Rocking Fretwerk

@ Peggy "25 to 35 gig for Vista is not enough by a very short shot. Vista with all it's updates, SP's over time will fill nearly the entire partition with little room for swap/paging files.....your virtual memory space will be reduced to next to nothing which could slow your computer to slower than a crawl (maybe even bring it to a full stop). I'm not running Vista currently, Win7 has made it redundant for the most part (another story there), so I can't attest to it's install size. Ah, here we are from MSDN w/SP1 "01. Windows Vista Starter x86......................6.26GB 02. Windows Vista Home Basic x86...............6,37GB 03. Windows Vista Home Premium x86..........7,63GB 04. Windows Vista Business x86...................6,82GB 05. Windows Vista Ultimate x86....................7,71GB 06. Windows Vista Enterprise x86.................6,81GB 07. Windows Vista Home Basic x64...............9,43GB 08. Windows Vista Home Premium x64..........11,14GB 09. Windows Vista Business x64....................10,27GB 10. Windows Vista Ultimate x64.....................11,24GB 11. Windows Vista Enterprise x64..................10,25GB" Of course those are vanilla install's, and you are correct that they will bloat beyond that. Win7's footprint is somewhat smaller. Currently I'm on Windows 7 "Ultimate" x64, and my C: partition is showing 14.9gb. Of course I'm cheating a bit because I've disabled the swap file, but normally Windows would assign a swap file that is 1.5x of the installed Ram (I beleive I'm right on that?). So that would be 6gb of installed memory = upto a 9gb swap file (I'm assuming), so with a default size swap file, the "footprint" of Win7 w/ 3 months of messing about + every available update, comes out to 23.9gb, still Ok imo. > This saves space for storage of non system files like game patches etc on the secondary partition. I know user application will vary, but in 3+ months on this install I've had zero issues personally with the swap file disabled. This includes the common apps most of us use, Adobe, photoshop, and the new games Mass Effect 2, COD MW2, Bioshock 2, and of course Emerald, Snowglobe, and the Official SL viewers, everything runs fine. But I digress, it is probably best for most users to have a swap file enabled. Do keep in mind though, Ram is much faster than any hard drive as of yet, so avoiding paging to the hard drive will provide the best performance on any machine. With sufficient system memory installed, the swap file will not be as critical an issue provided the application you're trying to run doesn't complain. Optimal for most users, 2 to 3gb memory for XP-32bit, 2 to 3gb for Vista/Win7 32bit, and 4gb or more for the 64bit flavor's. Also in my opinion, avoid using a 32bit operating system if you have a graphics card with alot of memory 512+, because of 32bit memory addressing the graphics card's memory will have it's own footprint on your system memory. 32bit OS + 3gb memory + 512mb graphics card = ~2.5gb available system memory Ok I've rambled on a bit, so will get back on topic. To "improve" PC performance in Second Life, press CTRL + P, click Graphics, click the Hardware Options tab, set the Texture Memory (MB) slider to half the memory your videocard has on-board. i.e > 512 megabyte graphics card = set the slider to 256 and press apply. You can experiment different settings of course, but I haven't seen any degradation in picture quality during normal SL'ing and it does seem to keep SL running smooth over the long run.

The #1 best thing is to start with a fresh install of your favorite O.S. Install your drivers, updates, and "crucial" apps - but keep it lean. Do the CCleaner/Comodo System Cleaner/Disk cleanup/Defrag ritual. Type msconfig in Start/run, and disable things you don't need to autostart.( Click Start Button, "Search Programs and Files" line for you Vista/Win7 users) Apply your favorite tweaks/adjustments. --> Black Viper has a good Windows services tweaking tutorial. Then use a program like Macrium Reflect (freeware) and create a backup image of the C: partition. The backup image should ideally be located on a physically separate hard drive. Create a CD boot disk with Macrium, this will be used to boot the computer and restore your backup image (even if your main hard drive had failed and been replaced) At this point your installation is nearly bullet-proof, if something gets funky beyond repair, boot the computer from the CD you made, and restore the computer. Macrium also lets you add incremental updates to your backup image, but I think it's best to keep the original image in addition to any new one you might create instead. - Defragging daily is excessive wear and tear on the hard drive, and will lead to premature failure. They say it causes blindness too Instead, move the SL cache to a physically separate hard disk, and resume (for most users) a "realistic" bi-weekly/once a month schedule for defragging the C: partition. Also while on about Hard Drive's. Don't use the entire disk capacity for "C:", instead set a reasonable partition size, ~20-35gb for "C:" Vista/Win7 You can get away with a 10-15gb partition for XP. Keep what applications/games that you can, off-of-the-system drive's partition(C:), install them to a different partition when/where possible. Treat your C: partition as "holy ground", only let things install to it if you have no other choice. This will help to keep Windows running smoother, and longer - Dust; Use a can of compressed air to blow out the dust from inside the computer about once a month (depending on your environment) If you're compulsive and have time, you can use a small toothbrush/Q-Tips to swab the dust from any fan blades inside (be sure to clean the graphics card's fan GENTLY and heatsink too) so that the fan blades "cut" the air properly. Use your vacuum cleaner to remove dust from the inlet/outlet grills of your power supply as well.(Do Not Open the power supply unit to clean the fan(s) there is a shock hazard even when unplugged) Doing the above things should help lower general stress levels when you go to press the "ON" button of your computer.