Anyone else like to mess with your co-workers or roommates by messing with their computer? If so, here is a fun little list of stuff you can do to their machines. Most of these will require that you have either physical access or at least network access to their PC, but the results can be hilarious as long as they don't try to kill you...
1. http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html - has instructions to flip internet images upside down, redirect pages, or make images blurry.
2. Make a new calendar in Outlook and set appointments for every hour (or less) with reminders.
3. Add a scheduled task for Shutdown.exe that runs every hour.
4. Change the password for logging into the domain or machine.
5. Take a screenshot of the desktop. Hide all desktop icons in another folder and make the screenshot the background.
6. Screw with appearance - right-click on desktop and choose properties. Go to the Appearances tab and go to Advanced. Now click on various parts of windows and change the colors. A good trick is to set everything to the same color...
7. Change the mouse speed to either full speed or take it all the way down.
8. Change the keyboard layout to Dvorak or change the input language to Russian (or another foreign language).
9. Swap right and left click on the mouse.
10. Make a new shortcut on the desktop (or change an existing one) with the target as "shutdown -s -t XX -c YY" where XX is the amount of time before shutdown and YY is a message that can be displayed (like "Formatting C:").
11. Fun with Word - Open word, Press Alt F-11 to open the VBA Editor, Select your Normal Template by double clicking “This Document" and paste this code into the template:
Sub AutoExec()
counter = CStr(Int((2 - 1 + 1) * Rnd + 1))
Application.OnTime When:=Now + TimeValue("00:00:" + counter), _
Name:="Timer"
End Sub
Sub Timer()
On Error Resume Next
counter = CStr(Int((500 - 1 + 1) * Rnd + 1))
ActiveDocument.ActiveWindow.View.Zoom.Percentage = counter
Call AutoExec
End Sub
This code will cause their Word documents to randomly zoom in and out.
12. Swap random keys on the keyboard (like 0 and ~).
13. Blue Screen Of Death screensaver.
14. Edit the registry to add a "shutdown.exe" tag to Startup.
15. Change desktop or Quick Launch icons.
16. Change one of their shortcuts to point to "%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation" (without the quotes). This will lock the machine and require their password to unlock it. Always fun to swap this with their IE shortcut.
17. On their IE (or FireFox) shortcut, you can add URLs after the Target to make it load pages on launch. Make them think they have spyware or a virus by adding links to sites or videos (a fun one is http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/728).
18. Change their background to a shattered LCD screen.
19. If they have a wireless mouse or keyboard, flip the batteries so that the device no longer works, but the weight is still the same. Watch them fight to reconnect the device before offering advice.
Don't forget what all you changed; you may have to help them fix it. Use these cautiously; while few of these pranks have the ability to mess up a computer for real, bad things happen. If you have other favorite pranks or tricks, post them in the comments.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Keeping Your Computer Running Smooth
Easy Computer Maintenance
Ok, we’ve all been there. A computer that hasn’t been rebooted in about 2 months that is running slower than a fat man through peanut butter. All of a sudden the computer throws a blue screen and leaves you with a paperweight. Did you know that with just a few simple steps you can keep your computer running better and help prevent those horrible crashes? Of course you did, you just don’t want to admit it. Some of these suggestions are the same as from my “Tweak your XP” article, but this one will go into more depth for maintenance and have more suggestions.
First of all, rebooting your machine periodically is of vital importance on a Windows system. While Linux and Unix machines are capable of being up for months at a time, Windows machines need a bit of a rest every now and then. Shutting your machine down for a little while will clear everything from memory, flush the cache, and allow all the hardware to reset and start back from a clean point. When you reboot your machine you should notice that there are fewer processes running and that most of your programs are a little more responsive compared to before the reboot. Rebooting should also help if you are having problems with a couple of applications or things are just not behaving like they should. Computers aren’t the only things that benefit from being rebooted, printers and other peripherals need to be shut down from time to time to allow them to start with a clean slate. Heck, we do the same thing every night when we go to sleep.
Secondly, every time you surf the web or open files on your computer, random little files get saved all over your hard drive. These are cookies and other temporary files that can pile up over time. I would recommend that about once a month or at least a couple times a year you run a program that gets rid of them. The default Windows Disk Cleanup (open My Computer - right click on your C: drive and go to Properties – click the Disk Cleanup button on the General Tab) will delete most of these files and even has the added bonus of allowing you to compress files that you don’t use very often so that they take up less space on your hard drive. However, Disk Cleanup can take a long time to run (a few hours is normal for my machine) and unless you run it overnight it will seriously bog your computer down. I recommend CCleaner, a free download from www.ccleaner.com. While it does not have the compression option, it has options that allow you to find and delete a greater range of useless files to clean up more room, along with being able to mark certain files to be ignored. CCleaner also comes with a Registry cleaner that will scan your registry for items that are no longer relevant (broken fonts, files from uninstalled programs, icons, dlls, etc) and get rid of them in order to make your registry more efficient. The registry is what contains information about all the software and settings on your machine, so it is good to keep it cleaned up if you can. Of course, if you decide to run the registry cleaner you will want to allow it to create a backup of your registry first. I have never had it delete something important and crash my computer, but better safe than sorry.
Defragging is another bit of maintenance that a lot of people forget or ignore. When a file is saved to your hard drive, it is not always in one big chunk. Your computer will save the file wherever it has space available so it may get split up into multiple pieces and scattered over the drive with each piece containing a pointer for the rest of the file. After a while your computer has to spend so much time looking for the next piece of a file that it can take forever to load that picture that you were trying to pull up or to play that next mp3. Defragging takes all those pieces of files and tries to put them back into some semblance of order. While it will probably never get everything into a perfect sequence, defragging your hard drives will certainly speed up everyday operations like opening your browser (Firefox, right?) or playing your music and games. Again, Windows has a built in tool to defrag (My Computer – right-click C: - Properties – Tools tab – Defrag) that will get the job done. There are some free defrag programs that you can download out there, but not all of them work as well as advertised. If you don’t want to spend money on it, I would say that the Windows defrag will work for you. If you don’t mind spending a little money on a defrag program, then I would suggest Diskkeeper or PerfectDisk. I have used both of these at work and Diskkeeper on my home machine; they both get the job done faster than the default Windows program and generally do a better job of it. Another feature that they have over Windows defrag is an option to schedule automatic defrags so that you can set it and forget about it. Once a month should be ok for a defrag, but if your computer starts running too slow before the month is up it probably wouldn’t hurt to check and see if it needs a defrag. Of course, a defrag generally works better if you reboot the machine immediately before. That will clear the cache and keep your defrag program from trying to work all of the files that were being held in memory at the time. If you can, try to run your Disk Cleanup or CCleaner before a defrag as well; the temporary files and cookies usually make up a big portion of the fragmented files.
