Windows 2003 Performance Tweaks

2009-12-11T02:45:00.000-08:00

Windows 2003 Performance Tweaks

Turn off Indexing to speed up Server 2003

To make searching your hard drive faster Server 2003 keeps a record of all the files on the hard drive. The downside to this is it will slow down normal file commands such as open, close, etc. If you don't do many searches (like me) it is better to turn off this feature. Here's how:
-Open my computer
-Right click your hard drive icon and select properties.
-At the bottom of the window find "Allow indexing service to index this disk for faster searches" uncheck this and click ok.
-A new window will pop up, select apply to all folders and subfolders. It will take a minute or two for the changes to take affect...you are done.

Prioritizing your IRQs

The essential components in your computer have an IRQ number assigned to them. With this tweak we can increase the priority given to any IRQ number, improving the performance of that component. This tweak is commonly used for the System CMOS/real time clock, which can improve performance across the board. First of all, decide which one of your components you want to give a performance boost to. Next, you have to figure out which IRQ that piece of hardware is using. Doing this is simple. Just go to Control Panel, then open the System panel (You can also press the shortcut of Windows Key +Break). Click on the Hardware tab, then on the Device Manager button.

Right click on the component that you want to discover the IRQ for and then click Properties, and then onto the Resources tab.

You now can see which IRQ this device is using. Remember this number and close down all of the dialog boxes that you have opened, fire up RegEdit. Next, navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl

You will need to create a new DWORD value - called IRQxPriority (x is the IRQ number), finally set the data to 1.

Now restart and see the new improved performance. We recommend tweaking the CMOS, because it improves all around performance but the choice is up to you. You can prioritize more than 1 IRQ but it is definitely not recommended. You can easily remove this tweak by simply deleting the value that you originally created.

Memory Performance Tweaks

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management

Disable Paging Executive

Note: Only users with a large amount of RAM (256MB+) should use this setting.
By default, Windows Server 2003 pages sections from RAM memory to the hard drive. You can easily keep this happening and keep the data in RAM, resulting in improved performance. The setting we want to change to disable the Paging Executive, is called DisablePagingExecutive. Changing the value of this key from 0 to 1 will stop the memory paging.

System Cache Boost
Note: As with the above tweak, you should have at least 256MB of RAM before attempting to enable the

LargeSystemCache tweak:

When changing the value of the key LargeSystemCache from 0 to 1 you tell Sever 2003 to allocate all but 4MB of the systems memory to the file system cache This simply means that the Server 2003 Kernel can run in the memory, significantly improving overall speed. The 4MB of memory left is used for disk caching, but if for any reason more is needed, Server2003 allocates more. This tweak improves performance a bit but can, this tweak can degrade performance in some intensive app's.

Input/Output Performance:

Note: As with all these memory tweaks, you should only use this if you have 256MB or more of RAM.
This tweak is only beneficial to people running a server, it improves performance while a computer is performing large file transfer operations. By default, the value does not appear in the registry, so you will have to create a REG_DWORD value called IOPageLockLimit. The data for this value is in bytes, and defaults to 512KB on machines that have the value. Most people using this tweak have found maximum performance in the 8 to 16 megabyte range but you should play around with the value to find whats best suited for you. Remember that the value is measured in bytes, so if you want, 8MB allocated, its 8*1024*1024 = 8388608.

Unloading DLLs:

Explorer can cache DLL files in memory for a length of time after they have finished being used. This results in giant amounts of memory being taken up by DLL files that are not even in use. Fix this by going to Windows Server 2003 Registry Editor and navigating to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Create a new sub-key called AlwaysUnloadDLL with a default value of 1.

If you want to disable this, just delete the key you made.

Enable Boot and Application Prefetching:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters. Change the value of "EnablePrefetcher" to 3

Disable Application/System Popup messages on Windows Startup:

You can control what errors pop-up to interupt you by using the following registry keys (errors are still recorded in the event logs):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows
Add value NoPopUpsOnBoot as a REG_DWORD. When set to 1, Boot pop-up messages are suppressed. The default is 0.

Add value ErrorMode as a REG_DWORD.
0 - All system and application errors Pop-up (this is the default).
1 - Errors from system processes are suppressed.
2 - All system and application errors are suppressed.

To Disable The Notification Area Balloon Tips:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced. Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips. Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0.

Kill Shut Down Tracker:

If you want to remove the Shutdown Event Tracker, the new .NET Server feature, and don't want to document the shutdowns in Event Logs especially in a testing environment, you can easily disable this feature in the Local Computer Policy MMC. This console is not in the Administrative tools by default, so you have to create it:

1. Open a blank MMC console by typing mmc from the command line.

2. From the empty console, click the File menu and select Add/Remove Snap-in or press Ctrl+M.

3. From the Add/Remove Snap-in page, click Add or Alt+D, choose Group Policy, select Local Computer and click finish.

4. From the Add Standalone Snap-in page, click Close. From the Add/Remove Snap-in page, click OK.

5. Expand Local Computer Policy, Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System and in the right pane locate Display Shutdown Event Tracker.

6. Double-click the Display Shutdown Event Tracker and select Enabled. Change the drop-down selector to Never.

7. Click OK to accept the policy change. Close the MMC console, saving it if prompted to so.

Optimise NTFS:

Disable last access time by pointing regedit to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem and set ' eNtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate ' to 1 (DWORD).

Enable or disable boot defrag:

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
Select Enable from the list on the right.
Right on it and select Modify.
Change the value to Y to enable and N to disable.
Reboot your computer.

Classic Win2000 Style Search

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CabinetState
Add a new string (REG_SZ) called "Use Search Asst" - set the value to "no" and you will have the classic win2000 search

Disable CD autoplay:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer
Create a new value called: NoDriveTypeAutoRun
Type is: DWORD
Value is: 0x000000b5 (181)

Start Menu Speed:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/ on the right you'll see MenuShowDelay change the value there.
Then reboot

mirzakamran

Windows 2003 Performance Tweaks