Win2K Settings

[cpostma]

Hello,
I am setting up a system with Windows 2K Pro and was wondering what settigns to use to get the best gaming performance. Are there any major settings I should change once the OS is installed? How do I make it so I don't have to log on everytime as I am the sole user of this machine? Do I have to enable ATA100 (I read that I had to somewhere)? Oh, and what file system should I use? NTFS? FAT32?
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks
Chris

 

[Teq]

Hello Cpostma,
There are a lot of tweaks for win2k.

Some of the best ones are at:
<A HREF="http://snakefoot.fateback.com/tweak/winnt/default.html" target="_new">http://snakefoot.fateback.com/tweak/winnt/default.html</A>

You can also find a lot of good tweaks and adjustments at:
<A HREF="http://www.annoyances.org" target="_new">http://www.annoyances.org</A>
and
<A HREF="http://www.winguides.com" target="_new">http://www.winguides.com</A>


If you go into Control Panel/Users you can set the system to always log you on (i.e. single user) Just uncheck the "Users must enter a password" box at the top of the dialogue and enter a password for yourself. (It won't ask again, unless you somehow get logged off)

Best gaming performance is going to require a fair bit of tweaking both from Control Panel and in the registry. A lot of it will depend on the hardware installed so it's difficult to give you an exact list. But, once done, this is well worth the trouble. Win2k can be a trully impressive performer.

For the file system, I prefer NTFS. It has several advantages over FAT32 and there are quite a few registry tweaks to improve it's performance as well.

One note about NTFS... don't use the Convert tool. It will set your allocation unit size to 1 disk sector (512b) which imposes a lot of directory and access overhead. You should always use the installer's format utility. It defaults the AU to 4k, which is faster and imposes far less directory overhead. (Unfortuately, to do this on your OS partition will mean reinstalling)



<b>(</b>It ain't better if it don't work.<b>)</b>