Scandisk is another Windows program, but it is a little more useful than some. Scandisk will perform a test on your hard drives while your computer is booting to make sure that they don’t have bad sectors or damaged areas that can cause slow performance or system crashes. If Scandisk finds a bad sector, it can try to repair it; I have found that it usually can do a pretty good job of repairing most of what it finds. If Scandisk finds some problems that it can’t fix, there might be other programs that can. If there are a lot of bad sectors that can’t be fixed, then it is probably time to buy a new hard drive and get everything transferred before your drive fails. This is another program that should probably be run every couple of months, just to make sure.
Regular virus and spyware scans should be part of your routine, either weekly or monthly. After all, what good is that software if you never run it to see if something has gotten by that impenetrable Windows firewall (which you probably turned off anyway)? If you start getting a bunch of random popups or your computer slows to a crawl, then a virus or a bunch of spyware may be part of the problem. As far as antivirus programs, I use Avast home version. It is a free download and has real-time protection in addition to the manual and scheduled scans. Avast does not take up near as much system resources as the expensive bigger names like Norton or McAfee and does not cause as many conflicts with other programs. For spyware, I generally use Ad-Aware, another free program. While it has a version that you can buy that offers real-time protection, the free version offers the regular scans and I have found it to work just fine if you run the scans regularly. Both of these programs can be downloaded from www.download.com.
Drivers control how your software communicates with your hardware. Companies are putting out new drivers all the time for hardware that you have installed on your machine, and updating the driver to a newer version may make it work better. When you install a new piece of hardware, Windows may use a default driver that is probably old and while it may work, you may not get all the functionality that you could with a new driver. If you know the manufacturer and part number of some of the parts in your computer (like video card, sound card, cd/dvd drive, etc) then you can go to the manufacturer’s website and look for the newest drivers for your hardware. If you bought your machine from Dell, then you can visit Dell’s website and either search by model number or service tag to find drivers for your machine. Now, on the off chance that a driver update causes problems, you can always roll back to a previous driver and try to fix it that way. For the more severe driver problems, this is where your backups can come in handy. Most driver updates shouldn’t cause any problems and very few should crash anything if they go badly, but again, better safe than sorry.
Another part of maintenance that a lot of people skip or ignore is to simply get rid of files you don’t need anymore. Do you have games installed that you are never going to play again? What about that AOL program that you used for the free 6 months of internet before you found out AOL was the spawn of Satan? Any programs that you haven’t used in over 3-4 months are likely candidates for uninstallation unless you have a specific need for that program. Cleaning this dead weight from your computer will not only free up more space for you to put stuff you will actually use, but once it is removed from the registry it may improve your boot time or general responsiveness or fix some random issues that you may not have even known about. In addition to uninstalling old programs you don’t use, you might want to consider archiving some files to CDs or DVDs if you have a bunch of music, videos or pictures on your machine. After all, do you really need to have the entire collection of Weird Al songs in your iTunes? Why not just take the songs you listen to and delete the rest, or burn them to a disc in case you want them in the future. Again, this will free up space on your machine and make it so that your defragger doesn’t have to go through quite as many files. Besides, you might want to just go ahead and burn all your important files to discs, not just the ones you don’t need on your machine anymore.
Backing up your data can turn a system crash from a total nightmare in the 7th circle of hell to just a minor inconvenience while you reinstall a couple programs and copy your files back. Take it from someone who has killed a couple of hard drives, if you have anything important on your machine such as pictures, music, saved games, homework, whatever, you want to back it up. For that, I would suggest an external hard drive or just a secondary hard drive in your machine. I prefer these methods to CDs or DVDs because unless you have the re-writable discs you can’t go back and add more data to them. Putting everything on another hard drive gives you more freedom as far as adding or moving files. With the prices of hard drives falling (heck, I saw an external 1TB hard drive from Newegg for $200) I feel that everyone should have one to put their most important files on. While some people may not really feel that backing up is part of computer maintenance, you can lump it all together with your other monthly cleaning schedule and make sure you have current copies of all your irreplaceable data.
As King Rat noticed recently, cleaning your fan vents can make a huge difference in the way your computer runs. Of course, you may want to skip this step if you don’t want to void your warranty by opening your computer case. When dirt, dust and hair builds up and blocks air flow in or out of your system, it can cause your machine to overheat and not function correctly. For those who are daring enough to undertake this cleaning operation, it’s really not that hard. Simply open your computer case (please unplug it first) and locate the vents. If you have a can of compressed air you can use it to blow any dust or dirt out (never in). If you do not have the compressed air, you can use a soft brush or lint-free cloth, but it is likely to take longer. Gently wipe the filter or vents until you can see through it again and then you can put the case back together and forget about it for another few months. It helps if you can keep your case off the floor or away from any obvious sources of dirt/dust/hair (pets, cigarettes, small children).
For those of you that are seriously hard-core about your computer maintenance, there is also the clean install. Of course, this is when a good backup is critical. Formatting your hard drive and re-installing everything will take everything back to square one and make your system run like new again. If you want to speed the process up a little, then all it takes is a little preparation and foresight. After you perform a fresh install for the first time and get everything tweaked just right, you can create a disk image using any number of tools available off the internet. That way, the next time you decide to re-install everything, you can just pop in the image and load it onto your system and get it back to that same point. Makes a hard, long process a lot easier and shorter.
Do you have a monthly maintenance routine? Let me know if I missed anything in the comments.
Ok, we’ve all been there. A computer that hasn’t been rebooted in about 2 months that is running slower than a fat man through peanut butter. All of a sudden the computer throws a blue screen and leaves you with a paperweight. Did you know that with just a few simple steps you can keep your computer running better and help prevent those horrible crashes? Of course you did, you just don’t want to admit it. Some of these suggestions are the same as from my “Tweak your XP” article, but this one will go into more depth for maintenance and have more suggestions.
First of all, rebooting your machine periodically is of vital importance on a Windows system. While Linux and Unix machines are capable of being up for months at a time, Windows machines need a bit of a rest every now and then. Shutting your machine down for a little while will clear everything from memory, flush the cache, and allow all the hardware to reset and start back from a clean point. When you reboot your machine you should notice that there are fewer processes running and that most of your programs are a little more responsive compared to before the reboot. Rebooting should also help if you are having problems with a couple of applications or things are just not behaving like they should. Computers aren’t the only things that benefit from being rebooted, printers and other peripherals need to be shut down from time to time to allow them to start with a clean slate. Heck, we do the same thing every night when we go to sleep.
