re: Running Windows ME My Way 19/07/2003
Saturday, July 19, 2003 at 1:34 am
Windows Me Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Cam
(4178 messages posted)
RUNNING WINDOWS ME MY WAY [19/07/2003]
The FIRST thing to do is ALWAYS to make a Windows Startup Disk, EBD or Bootdiskette,
on YOUR computer: STARTUP-DISK And also a: QuickCleanUpBootDisk DOS COMMANDS
I have ME running very well after one year of use, but by using two drives. The OS
is installed on drive C: and the fixed swap-file runs on drive D:
All of My Documents, Images, Music & Video, etc. resides on drive D: as do email,
and all archives.
With no PCHealth, no System Restore, No Active Desktop, (NoDesktop registry entry)
No Find-Fast, No Icons on the desktop, no loading of power profiles, no SSDPSRV (laughingly
referred to as the Secret Service Document Procurement SeRVer), no Taskmonitor, and
by not using "Rearrange my programs, etc." in MS Defrag but using SpeedDisk instead,
it ALL works excedingly well and is VERY fast in operation, with 512Mb SDRAM.
The C:\_RESTORE folder is set to zero bytes.
In your Control Panel, System, Performance, File System, Move cache down to as low
as possible and click on Apply. Wait for the restore files to come off the disk.
Open the Troubleshooting tab and check Disable System Restore. Click Apply and OK
but don't re-boot until you have Typed: msconfig , in the Run window, opened the
msconfig Start-Up tab and un-checked: *Statemgr , clicked Apply and OK, and now re-boot
the system. Then, using a Windows ME Startup Disk, Bootdiskette (EBD) ...
First of all type: A:\>DELTREE C:\_RESTORE , enter, etc., to remove the old folder
and all sub-folders. Then ...
A:\>edit C:\_RESTORE , enter, a file of this name will open on the screen and should
be saved as a zero byte file.
Next ...
A:\>attrib +R +A +S C:\_RESTORE , enter, to make this file read-only, archive, &
system.
(NB: RASH = Read-only, Archive, System, Hidden.)
There are a number of MS KB Modifications too:
In: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.INI
[386Enh]
MinSPs=6
MinPagingFileSize=1024000
MaxPagingFileSize=1024000
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
PagingDrive=D:
In: C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD\CONFIG.SYS
[COMMON]
files=60
buffers=40
stacks=64,512
These two modifications have prevented many of the BSODs associated with VxD error
messages and KERNEL errors, and both apply to '98 as well.
Using a fixed swap-file has prevented the hang when Windows re-sizes it, as does
not using Find-Fast when it is building indices. (indexes)
Simply set the min & max values to 1000Mb in System, Virtual memory to achieve an
actual size on the disk of 1024Mb. This vale represents: Amount of physical RAM x
2. However the more RAM you have, the less swap-file you should need, and RAM is
faster. Most systems benefit by using more RAM.
Not using PCHealth and the system restore *Statemgr means that scandisk and defrag
will run properly, provided that the rest of the system is clean and free from junk
files, unused registry entries & Trojans, diallers, etc., especially as I do not
use a screen saver and just power-down the monitor after 20 minutes of inactivity.
I use RegCleaner 4.3 by Juoni Viorio, which has never made a mistake to date, and
follow up by typing: scanreg /fix /opt , in the Run window. (A:\>scanreg /fix /opt
, from a bootdiskette.)
For those who do not use Norton Utilities, which has the fastest disk surface scan
that I have come across, you should use a bootdiskette, choosing "Minimum boot" to
get to the A:\> DOS prompt and type: A:\>scandisk /all / surface , to scan all files
in the first place, and to run a thorough surface scan, on all drives, as part of
a monthly maintenance routine.
Norton's Internet Security 2002 v4.0 works very well as long as ALL listed file exclusions
are removed in the options panel, and the firewall is managed correctly.
I also use AVG 6.0 Free AV which can also up-date automatically every day, but which
scans three times faster.
