link to which can be found at the bottom of the article as well as addresses for some of the aforementioned products.
More Advanced Tweaking
This section will deal with a number of ways to increase speed by freeing up those precious resources, however, some of these techniques can lead to an instable system, and for example, editing the service list may result in the system failing to start at all.
Having earlier mentioned closing all those pesky programs running in the background and eating up all of our precious gaming resources, I’ll now describe how to best go about closing them. For this example I will use my own taskbar, stuffed with needless applications:
Not too much stuff in taskbar ! :D
As we can see, the ones in the main taskbar can be closed by opening them up and closing the application itself down. However, we also need to close the ones which appear as icons in the right hand side of the picture. The majority of these can be closed by either left or right clicking on them to bring up a menu, and then clicking "close" / "exit" or "Open Application" and then closing it:
Close the un-necessary stuff
"Ahhh, much better.. but hold on, there’s some left that I couldn’t close or some I didn’t want to close" I hear you say. Well not to worry ! We can close those other ones as well, but this is why this section was placed in the more advanced part. Here we go …
Press Control + Alt + Delete to bring up the Windows 2000 Security dialog box, now click "Task Manager". On the "Applications" tab you shouldn’t see anything except the programs you have left running. This is where 2000 differs from 98 because in 98, this is all you would be able to see. Windows 2000 lets us get at the "nitty-gritty" of the system and the processes which are hiding in the background. To view this, click the "Processes" tab.
Gotta love Windows 2000 Task Manager
Yet again using my taskbar as an example, I’ve managed to close all of the "visible" applications except one which I know to be the "Sidewinder Game Controller Applet" which has no close or exit function. So to close this I look down the list in the Processes tab and, low and behold "SWtrayV4.exe" is there. From the point of identifying the applications process it’s a simple matter of pressing "End Process" (Making sure the appropriate process is selected!). While looking through the list, you may find applications which you know are not critical to system functioning (for example "DirectCD.exe" on my system), these can be closed too, but be advised that closing certain ones may result in system instability or non functioning. The processes list also provides other interesting information such as CPU usage, however, instead of closing by usage, we close all non-critical applications to get the best performance.
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