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?