Secondly, every time you surf the web or open files on your computer, random little files get saved all over your hard drive. These are cookies and other temporary files that can pile up over time. I would recommend that about once a month or at least a couple times a year you run a program that gets rid of them. The default Windows Disk Cleanup (open My Computer - right click on your C: drive and go to Properties – click the Disk Cleanup button on the General Tab) will delete most of these files and even has the added bonus of allowing you to compress files that you don’t use very often so that they take up less space on your hard drive. However, Disk Cleanup can take a long time to run (a few hours is normal for my machine) and unless you run it overnight it will seriously bog your computer down. I recommend CCleaner, a free download from www.ccleaner.com. While it does not have the compression option, it has options that allow you to find and delete a greater range of useless files to clean up more room, along with being able to mark certain files to be ignored. CCleaner also comes with a Registry cleaner that will scan your registry for items that are no longer relevant (broken fonts, files from uninstalled programs, icons, dlls, etc) and get rid of them in order to make your registry more efficient. The registry is what contains information about all the software and settings on your machine, so it is good to keep it cleaned up if you can. Of course, if you decide to run the registry cleaner you will want to allow it to create a backup of your registry first. I have never had it delete something important and crash my computer, but better safe than sorry.
Defragging is another bit of maintenance that a lot of people forget or ignore. When a file is saved to your hard drive, it is not always in one big chunk. Your computer will save the file wherever it has space available so it may get split up into multiple pieces and scattered over the drive with each piece containing a pointer for the rest of the file. After a while your computer has to spend so much time looking for the next piece of a file that it can take forever to load that picture that you were trying to pull up or to play that next mp3. Defragging takes all those pieces of files and tries to put them back into some semblance of order. While it will probably never get everything into a perfect sequence, defragging your hard drives will certainly speed up everyday operations like opening your browser (Firefox, right?) or playing your music and games. Again, Windows has a built in tool to defrag (My Computer – right-click C: - Properties – Tools tab – Defrag) that will get the job done. There are some free defrag programs that you can download out there, but not all of them work as well as advertised. If you don’t want to spend money on it, I would say that the Windows defrag will work for you. If you don’t mind spending a little money on a defrag program, then I would suggest Diskkeeper or PerfectDisk. I have used both of these at work and Diskkeeper on my home machine; they both get the job done faster than the default Windows program and generally do a better job of it. Another feature that they have over Windows defrag is an option to schedule automatic defrags so that you can set it and forget about it. Once a month should be ok for a defrag, but if your computer starts running too slow before the month is up it probably wouldn’t hurt to check and see if it needs a defrag. Of course, a defrag generally works better if you reboot the machine immediately before. That will clear the cache and keep your defrag program from trying to work all of the files that were being held in memory at the time. If you can, try to run your Disk Cleanup or CCleaner before a defrag as well; the temporary files and cookies usually make up a big portion of the fragmented files.
Scandisk is another Windows program, but it is a little more useful than some. Scandisk will perform a test on your hard drives while your computer is booting to make sure that they don’t have bad sectors or damaged areas that can cause slow performance or system crashes. If Scandisk finds a bad sector, it can try to repair it; I have found that it usually can do a pretty good job of repairing most of what it finds. If Scandisk finds some problems that it can’t fix, there might be other programs that can. If there are a lot of bad sectors that can’t be fixed, then it is probably time to buy a new hard drive and get everything transferred before your drive fails. This is another program that should probably be run every couple of months, just to make sure.
Regular virus and spyware scans should be part of your routine, either weekly or monthly. After all, what good is that software if you never run it to see if something has gotten by that impenetrable Windows firewall (which you probably turned off anyway)? If you start getting a bunch of random popups or your computer slows to a crawl, then a virus or a bunch of spyware may be part of the problem. As far as antivirus programs, I use Avast home version. It is a free download and has real-time protection in addition to the manual and scheduled scans. Avast does not take up near as much system resources as the expensive bigger names like Norton or McAfee and does not cause as many conflicts with other programs. For spyware, I generally use Ad-Aware, another free program. While it has a version that you can buy that offers real-time protection, the free version offers the regular scans and I have found it to work just fine if you run the scans regularly. Both of these programs can be downloaded from www.download.com.
Drivers control how your software communicates with your hardware. Companies are putting out new drivers all the time for hardware that you have installed on your machine, and updating the driver to a newer version may make it work better. When you install a new piece of hardware, Windows may use a default driver that is probably old and while it may work, you may not get all the functionality that you could with a new driver. If you know the manufacturer and part number of some of the parts in your computer (like video card, sound card, cd/dvd drive, etc) then you can go to the manufacturer’s website and look for the newest drivers for your hardware. If you bought your machine from Dell, then you can visit Dell’s website and either search by model number or service tag to find drivers for your machine. Now, on the off chance that a driver update causes problems, you can always roll back to a previous driver and try to fix it that way. For the more severe driver problems, this is where your backups can come in handy. Most driver updates shouldn’t cause any problems and very few should crash anything if they go badly, but again, better safe than sorry.
Another part of maintenance that a lot of people skip or ignore is to simply get rid of files you don’t need anymore. Do you have games installed that you are never going to play again? What about that AOL program that you used for the free 6 months of internet before you found out AOL was the spawn of Satan? Any programs that you haven’t used in over 3-4 months are likely candidates for uninstallation unless you have a specific need for that program. Cleaning this dead weight from your computer will not only free up more space for you to put stuff you will actually use, but once it is removed from the registry it may improve your boot time or general responsiveness or fix some random issues that you may not have even known about. In addition to uninstalling old programs you don’t use, you might want to consider archiving some files to CDs or DVDs if you have a bunch of music, videos or pictures on your machine. After all, do you really need to have the entire collection of Weird Al songs in your iTunes? Why not just take the songs you listen to and delete the rest, or burn them to a disc in case you want them in the future. Again, this will free up space on your machine and make it so that your defragger doesn’t have to go through quite as many files. Besides, you might want to just go ahead and burn all your important files to discs, not just the ones you don’t need on your machine anymore.
Backing up your data can turn a system crash from a total nightmare in the 7th circle of hell to just a minor inconvenience while you reinstall a couple programs and copy your files back. Take it from someone who has killed a couple of hard drives, if you have anything important on your machine such as pictures, music, saved games, homework, whatever, you want to back it up. For that, I would suggest an external hard drive or just a secondary hard drive in your machine. I prefer these methods to CDs or DVDs because unless you have the re-writable discs you can’t go back and add more data to them. Putting everything on another hard drive gives you more freedom as far as adding or moving files. With the prices of hard drives falling (heck, I saw an external 1TB hard drive from Newegg for $200) I feel that everyone should have one to put their most important files on. While some people may not really feel that backing up is part of computer maintenance, you can lump it all together with your other monthly cleaning schedule and make sure you have current copies of all your irreplaceable data.
