Script Soft Windows Tuning Blog

The problem is certainly known by all Windows users: the system becomes slower day by day, it takes longer until the computer is ready after it has been switched on. Through numerous software installations, the system is slowly filled, and has more to do. A radical solution to turn a system back to its initial speed lies in formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows. However, this is extremely time-consuming: you need to reinstall all necessary programs, backup and restore your data and have all required drivers ready. A reinstallation of Windows is always very time-consuming.

There is an easier way to re-gain your computer's initial performance. The most common reason why a system slows down over time are too many programs that start automatically with Windows. These programs are located at various places in the system and they are automatically started each time Windows starts. Most of these programs are not needed, but use the processor and hard drive and consume memory, therefore slowing down the system. Some of these programs show up as small icons in the taskbar to the left of the clock. Many are redundant and it is enough to start them when needed. Therefore a first step to tune Windows is to disable all unwanted programs that automatically start with Windows.

WinLube shows a list of all automatically starting programs in the "Tuning" category ("Manage Autostarts"). It is however difficult to decide which program is needed and which can be removed from Autostart. By clicking on "Rate Online", WinLube can go online and get a recommendation for each program. WinLube then shows a recommendation in the "Rating" column whether the program should be kept in Autostart (like Anti-Virus software), be disabled or even is malicious, and must be disabled. After disabling all unnecessary startup entries the system performance will be significantly better and your computer will be ready faster.

WinSpeedUp is already available in 6 languages: English, German, Italian, French, Czech and Russian. Your own translation can be done very easily. In the directory of WinSpeedUp, which is usually located in C:\Program Files\WinSpeedUp, there is the subfolder "Lang". Every translation consists of two files: a .ico file with a flag that represents the language and a .ini file, which contains the actual translation. To translate WinSpeedUp into another language, just make a copy of any .ini file (e.g. eng.ini to choose English as a base) and edit the file. Any text that appears in WinSpeedUp is contained in this file. Since some of the text are changed during the execution of the program, they include variables: %1, %2, etc. These variables must be preserved in translation, but they can arbitrarily change position in the text.

WinLube can be translated in the same way. You will find the language files in the subfolder "Language" of the WinLube directory (usually C:\Program Files\WinLube). There are no .ico files needed for WinLube. The .ini files are structured the same way as those for WinSpeedUp as described above.

You are welcome to send your translation to info@scriptsoft.de. As a reward for the effort you will receive a free license key for one of the programs.

Windows tuning typically includes tuning of the Internet connection. Many parameters influence the connection's speed and quality. First, the MTU and MSS value are such parameters. The MTU determines the maximum size of a data packet that is sent over the line (or air). The MSS value specifies the maximum size of a data segment, a further breakdown of data packets into individual segments.

A much more important value for the throughput is the so-called RWIN value. Since the TCP protocol is mainly used on the Internet, it is a packet-switched network. Data will be put in packages marked with the sender's and recipient's address and other control data and sent on their way through the net. To let the sender know that his package has arrived, he demands an acknowledgment from the receiver. The effort would be very high to send a confirmation for each packet. The RWIN value (Receive Window) determines how many packets the sender can send without a confirmation. After this amount of packets the receiver has to send the confirmation. If the sender does not receive the confirmation, he will re-send all packets and wait for a confirmation again. With a small RWIN value the many confirmation packets slow down the connection, because the sender has to wait for every confirmation before he can send the next packets. A too large RWIN value can also lead to problems. If a loss of data or erroneous data occurs, a large amount of packets must be sent again. On the Internet it does happen regularly that individual packets are faulty or not delivered.

To get the best of your Internet connection, you need to find an optimal value for the RWIN paramter. There are different opinions and formulas which are all similar. However, since Windows Vista the subject of Internet tuning became unimportant: Vista's TCP/IP implementation has the ability to auto-tune itself. It dynamically adjusts all key parameters to the connection's capacity and quality. Windows Vista (and of course the successor Windows 7) independently find an optimal RWIN value, without the need for the user to have additional tools for Internet tuning. Therefore, WinLube no more has a module for Internet tuning, since this is no longer needed with Windows Vista and Windows 7.

There are many programs on the market that promise to clean up memory or free more memory. It began in 1998, with the program RamCharger 2.0, which was supposed to defragment memory and thereby speeding up Windows. The German magazine c't has tested the program and could find no benefit. Even today's RAM optimizers are often ineffective. They usually operate on the same principle: the program demands as much memory as possible from Windows and thereby displaces other programs from memory. Normally these programs are then swapped to disk, because of memory shortage, the swap file is used. But hard drives are more than 100 times slower than RAM, so the outsourced programs are drastically slowed down. The memory optimizer now frees its own large memory area and suddenly the system has more memory available than before - with the disadvantage that the other running programs have been swapped out to disk and then run much slower. Windows will now realize that memory is free again and move the programs back into memory. And how does this all help? Actually nothing, except that Windows displays more free memory, but for only a short time.

There are few positive exceptions among memory optimizers. For example, our tools WinSpeedUp and WinLube use a different method to free memory. They rely on Windows-internal data structures that are not officially documented by Microsoft. They request Windows to re-calculate the memory area of each program, thus releasing memory areas which were not used for a long time. This means that programs will not be swapped out to disk and slowed down. However, it can not be predicted well, how much memory can be released, which depends on the used programs. It can therefore not be determined in advance how much memory is being freed. This option is offered by the memory optimizers of the ineffective category. It only determines the size of memory that those "optimizers" claim and immediately release.

There are hundreds of memory optimizers on the market, but few provide what they promise. Among the exceptions there are our tools to help you free memory purposefully.

After the beta version had been released 3 weeks ago, the final version of WinLube 2 is here now. You can download the 30 day trial version from here. Some of the many new features include:

- New interface design
- Instant Tuning for fully automatic system optimization
- Bootmanager configuration
- FileShredder to delete files securely
- Repair broken shortcuts
- Manage Windows services
- Improved hard disk and registry clean-up
- Fully compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7 each in 32 bit and 64 bit version
- ... and lots of more new features and enhancements, more details here

Customers who have bought WinLube in the last 6 months will get the update for free. All other customers get a discount of 50% on the update. Please contact us by e-mail.

Welcome to the Script Soft Tuning Blog!
The purpose of this blog is to report about tuning tips and tricks for Windows and about news from Script Soft. As the developer of the tuning tools WinSpeedUp and WinLube I may call myself an expert in this topic and want to share my knowledge with you. The first article is planned for next week, so check back again.