While the following guide is prepared on Windows Millennium, much of the guide is applicable to Windows 9x also. For the most part the differences between Windows 9x & Millennium Edition are minimal, or just plain cosmetic, e.g. different icons. When any large discrepancies exist they will be noted however.

The tweaks below will help you improve your Windows 9x/Millennium performance.

Update

First things first, update the Operating System. This will ensure you have better-optimized components/files, bug fixes, security updates & so on. I suggest using a combination of Windowsupdate, Updates & CNET Catchup (My personal favourite). This way you're bound to find any updateable components. Install them as appropriate.

You should also check out our OS Updates page which has links to, & installation order of all current Windows Millennium Edition patches.

1 fairly essential update is that to Internet Explorer 5.5 (Included with Millennium Edition). This includes many fixes & optimisations & updates several online components.

“Missing” VXD’s

Like previous versions of Windows 9x, Millennium Edition supposedly “suffers” from the same Missing VXD’s installation problem of “missing” VXD’s (When it actually isn’t a problem). The VMM32.VXD file is a combination of these “missing”, & many others. To see what I mean, click on Start, Run, type regedit & hit Enter. Go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VMM32Files]. Listed here are the files that make up VMM32.VXD.

Right click on My Computer select Properties. Click the Device Manager tab. Open any Device category, e.g. Modem, then double click on the device listed there. When opened select the Driver tab then the Driver File Details button (Some devices may have this option greyed out so skip onto another one). What you are looking for is any bracketed, (), files. Below is an example of you are trying to find.

In this case the vcomm.vxd is bracketed. This essentially means that vcomm.vxd is one of the driver files being used by a device, although it being obtained/loaded via the VMM32.VXD.

Basically the point of this is that you do not need to extract any VXD’s from *.cab files & copy them into the WINDOWS\SYSTEM\VMM32. The files never were missing in the first place.

System Restore is one of the few new features that distinguishes Windows Me from Windows 9x. System Restore works by monitoring & backing up (most) system files with .exe, .vxd, .dll, .com, & .sys extensions & of course the system registry. This is done in the hope that should something bad go wrong you can simply rollback to an earlier backup point when your system was functioning correctly.

It is also is a genuine pain for users who are somewhat knowledgeable about their computer & know they can do without it. Your system performs better without it too. By disabling it you won’t lose much, your system will revert to being as “protected” as Windows 9x was.

Before you decide whether or not you can live without it you should read what may be customized with it first of all.

Right click on My Computer, select Properties. Select the Performance tab then the File System button.

In the General tab you can set System Restores space usage & as a result the amount of backup/snapshots made of your system configuration/files.

Use the slider bar to set the amount of space the System Restore may use for backups. The Min size will always be 200MB. The Max size is determined by the size of the hard drive that Windows is installed on, i.e. If the hard drive is larger than 4 GB the Maximum size is 12% of the hard drive size, whereas on hard drives smaller than 4 GB the Maximum size is 400MB, if you don’t have enough free space for System Restore it will be disabled until enough free space exists for it to resume use.

When 90% (or so) of the space given for System Restore is reached, the oldest backup(s) are deleted.

System Backups/Restore points happen during the following situations (According to MS KB).

• Automatic System CheckPoints are created for every 10 hours of computer up time but only after the computer has been idle for 2 minutes. If this criterion is not met, then a System CheckPoint will be created once every 24 hours after the system has been idle for 2 minutes.
  

• Restore points are created by Installer packages that use the new Microsoft Software Installer (MSI) technology.  
  

• Restore points are created by Installer packages that use InstallShield 6.1 Pro & later.  
  

• Restore points are created when AutoUpdate (AU) installs an update package.  
  

• Restore points are created when you use System Restore to roll your system back to a different Restore Point. However, if this is done in Safe Mode, a Restore Point will not be created.
  

• Restore points are created manually by using the System Restore interface.

I’d recommend sliding the bar to Min, which is 200MB. This way all System backups will be fairly new & the amount of backups will be kept to a minimum.

Advanced System Restore settings

While it is possible to Uninstall Pc Health/System Restore a more user friendly alternative is to simply disable System Restore & change the backup folder instead, rather than using the default C:\_RESTORE directory.

To Disable System Restore use the following procedure. Right click on My Computer, select Properties. Select the Performance tab then the File System button. Select the Troubleshooting tab. Tick, Disable System Restore. Click Ok & restart your system for the changes to take effect. This won’t stop System Restore entirely, although for many users it will disable enough of it.

To change the location of the System Restore folder use the following procedure. Click on Start, Run, type in regedit. Open the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\VxDMon] key.

Edit the following entries directory names as appropriate.