As King Rat noticed recently, cleaning your fan vents can make a huge difference in the way your computer runs. Of course, you may want to skip this step if you don’t want to void your warranty by opening your computer case. When dirt, dust and hair builds up and blocks air flow in or out of your system, it can cause your machine to overheat and not function correctly. For those who are daring enough to undertake this cleaning operation, it’s really not that hard. Simply open your computer case (please unplug it first) and locate the vents. If you have a can of compressed air you can use it to blow any dust or dirt out (never in). If you do not have the compressed air, you can use a soft brush or lint-free cloth, but it is likely to take longer. Gently wipe the filter or vents until you can see through it again and then you can put the case back together and forget about it for another few months. It helps if you can keep your case off the floor or away from any obvious sources of dirt/dust/hair (pets, cigarettes, small children).
For those of you that are seriously hard-core about your computer maintenance, there is also the clean install. Of course, this is when a good backup is critical. Formatting your hard drive and re-installing everything will take everything back to square one and make your system run like new again. If you want to speed the process up a little, then all it takes is a little preparation and foresight. After you perform a fresh install for the first time and get everything tweaked just right, you can create a disk image using any number of tools available off the internet. That way, the next time you decide to re-install everything, you can just pop in the image and load it onto your system and get it back to that same point. Makes a hard, long process a lot easier and shorter.
Do you have a monthly maintenance routine? Let me know if I missed anything in the comments.
Magic the Gathering Online v 3
Wizards of the Coast recently released version 3 of their Magic: The Gathering Online game (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/moliii/launch). The program itself is available as a free download, but as in the past, players will have to purchase cards and packs in order to create and edit decks. With just the free download you can access a free server that will allow you to duel using a pre-built deck, but the options are probably very limited and this will not give players a good taste of the game. However, I am a little wary of spending real money in order to “buy” digital representations of cards. However, Wizards of the Coast has implemented a feature that allows you to trade cards from your online library in and have physical copies mailed to you, for an additional fee.
Playing Magic over the internet seems like a great idea in theory. Cards are easier to organize and build into decks, no wear and tear on your physical collection, and a plethora of opponents in easy reach are all big selling points. However, the fact that you have to purchase the digital cards makes me a little iffy about the entire enterprise. Why not give people access to the entire collection of cards, or at least a flat fee to get an entire expansion set? If the game had a monthly fee instead of having to pay for the cards, then I think that I would feel better about it. While I don’t like monthly fees that much, I think that it would be easier for more players to stomach. After all, look at World of Warcraft. $15 a month for unlimited access and how many millions of players are there? If you had to pay for more items or in order to level up your characters, I can see a lot of pissed off gamers in the works. In my opinion, having to pay for the Magic cards is along the same lines. I know that it is a collectible card game and the fact that not everyone has access to the same database of cards adds some of the flavor and challenge to the game, but if I am going to pay money for cards, then I at least want to have the physical card in my hand. What about the physical cards that I already own? Why can’t I import those into the game and use them instead of having to buy the cards all over again?
In my opinion, having to buy the cards and only being able to use them for the online game is strangely similar to DRM in that you don’t actually own anything and if the company decides to cancel the service, then you are simply out the money that you spent (check out http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080422-drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-nuke-msn-music-drm-keys.html for one of the latest DRM-related stories). Seriously, paying for a product should mean that I can keep it for myself and sell it, trade it, burn it, bury it, whatever. Instead we are being made to lease a product from a company and have absolutely no rights as to what we can really do with it. With the online Magic cards, I know that you can trade them and “sell” them (no sales actually take place since you don’t own anything, but it is like people selling World of Warcraft items for real money) but unless I can convert them to physical cards for no additional charge, then I don’t really see the point. The reason that I say this is because it is a collectible card game. I have spent a considerable amount of money (at least for me) to build up my physical deck and I don’t really think that I should have to spend the same amount of money building up my virtual deck if there is no easy way to convert the cards over.
In my opinion, instead of having to purchase the cards for the virtual decks, they should either charge a monthly fee and allow everyone access to all the cards, or possibly make it so that you can “purchase” cards using some kind of points system. Participating in duels should earn points (of course winning the duel will earn more) and you can use these points to purchase packs or individual cards. Cards should be able to be traded to someone for some of their points or for other cards. Now, if they wanted to make it so that points could be purchased with money, then that is up to them and the people who are more willing to spend real money on a virtual deck. Of course all of this is just my opinion of how I would run it if I were in charge of the program.
Any thoughts? Anybody out there playing Magic Online that wants to weigh in?
Playing Magic over the internet seems like a great idea in theory. Cards are easier to organize and build into decks, no wear and tear on your physical collection, and a plethora of opponents in easy reach are all big selling points. However, the fact that you have to purchase the digital cards makes me a little iffy about the entire enterprise. Why not give people access to the entire collection of cards, or at least a flat fee to get an entire expansion set? If the game had a monthly fee instead of having to pay for the cards, then I think that I would feel better about it. While I don’t like monthly fees that much, I think that it would be easier for more players to stomach. After all, look at World of Warcraft. $15 a month for unlimited access and how many millions of players are there? If you had to pay for more items or in order to level up your characters, I can see a lot of pissed off gamers in the works. In my opinion, having to pay for the Magic cards is along the same lines. I know that it is a collectible card game and the fact that not everyone has access to the same database of cards adds some of the flavor and challenge to the game, but if I am going to pay money for cards, then I at least want to have the physical card in my hand. What about the physical cards that I already own? Why can’t I import those into the game and use them instead of having to buy the cards all over again?
In my opinion, having to buy the cards and only being able to use them for the online game is strangely similar to DRM in that you don’t actually own anything and if the company decides to cancel the service, then you are simply out the money that you spent (check out http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080422-drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-nuke-msn-music-drm-keys.html for one of the latest DRM-related stories). Seriously, paying for a product should mean that I can keep it for myself and sell it, trade it, burn it, bury it, whatever. Instead we are being made to lease a product from a company and have absolutely no rights as to what we can really do with it. With the online Magic cards, I know that you can trade them and “sell” them (no sales actually take place since you don’t own anything, but it is like people selling World of Warcraft items for real money) but unless I can convert them to physical cards for no additional charge, then I don’t really see the point. The reason that I say this is because it is a collectible card game. I have spent a considerable amount of money (at least for me) to build up my physical deck and I don’t really think that I should have to spend the same amount of money building up my virtual deck if there is no easy way to convert the cards over.
