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Author Topic: Cluttered Desktop slows down Windows? David Buckley Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 525 From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand Registered: Aug 2004 posted 08-31-2004 04:45 PM                        The key point here though is that Joe's game used to work fine, and then it didn't. Although I agree XP likes memory, I think its unlikely that the said PC lost a few hundred meg of physical ram. Something has changed. Suggest use the System Restore tool to see if any system updates occured over the period of note. As a general comment on Windows, registry stuffing and particularly registry contention can cause a otherwise fine machine to slug. This is less true with XP and S2003 than it was with previous windows, but the registry is still one of the foundations of windows performance.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 08-31-2004 05:36 PM                     I'm under the impression the PC Joe is using is a newly aquired "office" PC. As applications are loaded (or Windows is automatically updated with various patches) the registry grows. Also, there is the possibility Joe was lucky this game wasn't performing sluggishly from the start. As relatively cheap as system memory is anymore, I'm really surprised companies like Dell continue to sell PCs with as little as 128MB or 256MB of DDR SDRAM. Those low amounts of memory are especially a big liability when it is "shared" memory. Many entry level office cubicle PCs come with no dedicated video card, just an integrated chip on the main board that siphons off system memory for its own use. Those little $499 Dell Dimension 2400 boxes also have no AGP port on the motherboard in case you want to upgrade to a real video card. Lots of budget PCs sold in retail stores have the same drawback as well. My recommendation for any XP Pro system is to start with a minimum of 512MB of system memory. Move up to 1GB of RAM if you're going to be dealing with graphics. Gaming machines require dedicated video cards. The new graphics engines in games like DoomIII demand a really good 256MB AGP 8X card or even a more pricey PCI Express 16-lane card like nVidia's GeForce6950 or the Radeon X800XT.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 08-31-2004 06:26 PM                        Yes, it is the same computer that most everyone else in the office has... at least in my immediate area. My video game playing went smoothly today, but I still had to have a lot of the detail turned down when I used to have it turned up. I don't think they will let me have more RAM for this machine. At least I didn't have to reinstall the game today, and was able to play it all day at work without a hitch, even online. But why the performance decided to permanently degrade yesterday is beyond me. I can't say what game it is otherwise I will be fired.  |  IP: Logged Michael Gonzalez Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 790 From: Grand Island , NE USA Registered: Sep 2000 posted 09-01-2004 03:08 AM                     ANYTHING that is on the desktop will take up memory. For instance if the jpeg is 1MB big, than that is one less meg that will be available for games. Also if you create a folder on the desktop and put anything in it the whole thing will eat away at your RAM. The only thing that you should have on your desktop is shortcuts because they are usually less than 1k. So if you have anything other than shortcuts on your desktop (Windows stuff like the recycle bin and My Documents are really shortcuts so you don't have to worry about them), then move them somewhere else and create a shortcut to the folder to put on the desktop. Another tip is to right click and close any programs in the task manager that you are not using (such as realplayer) that also eats up memory and resources. Hell here is another tip. Increase the size of your swap file (Virtual Memory). Go to Control Panel -> System -> Advance Tab -> Click on the Performance Settings button -> Click on the advance tab and Change your virtual memory. Change both the intitial size and the max size to three times your RAM. So if you have 256 megs than your swapfile should be 768. This will give you extra (but slower) memory to play games.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 09-01-2004 03:24 AM                        Problem here. I've got 14 GB of data in files and folders on my desktop of my main Windows workstation. The machine only has 2 GB of RAM and a very small swap file. Could you please explain why this works? Thanks. In reality, the only performace hits you take by placing files on the desktop are the following: Any time Windows decides it needs to redraw the desktop it HAS TO read (at least the headers) of every single file on the desktop (not inside folders on the desktop) so that it can decide on what icon that file should have. This means that the machine is going to bog down while it seeks all over the disk reading each of these files that are physically scattered all over the hard drive. The desktop icons, like any graphic, consume physical memory (RAM). The only memory taken up is the memory required to represent the icon (plus the small amount of info linking the icon with the file). The entire file isn't loaded into memory, so a 100MB file doesn't use a 100MB of memory, instead it only consumes a few KB at most. In addition to the above two performance hits, it also takes processing time to calculate all of this stuff (more icons more calcs... but disk I/O is way more significant), that is generating the desktop graphic itself and including the icons. Active Desktop requires even more calculations. So turning off AD can help. That's about it. So, you might want to try turning of Active Desktop. Why did it used to be better? It may have been a change in graphics modes in any number of places, with either the game or Windows itself. Try running the game with either DirectX or Direct Draw if you can. Also, unless the game software is ultra crap, uninstalling and reinstalling the software isn't going to do anything for you that you couldn't do a lot easier by changing some setting (somewhere). Last, you may want to (if you can) try installing the game using a different user login. There are many problems (including performance problems) that can occur when an account takes a crap, to put it in technical terms.  |  IP: Logged Adam Martin I'm not even gonna point out the irony. Posts: 3686 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Nov 2000 posted 09-02-2004 12:38 AM                     Active Desktop is evil, as are wallpaper images and screen savers.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 09-02-2004 08:04 AM                        Well I increased my pagine file as I left work yesterday. We'll see if that helps my video games when I play them today at work. We have lots to do today, so my games better run more smoothly!  |  IP: Logged

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