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Home→Technical→DisablePagingExecutive and LargeSystemCache = XP corruption

DisablePagingExecutive and LargeSystemCache = XP corruption

Computer Aid Posted on by

I recently added a few XP tuning techniques to my “bag of tricks”.

In particular:

  • HKLMsystemCurrentControlSetControlSessionManagerMemoryManagementDisablePagingExecutive = 1
  • HKLMsystemCurrentControlSetControlSessionManagerMemoryManagementLargeSystemCache = 1
  • from the command prompt: fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1

I did this to about 5 different PCs, with no bad side effects, and a noticeable improvement in speed.

But then I setup 2 customer computers, everything seemed fine (at first) but then the PCs would gradually start to “deteriorate” and show some very unusual symptoms (each PC showed a subset of the following errors):

  • Outlook express is very slow and sometimes will not print
  • XP takes a long time to start up (>10 minutes) and sometimes doesn’t shutdown properly.
  • MS updates give error 0x80070008 or 0x80244022
  • After a normal shutdown, XP will do a chkdsk at the next startup
  • XP says that no firewall is turned on (but when I run the XP firewall app, I can see its turned on and running normally.
  • Installing webcams and scanners either won’t work, or will stop working after a few reboots.
  • Logitech quickcam ptz install: cannot install hardware (code 39). The driver may be corrupted or missing)
  • BSOD in file USBCAMD.sys (0x0000007E)
  • BSOD while viewing webcam (0x0000008E)
  • Error installing AVG (error E0018E06)
  • Stack overflow in IE7
  • Avira AntiVir will not update
  • corrupt windows user profiles

I did countless rebuilds and ghost images to track down an intermittent problem with 2 brand new systems.

I was suspecting all sorts of hardware faults.

I eventually found the source to be either one or both of: DisablePagingExecutive and LargeSystemCache.

Apparently, these “tweaks” can conflict with some device drivers in very unpredictable ways 🙁

What made it more difficult, is that one system didn’t show any problems until I started installing webcams and video capture devices… so I naturally assumed faults with the hardware.

I finally figured it out when I did yet another fresh install of XP, then installed the webcams, etc immediately afterwards… then I made ghost images at every step afterwards, until I found the cause.

at least I can say that the command:

fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1

causes me no problems, but doesn’t make for a noticeable increase in speed. It can only cause problems in certain backup programs that rely on a files access date.

Do you have a favorite tweak for improving the performance of your PC?

Comments

DisablePagingExecutive and LargeSystemCache = XP corruption — 5 Comments

  1. My favorite tweak for improving speed is removing all unecessary executables from Windows startup using msconfig. Not an overly advanced tweak but it is effective nonetheless.

  2. Both of these “tweaks” are found on just about every tweaking quide ever written. Most contain descriptions that are hopelessly inaccurate and with no warnings of any possible risks. The “DisablePagingExecutive” setting is usually harmless – and equally useless on most systems. Not so with the other setting.

    As Microsoft has clearly pointed out “LargeSystemCache” is intended for systems used primarily as servers. For Workstation use it will usually be bad. The setting tells Windows that file caching has priority over memory for application use. For servers this makes sense, but for a workstation it can kill application performance.

    As the author has mentioned, the setting can have serious consequences. It produces an environment that many devices and drivers were not designed for and they react very badly to it. It is deadly with some popular video cards and some other devices.

    References:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895932

    Larry Miller
    Microsoft MCSA

  3. A little-known cause of slowdowns is Dr Watson. This is an old carry-over diagnostic utility from the past built into XP, now of limited use.

    Every time there is a system error, Dr Watson will, by default, write an error log to the C-Drive. I was working on a 2-year-old computer recently in which the accumulated error logs had completely swamped the C-Drive to the point where the owner was getting critical “short of space” messages.

    Deleting the very large log folder (5 Gb!!!), and disabling Dr Watson, restored performance.

    Dr Watson is now redundant, as it does much the same job as the Event log.

    Dr Watson is buried deep down in Docs and Settings, under All Users/Application Data/Microsoft. The log file and memory dump should occasionally be deleted.

    To disable Dr Watson completely, several registry edits are needed. MSKB has full instructions.

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