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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."
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."
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.
Even if this does work, in a big business, the left hand rarely knows what the right hand is doing. Its amazing what you won't find if you only use MSN search.
Nothing accelerates windows like a good ol' fashioned 9.8m/s^2
My Windows 2K install was pretty slow too, then I grabbed this one program. I think it was called Mac OS X. Ever since then, haven't had any viruses, crashes or slow performance. You should give it a try...
I think I'll wait and see what my geekly brothers have to say before I assume it is anything other than a faster way to have your data deleted.
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
They cost about $200 more than your current processor, and you can buy them from Intel or AMD.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
silently preparing for something like Bonsi Buddy or XXX Toolbar
And disappointed when that didn't happen. I know. I know. I love Bonzi Buddy too
- Windows runs on many different pieces of hardware. Not all hardware supports the options that these accelerators need. Believe it or not, not everyone has an AGP video card.
- Linux is not faster as a desktop than windows. As the gnome and kde desktops are the main competition for Microsoft Windows, it does not make sense for microsoft to make windows as fast as it can, because Linux is not currently faster. If Linux does get better, then Microsoft will still have 'gas in the tank' to make windows faster again.
Just my thoughtsToo good to be true. Sorry, even Linux and BSD won't give you that much improvement over windows. Don't give 'em your credit card number.
I'd buy your browsing speed will imporove 300% if you remove IE spyware, but a broad 300% speed increase is bogus.
I tried it, too, completely broke my new Dell !
So is someone going to post about their actual experience with one of these products?
Never accelerate your Windows when you live in a glass house.
You have a huge entity like M$ and then you have these dingbat little companies making accelerators and crashproofing software. I don't like crediting microsoft for much on the OS end but I give M$ a bit more credit than for them to leave such an easy software fix undone. But hey that's just my two quid.
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
Yeah...by the same people who will enhance your manhood, give you immediate credit even if you're bankrupt and want you to click here to "unsubscribe" from future messages.
Did you know that gullible is not in the dictionary?
Both of these programs had their last revisions in late 2002, so it remains to be seen how effective they are now, or this is just some marketing BS...
Not the brightest bulb in the box are we? Why don't you buy the software and write a review based on it. Don't forget 386to486.exe while you're at it.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I tried Hare and it never seemed to make a difference at all. It did have many interesting options, though.
The only program that ever seemed to speed anything up was O&O Defrag (oo-software.com) who have a background defragger. Leave your computer, and the defrag turns on. When you come back, it is off in anywhere from instantly to a minute. The program also has a nice complete defragger to boot.
From the hare website:
Hare will improve performance no matter what software you use, thanks to a revolutionary compact 88-bit Kernel, which accelerates common system instructions
WTF? This is complete BS.
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.
m l or you can search for it on Planet Source Code.
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.ht
Although doubtful, I wouldn't say such software is impossible. Sometimes some rather neat hacks can be pulled. Example: The Apple Macintosh IIsi came with 1 Mb of on-board memory. This memory was very slow, AND it was shared with video. If you installed SIMMS, however, this memory could actually be operated at a faster speed (70ns max if I remember correctly) than the onboard memory.
Some hacker wrote a program called IIsi RAM Muncher which allocates the first megabyte of memory on start-up, and then does nothing with it. Result? All your stuff runs in the faster SIMM memory. The speed increase could be as much as 400% - not bad for giving up 1 meg of RAM.
Connectix Ram Doubler and CrashGuard worked beautifully on Mac back in the day. I always wondered if the same thing could be done on PC as well as Connectix did it for Mac.
This is like the people who, when you tell them that they need a new head gasket or valve seals, ask "Isn't there some stuff that I can put in my gas to fix it?" Of course the answer is yes, for $19.99, you can buy a bottle of stuff that will save you a $1000 repair bill.
Or not.
People are going to claim that "you can edit your 1337.ini file and set suck=no under the [R0XoR5] heading, and get a 11.1% FPS difference, d00d!"