In my opinion, instead of having to purchase the cards for the virtual decks, they should either charge a monthly fee and allow everyone access to all the cards, or possibly make it so that you can “purchase” cards using some kind of points system. Participating in duels should earn points (of course winning the duel will earn more) and you can use these points to purchase packs or individual cards. Cards should be able to be traded to someone for some of their points or for other cards. Now, if they wanted to make it so that points could be purchased with money, then that is up to them and the people who are more willing to spend real money on a virtual deck. Of course all of this is just my opinion of how I would run it if I were in charge of the program.
Any thoughts? Anybody out there playing Magic Online that wants to weigh in?
Torrents
Torrents. The very word is enough to make most people think of illegal downloads for music, movies, p0rn, games, etc. While torrents are used for illegal applications, there are also a ton of files out there that are perfectly legal to download and as such torrents should not be dismissed as inherently evil. Comcast recently tried to do that by using “network management” to effectively shut down bittorrent programs running on their networks. Ignoring the fact that many users are downloading and distributing legal files, Comcast began to insert TCP reset packets into the communications streams (masking their actions by making it look like a legitimate peer sent the packet) to stop the flow of information. As such, torrents have come into the news recently as Azureus and other torrent program makers have brought complaints against Comcast, enough that the FCC has stepped in to investigate.
The way that torrents work is that an individual marks a file or collection of files on their machine as something that they would like to share. They place the files out where others can connect to them and begin downloads. When others download the file or files, the downloader is also able to upload what they have already received in order to take some of the burden off of the original uploader. After the download is complete, the user also has the option of remaining connected and allowing others to download that file from them as well as the original source. This way, no single person (or server, or network) is responsible for hosting a file and making sure that they have enough bandwidth to allow anyone to download it, the burden can be spread out amongst hundreds or even thousands of machines and users. Also, since the files are spread out among computers that are possibly all over the globe, downloaders can connect to machines near to them to achieve better speeds.
I can hear a lot of people out there asking: If torrents can be used to download illegal music and software, then why shouldn’t Comcast be allowed to cancel the connections and stop them from using bandwidth? Well, torrents can also be used for good. For example, one of the reasons that many distributions of Linux (like Ubuntu) can be freely distributed is that the distribute them via torrent. This way, the makers don’t have such a large crowd slamming their HTTP or FTP download servers, and this allows them to focus a smaller percentage of their resources on distribution. In addition to being used to distribute freely available files and programs, torrents can also speed up file replication and distribution. One university in Holland had their IT department use torrents to roll out updates and patches to 6,500 PCs. The total amount of files to be pushed out was 22TB (that’s 22,000GB, no small feat). Instead of the usual 4 days that it used to take, all the updates and patches were rolled out in 4 hours. Note, it took 1/24th the amount of time that it used to take to roll out the updates thanks to torrents. Hit the link for the full story (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080309-dropping-22tb-of-patches-on-6500-pcs-in-4-hours-bittorrentdropping-22tb-of-patches-on-6500-pcs-in-4-hours-bittorrent.html).
Now, why did the whole Comcast mess blow up as bad as it did? Well, when Comcast was forging those reset packets to kill the connections, it was masquerading as a valid peer. Hackers do the same thing and get prosecuted for it, but Comcast felt that it was ok for them to use the same tactics because it was their network. Unfortunately, they messed with the wrong group of people. A good percentage of torrent users know a fair bit about computers themselves and so they were able to figure out what Comcast was doing and decided to fight back. I haven’t seen the results from the latest FCC meeting, but Comcast has recently added some new information about their “network management” methods to their website so that people know what kind of applications may be degraded in order to allow everyone else to enjoy their connections as well. Of course, that opens up a whole new can of worms. What gives Comcast the right to decide what applications will be degraded? Yes torrents use a lot of bandwidth by nature, but they cannot take what is already being used. Besides, as streaming video becomes even more widespread it is using more bandwidth than torrents. Azureus and other software vendors are concerned that customers will not be able to use their products if Comcast decides not to allow them to access bandwidth as they need it. That would be like trying to drive down a highway in your Ford truck only to be told that this highway is reserved for Honda Civics instead. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it. What if Comcast decided to start throttling online games like World of Warcraft or anything running on the Steam network? The people that paid for those products would be acting just like the torrent users that are getting screwed. Besides, the product that Comcast sells is access to their network in order to send and receive data. What is contained in that data is not specified in their terms of agreement. That means that what you send or receive should not matter at all to Comcast and they should not be able to throttle your connection based on the data.
One problem that Comcast is trying to get across is that they simply are running out of bandwidth. Comcast sells packages with download speeds of up to Xmb/s, but there is virtually no way that you will actually get to that theoretical download speed because there are other users online at the same time. Unfortunately for Comcast (and all other ISPs) they oversell their product and that means that they can’t handle the traffic. If everyone gets online at the same time and tries to download files, stream video, make VoIP calls, and browse the web, then the pipe gets clogged and everyone’s connection speed will drop to a crawl. I don’t really see how they can get away with operating that way. Imagine if you were to go to get into the shower one morning and could only get the water to drip out because everyone else on your block was showering or washing dishes or clothes. I imagine that you’d be pretty ticked that they couldn’t handle the volume. Another example is if an airline overbooks a flight. You bought a ticket for that flight, but you might get kicked off because there simply aren’t enough seats for everyone. Doesn’t it make you wonder how they can run a business like that?
Comcast tries to blame the bandwidth problem on torrents, saying that they use all the available bandwidth and that putting in bigger pipes would just give the torrents more bandwidth to suck up and would leave them right back where they started. Of course, what they are ignoring is the fact that no user can use more than the Xmb/s than they are paying for. If they were to improve the network to be able to handle the customers that they are currently providing service to, then the torrent users would not take up any more than any other user. Sounds like a simple solution, but Comcast just doesn’t seem to understand it.
Luckily I use Charter here in Texas and it does not appear to me that they are throttling any applications and they have not been in the news as screwing over their customers nearly as much as Comcast has. Anyone have any thoughts?
The way that torrents work is that an individual marks a file or collection of files on their machine as something that they would like to share. They place the files out where others can connect to them and begin downloads. When others download the file or files, the downloader is also able to upload what they have already received in order to take some of the burden off of the original uploader. After the download is complete, the user also has the option of remaining connected and allowing others to download that file from them as well as the original source. This way, no single person (or server, or network) is responsible for hosting a file and making sure that they have enough bandwidth to allow anyone to download it, the burden can be spread out amongst hundreds or even thousands of machines and users. Also, since the files are spread out among computers that are possibly all over the globe, downloaders can connect to machines near to them to achieve better speeds.