LogDir

TempDir

VxdCfg

VxdDat

E.g. the default directory for VxdCfg is C:\_RESTORE\VxDMon.cfg. Obviously the same directory should be entered for all, with the exception of Logs & TempDir, which you should put into a Log & Temp subdirectory respectively, e.g. C:\WINDOWS\BACKUP\TEMP. Do not delete any file names however, i.e. VxDMon.cfg & VxDMon.dat (Just enter the new directories before them).

If you still really want to totally get rid of PC Health/System Restore use the following procedure. You should note though that this will “break” certain features in Windows Millennium however, such as the Help feature on the Start Menu & System Information (although this could have been related to something else when I tried it, but be warned).

Anyhow, here’s what to do.

1.       Uninstall PC Health. After Disabling (This is just to be safe, although it should work fine even if not disabled) System Restore (shown earlier), click on Start, Run, type in rundll.exe setupx.dll,InstallHinfSection Uninstall 132 %windir%\INF\PCHealth.inf & hit Enter.

2.       Disable Help. Click on Start, Run, type in regedit & hit Enter. Open the following key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]. Add a New Binary Value entitled NoSMHelp. Give it a value of 01 00 00 00, as shown below.

3.       Disable the creation of the System Restore directory (_RESTORE by default), despite uninstalling System Restore/PC Health Windows will still insist on installing the Backup directories. To disable, or rather trick Windows Millennium Edition into skipping creating this simply download this file & follow the enclosed instructions.

Hopefully by now you will have customized System Restores features to your liking or just removed it altogether.

Add MS-DOS mode back to Windows Millennium Edition

Seeing as Windows Millennium Edition will be the last version of Windows based on the 9x kernel & future version will be based on the NT kernel, which is a real 32-bit Operating System (64-bit soon enough but that’s another matter), DOS mode will be killed off.

As a result DOS features are limited (e.g. cannot Restart in MS-DOS mode) or removed altogether in some sort of subtle attempt to make users to get over DOS.

Xteq X-Setup

You can forget about TweakUI (As far as I’m concerned), as this is a lot better. Go to Tweakfiles to download it. The current version is 5.7 (Don’t forget, you can check out our Exclusive X-Setup 6 preview right here too). You can download additional plug-ins from Xteq if you want & can even create your own Plug-ins with the SDK.

This rather amazing utility allows you to alter/tweak many aspects of your Operating system, be it Windows 9x, NT or Windows 2000. I’d suggest opening up the X–Setup\Plugins directory & removing any unneeded Plug-ins to make navigation that bit easier first, e.g. The Windows NT Plug-ins are unnecessary unless you are using Windows NT. Be careful doing this, if unsure don’t delete anything.

Here are a few tweaks I use with this:

Open Appearance, General, Effects, Windows FX options. I’d recommend Unticking Windows animation & Drag full windows.

Open Appearance, Misc., Other, Welcome Windows. Untick the options available there.

Use your own discretion for other available ones. Remember to be careful with what you choose to do.

Folder customisation – Windows 98

Open My Computer, select View, then Folder Options. Here you can modify how your Windows desktop appears & how you can open folders. By default Windows 98 uses a slow, resource intensive method. You’ll want to change that of course.

Select Custom then the Settings button.

The settings pictured above will give you the fastest drawing of folders (as no web content is shown) & allows folders/programs/shortcuts, etc. to be opened with a single click of the mouse. You can change this to suit your own needs, but this is what I would recommend using.

Folder customization – Windows Me

Open My Computer, select View, then Folder Options. Here you can modify how your Windows desktop appears & how you can open folders/files. By default Windows Millennium Edition uses a slow, resource intensive method. You’ll want to change that of course. Select the General tab.

The settings pictured above will give you the fastest drawing of folders (as no web content is shown) & allows folders/programs/shortcuts, etc. to be opened with a single click of the mouse. You can change this to suit your own needs, but this is what I would recommend using.

Another item you might want to look into is replacing the Windows shell (explorer) with a shell replacement, such as Smartalec's Darkstep. This should only really be considered by more advanced users however.

Autoexec.bat & config.sys – Windows 9x

This is more intended for Windows 9x than Me as Me tends to screw around with the autoexec.bat & config.sys. The msdos.sys settings however will be covered in full in a different guide (Which will be posted soon).

Open the C:\ drive, select config.sys. Right click it, select Open with. Use Notepad to open it. Add the following line to the file (If you must add anything at all).

Stacks=0,0

You should remove all other lines in this file. This will increase available memory & the other lines are only required in DOS mode, not in Windows.

Next, right click on autoexec.bat & delete all the lines in there. This should be done along with the config.sys clearing out, & for the same reasons. Again they are only required if you use full DOS mode.

NOTE – If you are unsure make a backup of them in case you need to restore them at any point. Some lines (e.g. SBLive DOS emulation) will need to be REM’d instead of removed as they are recreated upon boot-up. Simply put a REM (blank space) in front of them.