This is great for the tinfoil hat crowd, that MS, Intel and Madonna are part of a sinister cabal to put you on an upgrade treadmill. It's also great for the Uncle Joe 6Pack crowd, people who typically "know about computers" and have loud opinions on that great free HP printer they got when they signed up for MSN.
There's no magic bullet.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I haven't examined the current crop of these tools, but a lot of the old 'accelerators' simply did some system tweaks you could do if you knew what entry to change. They did work, but why spend $40 for it when the geek next door will do it for a bottle of soda?
By the way, the accelerators can work because they turn off some 'features' that almost nobody will miss, cache stuff that wasn't cached before, and even increase the sizes of certain buffers and caches. At least in general, that's how they work.
As to anticrash software, some is a nightmare to your system, some is useless, and some will drive you nuts.
If you're talking about those that actually work, the trick is there are crashes going on all the time in the OS and other programs that just aren't handled. Anticrash programs 'handle' them and let you know. That's why people think they increase the number of crashes. They just make the invisible ones visible. The basic thing is windows ignores or poorly handles a lot of problems, but then again, they wrote that code before it was in the hands of millions of users. The anticrash programmers studied (if they are anygood) tons of data on crashes, and worked out methods to handle it better for those. Since 80% appx are caused by just a handful of errors, it's relatively easy to concentrate on just those.
Useless piece of trivia...
Back when ######## was working on creating their anticrash program, they found that the single most crash prone program on the windows platform was Microsofts FindFast. (Or is that FastFind, I always get that backwards...)
That's a big reason why every technician will have you yank that from startup if they see it.
It's EVIL ! That's pure EE - VILE ! Don't Touch it!
Later peeps!
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.
but will it make DOOM 3 faster?
* 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.
That seems a bit suspicious. 88-bit!? Ok, so it's emulated. That still seems like 1) a strange number (not 64, not 128) and 2) would "emulated" 88-bit architecture really work? Isn't the CPU's inherent 32-bitness (or 64-bitness) the end-all anyway?
* CPU Tasking: the CPU Tasking technology's goal is to give more CPU to the program you currently use. Even if you don't know it, there are a lot of programs working in background and sucking CPU from your frontmost application - the CPU Tasking will know how much CPU you must give to each application."
Doesn't Windows already do this?
True believers seek redemption from the sin of death.
Well, it didn't work on their webserver...
...back in the (somewhat older) days when I spent most of my time in front of my beloved Compam 386 computer, I stumbled upon a bit of software called "386to486", which promised to instantly convert my 386 chip to a 486 chip. This was my first PC, and I didn't know much about it, but I was still a bit skeptical and very curious about how such a program could work.. So I checked the README file, which enlightened me on the subject with something along the lines of:
:^)
COMPUTER MAKERS DON'T TELL YOU EVERYTHING! THERE'S SECRET TRICKS THAT CAN BE USED TO CONVERT YOUR 386 into a 486!
Now, conviced it was just a hoax, or something worse, I tried the program. (I didn't really care about my data - the harddrive was dropped into the ground - multiple times, and the poor few working sectors I had only contained data I had copied from floppies anyway), The program happily told me the magical transformation was complete. I fired up MSD.EXE to check - no change in identification. Still a 386. I ran a benchmark program, which didn't show any change from before. Just to try, I ran the magic software again - this time I got the text "Your computer is already a 486!". At least the programmers thought about that. Well, no bigger disappointment, since I didn't really expected anything useful to happen. I never found out if it was a virus either...
Years later - a new little utility turned up on the BBSes I frequented - it was called 486toPentium, and the cheerful description of the file was "FROM THE GUYS WHO BROUGHT YOU 386to486"
Amazing!
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.
The product placement is getting a bit obvious here...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
And I'll promise "up to $1M" to anyone who replies to this comment. Seriously.
