Windows Accelerators - Do They Really Work?

danila asks: "Today I came across an intriguing review of Windows tweakers on a Russian technology news site. Among the plethora of traditional registry tweakers, the review mentioned Hare 1.5.1. The developers promised nothing less than up to 300% speed increase, 10% FPS increase in 3D games, automatic RAM preservation and even a wizard that automatically cleans and optimizes Windows. It also had AntiCrash 3.6.1 a program to prevent up to 95.8% of Windows crashes. Understandably, I was both intrigued and suspicious since it sounded too good to be true." Has anyone tried this piece of software with any degree of success? How successful are other "windows accelerators" at improving Windows performance? "After a little research I found that download.com didn't have it and there are precious few reviews of this revolutionary software online, but that it was endorsed by McAfee and that developers touted conformance with Microsoft's interface guidelines as an important feature.

Still suspicious, I gathered all my courage and installed both programs (silently preparing for something like Bonsi Buddy or XXX Toolbar) on my Win2k Pro machine (P4 1.6/512Mb). Truth be told, after several minutes I was blown away. Obviously I can't tell how well every promised features works, but disk caching (and pre-fetching) that Hare does is outstanding and display performance improved enough to scare me - windows were opening, minimizing and redrawing without the delay I was accustomed to.

The question is -- is it real or was I fooled by some clever placebo tricks? And if it is real, why isn't the Web full of success stories involving Hare and AntiCrash? Why isn't everyone installing them on every Windows machine in the world? And a rhetorical question -- why doesn't Microsoft incorporate some of the features into its operating systems."

Comments

7-Max

[Anonymous Coward]

7-Max by the author of 7-Zip works well for memory heavy programs assuming your drivers all support it. It works by using 4mb instead of 4kb pages for memory management.

How to speed up Windows

[dicepackage]

The easiest way to speed up Windows would be to keep it free of spyware and viruses. Almost every computer I go on is crippled because it is so bogged down with needless crap. I run Windows as my main operating system and all it takes is a little effort to get it running up to spead once it is free of viruses and spyware.

In Windows XP you can get things running faster by right clicking on my computer going to properties and clicking on the advanced tab to go to performance settings. From here you can make things run for best appearance or best performance. There are a lot of things I have disabled such as the normal Windows XP start menu and almost every built in animation and fading technique built into Windows XP.

Another good way to speed things up is to move the cache for programs to a RAM-Drive. This will keep things running fast by using the RAM as opposed to the hard drive and it will delete everything without a trace if you are paranoid that the feds are after you. I wrote a RAM-Drive program a while ago but it only works on Windows 9x. If you want to download the program it is available at http://home.comcast.net/%7Esessions9/RAM-Drive.htm l or you can search for it on Planet Source Code.

Re:How to speed up Windows

[Zocalo]

Also, shut down all that extra crud that Microsoft enabled by default for the few users that might think about using it some day. You'll have more free memory (or less junk in the pagefile) and be less vulnerable to remote attacks as well. These packages might do this kind of thing for you, but most likely they are just snake-oil relying on the placebo effect and a "no-refund" clause.

Re:88-bit kernel

[brsmith4]

From what the F.A.Q. was saying, it sounded like they rewrote a better windows kernel, which, judging by the outfit, is complete and utter bullshit. Those guys are playing entry-level power-user lingo to attract idiot "i-can-open-cmd.exe" users. 88 bit? Um, no. I don't think so.

looks like smoke and mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

the "endorsed by McAfee" link doesn't list 'Hare', or did you mean Anti-Crash?

i looked at the screen shots of hare, and it looked alot like the popup windows i've been seeing for accelerators. if you really did see a speed improvment, the you probably just found a spyware version of a spyware-blocker.

from Hare's faq:
* Hare technology: the core of Hare is a re-written Kernel, working at up to 88-bit (instead of the standard 32-bit) and accelerating most basic system actions by acting as the Windows Kernel. This is done by triple-buffering all I/O data, in order to achieve an emulated 88-bit Kernel. This technology is fully safe and we have implemented safeguards in order to make it impossible to damage your computer.

there is so much BS just oozing out.
so, they replaced the windows kernel?
running 88-bit on your 64 or 32 bit cpu?
triple-buffering?
impossible to damage your computer?

Hare is on the market since 2001 and no one ever experienced crash or data loss because of it.
possible claim, after all, Hare isn't about saving and loading data, its about running programs, so any data loss would be do to 3rd-party failings.

awards (on a popup?):
techtv - 404 (site redesigned, so this is expected)
locker gnome - 404
file hungy - "Not Yet Reviewed" but has a 4.5 of 10
shareware junkies - 5 of 5, english worse then mine.

Re:There is a simple reason

[jonfelder]

I disagree.

1. What options do the accelerators need? The AGP video drivers should take care of accelerating things that have to do with using the graphics card.

2. Linux is not the main competition for Microsoft Windows on the desktop. Microsoft's largest competetor for the desktop is it's own older products. There are still many many 95 and 98 installations out there. I think it's very unlikely that linux desktop manager development is driving Windows desktop development. I think it's more the other way around, where Linux desktop developers look and see what works and what doesn't with Windows and implement features accordingly. Microsoft invests a huge amount on GUI research, makes sense for Linux developers to benefit from that instead of reinventing the wheel.

I think these accelerators are junk most of the time, or they tweak things that make the desktop perhaps more responsive and thus it -seems- faster. You want a faster computing experience? Get new hardware.

Maybe it works..

[EvilIdler]

..or maybe not. I tried Hare on a Win2k installation, which died not
long after. It had a ram-optimiser, which *seemed* to at least free
memory from programs that didn't free everything (leaky MMOs).

I did find some registry settings that gave somewhat more of a
result, though. Some of them are from Slashdot posts, others from
various tip sites. Here are the filesystem settings I use for XP:

----- BEGIN -----
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSe t\Contr ol\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dwo rd:00000001
"Win31FileSystem"=dword:00000000
"Wi n95TruncatedExtensions"=dword:00000001
"NtfsDisab leLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoLowD iskSpaceChecks"=dword:00000001
---- END -----

This switches off many filesystem options the average user doesn't
care about, and increases disk activity a little when handling a
lot of files at a time.

The NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate key means no files are tagged with
a last access timestamp when you read them, and the last option
is a convenience to kill off that pesky low diskspace warning that
tends to pop the game I'm playing to the back while nagging..

There are also some virtual memory settings you can try, if you
feel brave:
----- BEGIN -----
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSe t\Contr ol\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"ClearPageFileAtShutdown"=dword:00000 001
"IoPageLockLimit"=dword:00020000
"LargeSyste mCache"=dword:00000000
"NonPagedPoolQuota"=dword: 00000000
"NonPagedPoolSize"=dword:00000000
"Page dPoolQuota"=dword:00000000
"PagedPoolSize"=dword: 00000000
"SecondLevelDataCache"=dword:00000100
" PhysicalAddressExtension"=dword:00000000
"WriteWa tch"=dword:00000001
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dwor d:00000001
----- END -----

Just stick everything into a .reg file and double-click.
If you want to know what everything does, Google for it - it's best
that you investigate before trusting me blindly ;)

Less technical explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice post on prefetch, but the link is a little dry. Here's a more analogous article. http://asia.cnet.com/enterprise/apps/0,39035809,39 172453-39000221c-1,00.htm

bugmenot.com

[ThreeDayMonk]

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