I can hear a lot of people out there asking: If torrents can be used to download illegal music and software, then why shouldn’t Comcast be allowed to cancel the connections and stop them from using bandwidth? Well, torrents can also be used for good. For example, one of the reasons that many distributions of Linux (like Ubuntu) can be freely distributed is that the distribute them via torrent. This way, the makers don’t have such a large crowd slamming their HTTP or FTP download servers, and this allows them to focus a smaller percentage of their resources on distribution. In addition to being used to distribute freely available files and programs, torrents can also speed up file replication and distribution. One university in Holland had their IT department use torrents to roll out updates and patches to 6,500 PCs. The total amount of files to be pushed out was 22TB (that’s 22,000GB, no small feat). Instead of the usual 4 days that it used to take, all the updates and patches were rolled out in 4 hours. Note, it took 1/24th the amount of time that it used to take to roll out the updates thanks to torrents. Hit the link for the full story (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080309-dropping-22tb-of-patches-on-6500-pcs-in-4-hours-bittorrentdropping-22tb-of-patches-on-6500-pcs-in-4-hours-bittorrent.html).
Now, why did the whole Comcast mess blow up as bad as it did? Well, when Comcast was forging those reset packets to kill the connections, it was masquerading as a valid peer. Hackers do the same thing and get prosecuted for it, but Comcast felt that it was ok for them to use the same tactics because it was their network. Unfortunately, they messed with the wrong group of people. A good percentage of torrent users know a fair bit about computers themselves and so they were able to figure out what Comcast was doing and decided to fight back. I haven’t seen the results from the latest FCC meeting, but Comcast has recently added some new information about their “network management” methods to their website so that people know what kind of applications may be degraded in order to allow everyone else to enjoy their connections as well. Of course, that opens up a whole new can of worms. What gives Comcast the right to decide what applications will be degraded? Yes torrents use a lot of bandwidth by nature, but they cannot take what is already being used. Besides, as streaming video becomes even more widespread it is using more bandwidth than torrents. Azureus and other software vendors are concerned that customers will not be able to use their products if Comcast decides not to allow them to access bandwidth as they need it. That would be like trying to drive down a highway in your Ford truck only to be told that this highway is reserved for Honda Civics instead. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it. What if Comcast decided to start throttling online games like World of Warcraft or anything running on the Steam network? The people that paid for those products would be acting just like the torrent users that are getting screwed. Besides, the product that Comcast sells is access to their network in order to send and receive data. What is contained in that data is not specified in their terms of agreement. That means that what you send or receive should not matter at all to Comcast and they should not be able to throttle your connection based on the data.
One problem that Comcast is trying to get across is that they simply are running out of bandwidth. Comcast sells packages with download speeds of up to Xmb/s, but there is virtually no way that you will actually get to that theoretical download speed because there are other users online at the same time. Unfortunately for Comcast (and all other ISPs) they oversell their product and that means that they can’t handle the traffic. If everyone gets online at the same time and tries to download files, stream video, make VoIP calls, and browse the web, then the pipe gets clogged and everyone’s connection speed will drop to a crawl. I don’t really see how they can get away with operating that way. Imagine if you were to go to get into the shower one morning and could only get the water to drip out because everyone else on your block was showering or washing dishes or clothes. I imagine that you’d be pretty ticked that they couldn’t handle the volume. Another example is if an airline overbooks a flight. You bought a ticket for that flight, but you might get kicked off because there simply aren’t enough seats for everyone. Doesn’t it make you wonder how they can run a business like that?
Comcast tries to blame the bandwidth problem on torrents, saying that they use all the available bandwidth and that putting in bigger pipes would just give the torrents more bandwidth to suck up and would leave them right back where they started. Of course, what they are ignoring is the fact that no user can use more than the Xmb/s than they are paying for. If they were to improve the network to be able to handle the customers that they are currently providing service to, then the torrent users would not take up any more than any other user. Sounds like a simple solution, but Comcast just doesn’t seem to understand it.
Luckily I use Charter here in Texas and it does not appear to me that they are throttling any applications and they have not been in the news as screwing over their customers nearly as much as Comcast has. Anyone have any thoughts?
Monday, November 26, 2007
Tweak your XP Computer for Gaming
This guide will cover tweaking your computer to (hopefully) improve performance for gaming on Windows XP. Those of you with Vista, Linux, or Macs will either have to wait until I write a guide to help you or just do some Googling (not the bad kind) to find out how to improve performance by yourself.
We will be creating a new hardware profile, disabling some unnecessary services, and performing some basic tweaks and maintenance. None of this is really too hardcore, but if you are worried about the state of your machine, then you may want to perform a backup beforehand, just to be safe.
First off, we need to create a new hardware profile. To do this, either right-click on your “My Computer” icon or go to Start – Control Panel – System. Once you have the System Properties window open, click the “Hardware” tab and click on the button for Hardware Profiles. You are going to want to copy your Default profile (or whatever the original profile is named) and then rename the copy to “Gaming”, “High Performance”, or “RPGX” (really, any name will do). Now, when you boot your computer you will be given the chance to choose which hardware profile to use. Depending on which profile you will be using more often, you can either set it to automatically select the first profile after a given time (default is 30 seconds) or to wait until you select one to continue booting. Now that you have created the new profile, reboot your computer and select your new profile before we go any further.
After you reboot into your new “Gaming” profile, it is time to get to work. The first thing we are going to do is start disabling services that we don’t really need in order to game on a closed network, like at a LAN party. All of these edits are just suggestions and could possibly cause your computer to stop responding or programs to fail. I recommend disabling only a couple at a time and rebooting to make sure that everything still works. If something breaks and you can’t get back into your computer, you will still have your “Default” profile that we can go back to.
Anyway, that’s enough disclaimer, let’s get started.
To access your services, you can go to Start – Run: and type “services.msc” (without the quotes). This will open the Services window that allows you to start, stop, or disable services. We are only going to disable services on the “Gaming” profile, so for each service you want to disable, you will want to right-click on it and choose “Properties”, then go to the “Log On” tab and select the appropriate profile and press the “Disable” button; this way your Default profile remains untouched.
The following are services that you can probably disable safely:
Alerter
Automatic Updates (disabling this will cause Automatic Updates to not function, duh)
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (disabling this will cause Automatic Updates to not function)
Clipbook
Error Reporting Service
Help and Support
Messenger
Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Portable Media Serial Number
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Procedure Call Locator
Smart Card
Smart Card Helper
Telephony (if you are on dial up, you will want to leave this enabled)
Telnet
Uninterruptible Power Supply (only if you are not using a UPS)
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) – (only needed if you are connecting scanners or cameras)
Wireless Zero Configuration (needed if you are on a wireless network)
Fast User Switching
Task Scheduler
Secondary Logon
Print Spooler (are you going to be printing while gaming?)