Bear in mind that the term "up to" includes the number "zero", so to promise "nothing less than up to 300%" is to promise "nothing less than zero".As for my "up to $1M" offer, guess which end of the scale I choose for payoffs. The zero end.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
...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.
Hmmm... "prevents absolutely no windows crashes" meets the criteria of "prevents up to 95.8% of windows crashes". Strike one - plus what's up with the obviously made-up 95.8% statistic with its meaningless but important-sounding precision?
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
So by now we've decided its "revolutionary". Good to see an unbiased starting point. Also, since when does "sold by" mean "endorsed" in all but the loosest sense? Strike Two. Oh, and notice that McAfee only sell one of these products, and not the one that the reviewer makes the most claims about...
Still suspicious, I gathered all my courage and installed both programs... 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.
Ah well, that's okay then. Asked and answered. And absolutely no signs of bias in this result . Absolutely no signs of any attempt at objective measurement of results either. Not one benchmark or even stopwatch timing showing any improvement at all? Strike Three.
Isn't it about time Slashdot started asking its reviewers if they have any affiliation with the product they are touting?
Sailing over the event horizon
..or maybe not. I tried Hare on a Win2k installation, which died not
e t\Contr ol\FileSystem]o rd:00000001i n95TruncatedExtensions"=dword:00000001b leLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001
D iskSpaceChecks"=dword:00000001
e t\Contr ol\Session Manager\Memory Management]0 001e mCache"=dword:00000000: 00000000e dPoolQuota"=dword:00000000: 00000000
" PhysicalAddressExtension"=dword:00000000a tch"=dword:00000001r d:00000001
.reg file and double-click. ;)
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\CurrentControlS
"NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation"=dw
"Win31FileSystem"=dword:00000000
"W
"NtfsDisa
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoLow
---- 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\CurrentControlS
"ClearPageFileAtShutdown"=dword:0000
"IoPageLockLimit"=dword:00020000
"LargeSyst
"NonPagedPoolQuota"=dword
"NonPagedPoolSize"=dword:00000000
"Pag
"PagedPoolSize"=dword
"SecondLevelDataCache"=dword:00000100
"WriteW
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dwo
----- END -----
Just stick everything into a
If you want to know what everything does, Google for it - it's best
that you investigate before trusting me blindly
In creating GUIs for programs I've worked on, I've noticed that people will THINK I've made something a lot faster if only I tweak how the slow task looks on the screen. For example, let's say my program parses an XML file in 5 seconds. I have some options:
Of course the easiest to do is option 1, but to users this also appears to be the slowest. 2 is an improvement -- but still seems kinda slow. Users think option 3 is blazingly fast for some reason -- and EVEN BETTER is if you create a progress bar that fills up to 100% multiple times before it's done (users no doubt think "WOW, look at that progress bar go!").
But back to the point: windows accelerators. I remember finding a registry tweak a LONG time ago which eliminated the short delay between displaying 'trees' in the start menu. Whenever ANYBODY used my computer (while this tweak was in effect), they always told me how fast it seemed to them. Was it faster? Well, yes, a 0.1 second delay was removed, but really it didn't make what you were trying to do go any quicker.
I guess my point is that speed doesn't matter so much as appearance.
So slashdot is now turning into an advertising medium for the software equivalent of snake oil?
I can't believe the editors let this sort of crap through. The seeming "question", and then the amazing success story of using the wonderful Hare program. Ugh.
Even if this "advert" wasn't intentional by the submitter (which I have a hard time believing), it is giving this shady Hare program way more free publicity than it deserves.
It sped up my system so fast that my Blue screens of death turned into a RED Screens of Death!
For a huge percentage of non-business users, a more responsive desktop is all the faster computer they need.
I find the idea that you should buy new hardware when your old hardware is grossly-underutilized, or at best ill-utilized, appalling. Are you a hardware vendor? Or an MS employee?
Certainly the AGP video drivers should take care of acceleration. But apparently, they don't! At least, not as well as they should, by default.