General Enhancements

Right click on My Computer, select Properties. Select the Performance tab, then the File system button. Change the Typical role of this computer to Network server. For a more detailed (& possibly better) setting for this check the Registry tweaking guide.

Click the Floppy disk tab. Untick the box there. This can speed up the booting process.

Click the CD-ROM tab next. Move the slider bar all the way to the right, & select Quad-speed or higher for Optimise access pattern for. You can find more advanced CD\DVD-ROM tweaks in the CD\DVD tweaking guide.

Click Ok.

Select Graphics. Set Hardware acceleration to Full. Check the Voodoo3, Voodoo 4/5 & TNT\GeForce tweaking guides for video card specific tweaks.

Click on Start, Settings, Control Panel. Double click the Sounds applet. Find the Schemes option. Change this to No sounds. This will disable the sounds that Windows plays for certain events. This will improve performance. Once you’ve disabled the sounds, you can delete the contents of your C:\Windows\Media\ folder as the audio files will be needed no longer.

If you have Office 2000 (Or other Office 2000 application such as Word 2000) installed on your machine, be sure to run OTUNEUP.EXE, located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office (By default). This utility optimizes Office files on the hard drive & can improve system performance.

FAT 32

FAT 32 file system. Using this new (Well, it’s not new anymore by that’s not really the point at all) filing system you can both save space, & improve performance, it also allows you to use partitions of larger sizes (FAT 16 was limited in this respect). If you have an upgrade version of Windows98 you may need to use the File system converter tool to change to FAT32. Most new PC’s now are automatically running FAT32 partitions, as does Windows Millennium Edition.

CTRL – ALT – DELETE

This is probably the most important key combination in Windows. Press the 3 of them at the same time to find out what programs are currently running on your system at any given moment. You can also use it to close frozen programs. Simply select the program (usually has a not responding message after it) & then select End task.

Pressing that key combination twice has the effect of rebooting your machine so be careful when you use it.

Virus protection

A lot of viruses, e.g. Melissa, are macro viruses. For those that have Word 97/2000, you have protection against macro viruses; to enable this protection, load Word, Click on Tools, select Options. A new box will appear on screen; select the General tab. Tick the Macro virus protection box. Then click Ok (Users with Word 2000 need to click on Tools, Macros, Security). Set it to either Medium or High for best protection.

This will now warn you if you are using Word to open up a document containing a macro. Not all macros are viruses, and you can either enable or disable the macro. The following general rule should be applied, if you know who sent you the file, & were expecting it then you should enable it. However, if the file was forwarded to you via email from an unknown user then you should disable it. User discretion applies in these situations.

Next, there is of course Anti-virus software that you can purchase, that will protect you. You must update the virus definitions frequently however so the software can identify newer strains & types of virus.

Desktop\Start menu customisation

You can enhance the appearance of your desktop, or limit what others have access to. Take a look at the Windows Registry guide for more information on doing this. You can also use X-Setup as mentioned earlier.

Memory & hard drive tweaks

Windows uses Virtual memory, which is basically using the hard drive as RAM. You can find out how to optimize & set your Virtual memory, vcache & hard drive settings for better performance in our in-depth Tweaking your System Memory guide.

System File Checker – Windows 9x

You can use System File Checker (Click on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information). Then select Tools, System File Checker to scan your hard drive for deleted/changed or corrupted files. Use the Settings button to change the scanning options available.

Device optimization

For information on how to optimize other components of the PC, e.g. modem or graphics card. Read the applicable guides on this page. Many guides are prepared for both Windows 9x & Millennium Edition, such as the Modem guides.

Better floppy formats – Windows 9x

When formatting floppy disks (or other removable media, such as zip disks) use this process instead of the Windows one.

In a DOS prompt, type Format a: /u. The /u parameter is for an unconditional format, meaning that it won't save un-format information, giving a faster format and more free disk space. In Windows Millennium Edition this feature is disabled.

Removing unnecessary files

Click on Start, then Find.

Search each drive for temporary or unneeded files; these will usually have the extensions of *.tmp, *.bak & *.old mostly. Enter into your search box *.tmp & then select Find now. You can delete most files that are found safely as they are no longer needed. Some may be backups of other files so be careful, e.g. system.bak may be a backup copy of your system.ini.

Click on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. You can use this to safely remove temporary/unneeded files from your hard drive.

You should scan your PC for unneeded files regularly.

Optimising system boot up

To find out how to improve boot time & load up with more free resources available check out the System Startup guide.

Conclusion

You should now have finished customizing your Windows desktop, removing resource intensive components & freeing up valuable memory as a result. The system itself & all components should be running better now too.

Go to 3D Spotlight !