"Give us a tweak, you're the Tweakin' Man, give us a tweak tonight. Cause we're all in the mood for a tweak0ring, and you've got us tweakin' alright." (Apologies to B. Joel)
Serve it up, Serve it up, Buddy gonna shut you down
Our first tip for Windows 2003 Server! One of the 'features' of the new OS from Microsoft is tracking of shut-downs. Each time you shut down the system, Windows wants to know why, with your reasons appearing in the event logs. Typing "Cos I frucking well want to!!!" every time, gets to be a chore, so let's turn that off.
You need to edit the local computer policy via a management console, so from the command line, run 'mmc', which will open a blank console. Then ctrl+m to add a new snap-in. Click the 'Add' button and select 'Group Policy Object Editor'. Make sure 'Local Computer' is entered in the 'Group Policy Object' dialogue box, then hit 'Finish'. Click 'Close' on the 'Add Standalone Snap-in' page, and 'OK' in the Add/Remove Snap-in' page.
Next, drill through the Local Computer Policy, --> Computer Configuration, --> Administrative Templates, and with the System folder highlighted, double-click 'Display Shutdown Event Tracker', in the right pane. Select 'Enabled' and in the drop down box, chose 'Never'. Click OK, close and save. If you are running Windows 2003 Server - Enterprise Edition, simply select the 'Disabled' option.
Place it in your memory, don't leave it up to HAL
Windows can be a bit of a 'tard sometimes, and either forgets or plain ignores the fact that your CPU may be fitted out with a full 512K L2, or second level cache. If, for example, you have a new Athlon CPU with the fancy schmancy Barton core, then give Windows 2K/XP a poke in the ribs and tell it how much cache you've got.
In regedit browse to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management/] and set the value for SecondLevelDataCache to the value, in kilobytes, of your actual L2 cache size. A value of 0 tells Windows to try and autodetect the value from the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). Don't be clever and tell Windows you got more cache than you really have. If you do, however (and I recommend that you don't), let me know the results.
When a folder comes along, you must ZIP it
Windows XP has the capacity to deal with a .zip file as a regular folder, without needing third party compression tools such as winzip. As handy as this may be, it chews up a fair chunk of resources. You can disable the feature by un-registering the appropriate dll. Go to Start -Run and type regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll. then OK. Easy Peasy. Don't forget to grab a copy of Winzip or Winrar, though, or those .zip files will only wink at you teasingly.
Gone insane, but the memory remains
A pain in the butt for Windows users everywhere is that Windows likes to presume too much. It presumes that just because you closed an application, you will probably want to reopen it again real soon, so it stores a bunch of DLLs in memory until it gets bored waiting for you.
You can force Windows to unload DLLs from memory as soon as you have finished with them with a trip to the registry:
Navigate to HKEY-LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer, create an entry called 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' and give it a value of '1'
Guys, Guys, Gals, don't make Phr33x do all the work. Achieve fame and glory and send us the tweaks you've been sitting on quietly. The ones that give your 'puter that little bit extra. The one that makes your system go all the way up to eleven. The one that makes your geek buddies go "Jeezus!" Send them to phr33xtw33x@atomicmpc.com.au . Do it. Do it now.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012