I suspect most Windows users could get a noticeable speedup from their current hardware, if only MS had made it easy to do so. Instead. you have to be a registry expert, which is right up there with assembly language programming on most folks' skills list or list of things to learn.
these "optimizing" programs are meant for idiots. There is no point explaining the technical details to them because it requires thinking on their part. Show them a program with a few graphs that jumps up and down claiming to be "optimizing" memory and they think their system runs faster. Never mind the fact you just released memory for abolutely no reason except to make a nice graph, slowing down the system while applications using the memory run smack right into one page fault after another.
what's so great about having a nice graph telling you, you have x amount of free memory? what the hell are you going to do with your free memory? look at it?
did you forget to take your meds?
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
I seriously doubt there is anything revolutionary here, and most likely you're trading one thing for another. If I disable XP system restore and file indexing, I get better load times, but I don't have the capability to restore the previous configuration, and my searches take longer. I don't care about those, so I disable them, and it's a win for me. But I thought one of the improvements of NT-family desktop operating systems was not allowing UI stuff to hog so much processor time. Sounds like a step backwards to me. And higher framerates aren't everything. I'd rather trade 10 frames if it means I'm not losing client update packets to choke, or that my keyboard input isn't being ignored.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
bugmenot.com has a login for you. Once logged in, the site works properly.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
You would be suprised how many grandmothers worked in business and had Unix come in as the newbie. To them linux will be childs play just as soon as someone actually allows them to get their hands on it and the teenage looser grandson doesn't think he knows best.
For the rest I agree with you. My linux desktop been more then ready. I code, surf, watch movies all a lot easier and faster then on a windows machine. I still can't understand all the stuff about codecs. Movies just work for me. Got to love mplayer. Linux not ready? Windows is not ready. Windows got the codecs, just not the architecture to install them all easily.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That seems a bit suspicious. 88-bit!?
It just uses your piano along with your processor. As long as you can stand the noise of your piano running at several Ghz, it's quite the improvement.
Lets just pick filesystems and buffer caching as one area of an operating system that can be tweeked to show some phenomenol performance gains. If you remove all the synchronous I/O requests made by a filesystem, you can improve performance on the slowest operations by orders of magnitude. However, watch out if you loose power in the middle of extent allocation and end up writing binary file data over the top of the root directory.
You can short circuit a lot of semaphores in the OS and speed up any operations that require concurrency. It'll work most of the time, and trash your data 2% of the time. If you don't need correct behavior, speed can be had more easily.
That said, windows is built to run decently on some pretty odd hardware. If you strip out all the unnecessary drivers, and set up some better config defaults for your hardware you can make some big gains. Setting memory zone preallocation, default filesystem allocation size, maximum table lengths, I'm sure you could easily add 75% to your performance ON AVERAGE. I am, however, extremely skeptical of any claims about game frame-rates. Games interract with the OS minimally, and are mostly hardware bound.
-my $.02
Actually, they seem to be accurate.
What they mean by 88-bit kernel isn't what most Linux users mean by kernel. They're referring to the programming style of the graphics kernel.
In this case, they're using floating-point registers for data moves, and other 'demo-scene' tricks to gain much higher memory bandwidth than simple 'mov eax, [screen]' assembly would normally generate, which is what the stock Windows graphics kernels use. In practice, it actually works quite well, and hand-tuned assembly-language memory-twiddling routines (which are all graphics kernels are) will be 2-4x faster than equivilant C/C++ code would be, so the speedups for some operations (like redrawing the windows, which is all the program is really claiming to speed up) are true.
As an AC poster pointed out, the parent's 'sig' executes rm -rf /
I tried to post an analysis, but I kept getting hit by the lameness filter, so I posted the analysis to http://www.dlitz.net/stuff/malicious-perl-sig/
Hint: If you're somewhat familiar with Perl, try doing the analysis yourself. The code is actually not anywhere near as complicated as it looks.