Indexing Service
Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
Google Updater Service
If you do not see some of these services in your list, don’t worry. That means they aren’t running and you don’t have to stop them. Did you remember to only disable these on your Gaming profile? Just checking. Disabling all these services that you won’t use should speed up your computer a little since it won’t be trying to run these services (and taking up CPU and RAM) while you are gaming.
Now, for this second bit of tweaking, you may want to create a second User Profile. This tweak will stop certain programs from starting up when you first log on, which means that unless you turn them on, they won’t be running while you are fragging your opponents. To create a new User Profile, go to Start – Control Panel – User Accounts. Select “Create a New Account” and follow the on-screen prompts. You will probably want to make this new user an Administrator so you can run games and install programs properly, but it is really up to you. After you have created the new User, log off and log back in as the new Profile.
Now that you are logged in as your new “gaming” user, go back to Start – Run: and type “msconfig” (again, no quotes). This will open the System Configuration Utility, which should be used sparingly. From here, click the last tab “Startup” to see a list of programs. All the programs that have a check next to them load when your computer first boots up. We are going to disable some programs that we don’t need, but be sure to leave all your Antivirus and Firewall programs alone (if you have them). This list will probably have some programs that you do not, these are just the ones I have seen and am pretty sure that you won’t need when gaming.
The following are some of the programs that you can uncheck:
QTTask (Quicktime)
Picasa Media Detector
Adobe Reader
Microsoft Office
Jusched (Java Updater)
WMPNSCFG (Windows Media Player Network Sharing config)
Yahoo Widgets
Azureus (or any other P2P program like BearShare, LimeWire, Kazaa, BitComet, etc.)
AIM (or any other instant messenger, unless you use them during games)
etc.
Really, the only things that need to remain checked are your Antivirus, Firewall, and any program that you know that you will be using. If your video card came with software that affects your monitor (something like Nvidia, ati, or AdobeGamma) and you see it listed, leave it checked as well. If you uncheck a program here that you need, then you can always go and start it manually later.
Another minor point that might should be addressed ties in with the Startup programs that we turned off earlier. If you have a lot of programs open and then decide to play a game, you might want to go ahead and close them before firing it up. You wouldn’t believe how much memory those little things like Instant Messaging, Office, Acrobat, iTunes, Widgets, internet pages, etc. can take up if you leave them running when you turn on a game. It doesn’t do us any good to make it so these programs don’t start up when your computer boots if you turn them on manually and leave them on while you game.
Ok, also on this profile we are going to tweak the appearance of your normal desktop and Windows. This will not affect anything in how your games appear, but it can make a little difference in your machine’s performance. Right-click on My Computer again and select Properties, but this time we are going to go to the “Advanced” tab. From here, click on the “Settings” button in the “Performance” area to open a new window where you can tweak the Visual Effects of Windows. To get the most out of this tweak, you will need to click the third option “Adjust for best performance”. This will get rid of most of the basic eye-candy on your desktop, but that means that Windows is requiring less RAM, which frees up more for your games.
You can also go to the 2nd tab, “Advanced” and click the “Change” button in the Virtual Memory area to change the amount of Virtual Memory your computer will use. Virtual Memory is what your computer will use if it runs out of RAM. It sets aside a section of your hard drive and uses it as Virtual Memory when your RAM is full. This method is slower than real RAM, but it can help your computer run programs it would normally have problems with. After clicking “Change”, the Virtual Memory window will come up. You will want to select “Custom Size” and type in the same number for both Initial Size and Maximum Size. You will want to type in a number that is about 1.5x the amount of physical RAM your machine has (you can check this by going back to the General tab of the System Properties). For example, if your computer has 512MB of physical RAM, then you want to set your virtual memory to 768MB. Using the same number in Initial and Maximum will keep your computer from constantly changing the size of the virtual memory in the middle of your game.
Don’t forget, another way you can help your machine out before a big gaming session is to do a Disk Cleanup and a Defrag. For Disk Cleanup, you can either use Window’s default application (right-click on your C:, click properties – select “Disk Cleanup”) or use a 3rd party application like CCleaner. Running a disk cleanup will delete old temporary files, cookies, downloaded files, and depending on the application, even compress your files or clean out old registry entries (always back up your registry first!). This means that old crap files that you don’t need anymore will be deleted, thus freeing up room on your hard drive and keeping Windows from having to sift through those files in order to get to the ones you need.
Defragmenting your hard drive should also improve performance. When data is stored in your hard drive, Windows generally tries to store it all together. If there isn’t enough room to put your Unreal Tournament files in one block, then it will break it up into pieces and spread it out on the hard drive so that it fits. This means that when you try to play the game, Windows is having to jump around on the hard drive to access all the files needed, wasting time and resources. Defragging tries to put the files back into continuous blocks so that your machine doesn’t have to pull files from 42 different places in order to play Solitaire. Now, there are many different defrag programs out there including the default one that comes installed with Windows.
The Windows default should be fine for most people, and beware of some of the free ones that might cause more harm than good. Personally, I use the non-free Diskkeeper and have found it to work well for me. Defragging should probably be done on a schedule like once a week or month for average users to keep their machines running better.
Well, those are the basic tweaks for improving your gaming performance on Windows XP. Let me know if they worked or if there was something that gave you a problem and I will try to address it in future articles.
We will be creating a new hardware profile, disabling some unnecessary services, and performing some basic tweaks and maintenance. None of this is really too hardcore, but if you are worried about the state of your machine, then you may want to perform a backup beforehand, just to be safe.
First off, we need to create a new hardware profile. To do this, either right-click on your “My Computer” icon or go to Start – Control Panel – System. Once you have the System Properties window open, click the “Hardware” tab and click on the button for Hardware Profiles. You are going to want to copy your Default profile (or whatever the original profile is named) and then rename the copy to “Gaming”, “High Performance”, or “RPGX” (really, any name will do). Now, when you boot your computer you will be given the chance to choose which hardware profile to use. Depending on which profile you will be using more often, you can either set it to automatically select the first profile after a given time (default is 30 seconds) or to wait until you select one to continue booting. Now that you have created the new profile, reboot your computer and select your new profile before we go any further.