As a precaution scanreg.ini has: MaxBackupCopies=10 so that there is more chance
of scanreg /restore finding a good registry to restore, and the system has, IE6 SP1,
DirectX 9.0a & Windows Media Player 9 running with no problem.
Delindex.bat clears out junk files, including the five hidden index.dat files (Type:
A:\>attrib /s index.dat , to see them.)(best done from a clean-up bootdiskette on
ME with only COMMAND.COM & IO.SYS, from the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD Folder, DELINDEX.BAT
http://www.burzurq.com/forum/delindex.html and an AUTOEXEC.BAT which you can make
yourself.)
Just these two lines are all you need:
SET COMSPEC=A:\COMMAND.COM
A:\Delindex.bat
Type the two lines into a text editor, such as notepad, and save the file with a
.BAT extension instead of .TXT
(If you want it to run automatically modify the second line to: A:\Delindex.bat run)
(With '98 you can run Delindex.bat from the C: root directory in DOS.)
___________________________________________________________________________
This is a MODIFICATION to the SECTION 2 DELTREE (Delete section) This is easier to
add to and to translate into other languages.
For %%Z in (c:\windows\cookies c:\windows\tempor~1 c:\windows\PARAMÔ~1\tempor~1 c:\windows\histor~1
c:\windows\recent c:\MyImag~1\thumbs.db c:\MyDocu~1\MyImag~1\thumbs.db c:\windows\ShellI~1
c:\windows\*.bad c:\windows\sysbckup\rbbad.cab c:\windows\applog\ c:\temp\ c:\windows\temp\
c:\*.tmp c:\windows\*.tmp c:\windows\pchealth\helpctr\datacoll\ c:\windows\*log.txt
c:\windows\system\sfp\sfplog.txt c:\windows\userdata\index.dat) do deltree /y %%Z
You will see that I have added: c:\windows\userdata\index.dat
___________________________________________________________________________
SpyBot S&D , AdAware 6.0 Build 181 (just released) and SpywareBlaster keep the system
free of Trojans, etc.
Using a highspeed Skynet DSL is a big advance, and there is a dial-up modem as back-up.
Both '98 and ME suffer from a lack of system resources due to provision for backward
compatibility 16-bit programming, but ME can benefit from using the AlwaysUnloadDLL
registry entry from 95/98/fe/se:
AlwaysUnloadDLL
Then there is the diagnostic and freeware kit which helps to keep it and many other
computers all running:
CLEAN-UP/TUNE-UP/ANTI-VIRUS KIT/IE6 SP1 ME/98
I hope that this may be of help to anyone finding ME to be difficult to keep running.
Having had a LOT of problems initially, I now have a very smooth running FULLY-UPDATED
system.
Full up-dating IS essential.
One small recent problem with IE6 SP1 was having to extract the correct MSHTML.DLL
file from the IE6 cabinet files to place it in: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM (This file should
have the same version number as the IE Browser in: IE/?/ About , tab.)
PLUS, in the Explorer key on:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
CDRAutoRun 00 00 00 00
LinkResolveIgnoreLinkInfo 0x00000001 (1)
NoDesktop 0x00000001 (1)
NoDriveTypeAutoRun 95 00 00 00
NoRecentDocsHistory 01 00 00 00
NoRecentDocsMenu 01 00 00 00
NoStartBanner 0x00000001 (1)
NoNetHood 0x00000001 (1)
Now ... ALL ... is well.
Overall impression so far:
Note: When all else fails, read the "Instruction Manual" The Microsoft Knowledge
Base
MY OWN DESKTOP. NO ICONS: http://www.wallpapershq.com/img.php?cat=info&id_img=105
FREE OFFICE-SUITE
OPEN OFFICE
DICTIONARIES
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Last edited: 07-19-2003 at 10:42 HRS
- Written in response to:
- re: Superb! (Cam: Friday, July 11, 2003 at 12:55 am)
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