Windows Tips | Windows Secret Tips

When you connect to a web site, your computer sends information back and forth. Some of this information deals with resolving the site name to an IP address, the stuff that TCP/IP really deals with, not words. This is DNS information and is used so that you will not need to ask for the site location each and every time you visit the site. Although Windows XP have a pretty efficient DNS cache, you can increase its overall performance by increasing its size. You can do this with the registry entries below:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters]
"CacheHashTableBucketSize"=dword:00000001
"CacheHashTableSize"=dword:00000180
"MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit"=dword:0000fa00
"MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit"=dword:0000012d

Make a new text file and rename it to “dnscache.reg”. Then copy and paste the code above into it and save it. Finally, double-click it to merge into your Windows registry.

Scandisk is not a part of Windows XP, instead you get the improved CHKDSK. To check file system errors and bad sectors on your hard disk, you can use the Error-checking tool. Here is the step-by-step to open this tool.

1. Open My Computer, and then select the local disk you want to check.
2. Right-click on it and then choose Properties
3. On the Tools tab, under Error-checking, click Check Now
4. Under Check Disk options, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box.

Attention !

• All files must be closed for this process to run. If the volume is currently in use, a message box will appear prompting you to indicate whether or not you want to reschedule the disk checking for the next time you restart your system. Then, the next time you restart your system, disk checking will run. Your volume will not be available to perform other tasks while this process is running.
• If your volume is formatted as NTFS, Windows automatically logs all file transactions, replaces bad clusters, and stores copies of key information for all files on the NTFS volume.

In Windows 95, sometimes we need to use Direct Cable Connection or to create a “Null Modem Cable” for some reason, here are the pin connections for 9-pin and 25-in serial ports.

If you have noticed that the speed of your Windows system is very slow with Vista, so may be this tip is very useful for you to increase the performance of Windows Vista. There is some default setting in Vista which is used to manage the write caching on disk. By default Windows enabled the write caching on disk but the advanced performance setting is disabled. To enable this feature, you will need to be logged into your computer with administrative rights.

• First, right click on My Computer icon then select “Manage”.
• On the “Computer Management” window, select the “Device Manager” option, then locate to your hard drive under “Disk Drives” item.
• Right-click your drive and choose “Properties”.
• On the “Policies” tab, check all of option there.
• Now click on OK button to apply the setting and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.