After you reboot into your new “Gaming” profile, it is time to get to work. The first thing we are going to do is start disabling services that we don’t really need in order to game on a closed network, like at a LAN party. All of these edits are just suggestions and could possibly cause your computer to stop responding or programs to fail. I recommend disabling only a couple at a time and rebooting to make sure that everything still works. If something breaks and you can’t get back into your computer, you will still have your “Default” profile that we can go back to.
Anyway, that’s enough disclaimer, let’s get started.
To access your services, you can go to Start – Run: and type “services.msc” (without the quotes). This will open the Services window that allows you to start, stop, or disable services. We are only going to disable services on the “Gaming” profile, so for each service you want to disable, you will want to right-click on it and choose “Properties”, then go to the “Log On” tab and select the appropriate profile and press the “Disable” button; this way your Default profile remains untouched.
The following are services that you can probably disable safely:
Alerter
Automatic Updates (disabling this will cause Automatic Updates to not function, duh)
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (disabling this will cause Automatic Updates to not function)
Clipbook
Error Reporting Service
Help and Support
Messenger
Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Portable Media Serial Number
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Procedure Call Locator
Smart Card
Smart Card Helper
Telephony (if you are on dial up, you will want to leave this enabled)
Telnet
Uninterruptible Power Supply (only if you are not using a UPS)
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) – (only needed if you are connecting scanners or cameras)
Wireless Zero Configuration (needed if you are on a wireless network)
Fast User Switching
Task Scheduler
Secondary Logon
Print Spooler (are you going to be printing while gaming?)
Indexing Service
Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
Google Updater Service
If you do not see some of these services in your list, don’t worry. That means they aren’t running and you don’t have to stop them. Did you remember to only disable these on your Gaming profile? Just checking. Disabling all these services that you won’t use should speed up your computer a little since it won’t be trying to run these services (and taking up CPU and RAM) while you are gaming.
Now, for this second bit of tweaking, you may want to create a second User Profile. This tweak will stop certain programs from starting up when you first log on, which means that unless you turn them on, they won’t be running while you are fragging your opponents. To create a new User Profile, go to Start – Control Panel – User Accounts. Select “Create a New Account” and follow the on-screen prompts. You will probably want to make this new user an Administrator so you can run games and install programs properly, but it is really up to you. After you have created the new User, log off and log back in as the new Profile.
Now that you are logged in as your new “gaming” user, go back to Start – Run: and type “msconfig” (again, no quotes). This will open the System Configuration Utility, which should be used sparingly. From here, click the last tab “Startup” to see a list of programs. All the programs that have a check next to them load when your computer first boots up. We are going to disable some programs that we don’t need, but be sure to leave all your Antivirus and Firewall programs alone (if you have them). This list will probably have some programs that you do not, these are just the ones I have seen and am pretty sure that you won’t need when gaming.
The following are some of the programs that you can uncheck:
QTTask (Quicktime)
Picasa Media Detector
Adobe Reader
Microsoft Office
Jusched (Java Updater)
WMPNSCFG (Windows Media Player Network Sharing config)
Yahoo Widgets
Azureus (or any other P2P program like BearShare, LimeWire, Kazaa, BitComet, etc.)
AIM (or any other instant messenger, unless you use them during games)
etc.
Really, the only things that need to remain checked are your Antivirus, Firewall, and any program that you know that you will be using. If your video card came with software that affects your monitor (something like Nvidia, ati, or AdobeGamma) and you see it listed, leave it checked as well. If you uncheck a program here that you need, then you can always go and start it manually later.
Another minor point that might should be addressed ties in with the Startup programs that we turned off earlier. If you have a lot of programs open and then decide to play a game, you might want to go ahead and close them before firing it up. You wouldn’t believe how much memory those little things like Instant Messaging, Office, Acrobat, iTunes, Widgets, internet pages, etc. can take up if you leave them running when you turn on a game. It doesn’t do us any good to make it so these programs don’t start up when your computer boots if you turn them on manually and leave them on while you game.
Ok, also on this profile we are going to tweak the appearance of your normal desktop and Windows. This will not affect anything in how your games appear, but it can make a little difference in your machine’s performance. Right-click on My Computer again and select Properties, but this time we are going to go to the “Advanced” tab. From here, click on the “Settings” button in the “Performance” area to open a new window where you can tweak the Visual Effects of Windows. To get the most out of this tweak, you will need to click the third option “Adjust for best performance”. This will get rid of most of the basic eye-candy on your desktop, but that means that Windows is requiring less RAM, which frees up more for your games.
You can also go to the 2nd tab, “Advanced” and click the “Change” button in the Virtual Memory area to change the amount of Virtual Memory your computer will use. Virtual Memory is what your computer will use if it runs out of RAM. It sets aside a section of your hard drive and uses it as Virtual Memory when your RAM is full. This method is slower than real RAM, but it can help your computer run programs it would normally have problems with. After clicking “Change”, the Virtual Memory window will come up. You will want to select “Custom Size” and type in the same number for both Initial Size and Maximum Size. You will want to type in a number that is about 1.5x the amount of physical RAM your machine has (you can check this by going back to the General tab of the System Properties). For example, if your computer has 512MB of physical RAM, then you want to set your virtual memory to 768MB. Using the same number in Initial and Maximum will keep your computer from constantly changing the size of the virtual memory in the middle of your game.
Don’t forget, another way you can help your machine out before a big gaming session is to do a Disk Cleanup and a Defrag. For Disk Cleanup, you can either use Window’s default application (right-click on your C:, click properties – select “Disk Cleanup”) or use a 3rd party application like CCleaner. Running a disk cleanup will delete old temporary files, cookies, downloaded files, and depending on the application, even compress your files or clean out old registry entries (always back up your registry first!). This means that old crap files that you don’t need anymore will be deleted, thus freeing up room on your hard drive and keeping Windows from having to sift through those files in order to get to the ones you need.
Defragmenting your hard drive should also improve performance. When data is stored in your hard drive, Windows generally tries to store it all together. If there isn’t enough room to put your Unreal Tournament files in one block, then it will break it up into pieces and spread it out on the hard drive so that it fits. This means that when you try to play the game, Windows is having to jump around on the hard drive to access all the files needed, wasting time and resources. Defragging tries to put the files back into continuous blocks so that your machine doesn’t have to pull files from 42 different places in order to play Solitaire. Now, there are many different defrag programs out there including the default one that comes installed with Windows.
The Windows default should be fine for most people, and beware of some of the free ones that might cause more harm than good. Personally, I use the non-free Diskkeeper and have found it to work well for me. Defragging should probably be done on a schedule like once a week or month for average users to keep their machines running better.
Well, those are the basic tweaks for improving your gaming performance on Windows XP. Let me know if they worked or if there was something that gave you a problem and I will try to address it in future articles.
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