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Improving PC Stability and Performance

Here are some tips for avoiding those dreaded "blue screens of death", freezes, lock-ups and crashes. Note: if you do find you have to shut your computer down in such cases, always use CTRL+ALT+DEL if you can - switching the pc off directly can cause data corruption. If you do force a "bad shutdown", the DOS version of Scandisk will run automatically. This can cause problems too - I will shortly be posting information here about how to rewrite the scandisk.ini file so that you are able to exercise more control over the whole process.

The most frequently recommended and perhaps generally useful option is to add more RAM. This is fairly cheap if you can fit it yourself (make sure you take proper anti-static precautions!). To purchase new RAM, you will need to know what your motherboard bus speed is, what type of RAM sockets it has, the voltage levels used by your CPU, and how much Level 2 / Secondary Cache you have. Much of this information can be gleaned from inspecting the RAM modules already installed, and purchasing exactly the same type. Any competent computer engineer should be able to check this without much trouble.

However, adding more RAM will not necessarily help. This is because of a quirk in earlier versions of Windows, which I presume will now have been corrected. There are are two very specific memory areas inside Windows: User Resources and GDI (Graphics Device Interface) Resources. These are like scratchpads -- actually, internal tables and pointers -- that Windows uses to keep track of running applications. Both resource areas are of a fixed size regardless of how much RAM you have -- and that's the problem.

In theory when an application is closed, the memory resources it is using should be released, but this is not always the case. The result of these "memory leaks", as they are called, is that your pc gets progressively slower and more unstable as the day goes on and eventually it seizes up or crashes.

Furthermore, there are circumstances in which adding more RAM can make things worse, due to the impact on VCache - there is a good article about this at The Windows 4 Support Center in the context of a controversy about the wisdom of altering VCache settings. He points out that VCache settings in Windows 98 onwards should not normally be altered but where more than 128MB RAM is used in Windows 98/ME, they should be.

Basically freezes (etc.) are most commonly caused by trying to do too many things at the same time too quickly, not waiting for one process to end before starting another (the "manic clicking syndrome"), and leaving one's computer running constantly without having the patience to reboot it periodically. Of course, you can upgrade to a faster computer or install more RAM, but perhaps it might be better for your pocket and your health to slow down a little and not try to do so many things at the same time!!

However, for those of you who are interested in trying to get your pc to perform to the max - there are some things you can do, such as controlling the applications which load at startup, and managing the swapfile:

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