I've done #1 as you suggested, and I regularly run both anti-virus and anti-spy programs. Don't know if this will make a difference in the game, but I'm willing to bet if nothing else, stability will be a bit better. Thanks. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
3) For Power Users ONLY! Go to www.freshdevices.com and download FreshUI. In FreshUI set the following settings: First thing, in case something screws up, go to the File menu and choose "Save Windows Settings". Hardware>CPU>L2 Cache Optimization: Stupidly enough, Windows XP defaults 0KB L2 cache utilization as DEFAULT. Go to your CPU manufacturer's website and find out how much L2 cache your CPU has. Input the value you found (256KB inputs 256, etc.) Windows System>File System>UDMA/66 mode: Check your HDD manufacturer to see if your drive supports this mode. If it does, enable it. Windows System>Startup/shutdown>Shutdown>Delete Swap File at System Shutdown: This can cause PC boot time to increase a little, but you'll always have a clean swapfile to be written to, rather than having to delete old entries during runtime. If you follow only what I've listed you should be safe. Do NOT make alterations on other settings unless you know what you are doing or you could easily HOSE your computer. FreshUI gives a lot of other options that can massively improve performance, but used incorrectly can cause equally massive problems.
These intrigue me. Will these improvements in performance transfer to either increased FPS in Morrowind, or quicker data loading time between areas?
This will help the computer in general, taking load off of the RAM, allowing more room for video processing, decreasing load times, and, since there's more physical memory, there's less virtual memory usage, and there's less stress on the HDD. The UDMA/66, if supported, also affects HDD performance, with directly affects virtual memory performance. One thing I've seen some gamers do, and I've been considering this myself, get 1GB HDD and dedicate the entire thing to virtual memory, taking all of that stress off of your primary HDD. I've actually seen one PC use a fast W/R flash drive as a virtual memory drive, but I don't have the cash to shell out $300 for a 1GB flash stick... unfortunately <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" />
In short, it'll help both <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
