5-27LESSON 3 CONFIGURING SYSTEM SETTINGSHOW TO ENHANCE SYSTEM PERFORMANCEYOU CAN ENHANCE SYSTEM PERFORMANCE IN SEVERAL WAYS

5-27Lesson 3 Configuring System Settings

How to Enhance System Performance

You can enhance system performance in several ways. First, if your computer has mul-

tiple hard disk controllers, you can create a paging file on a disk on each controller.

Distributing information across multiple paging files improves performance because

Windows can read and write from disks on different controllers simultaneously. When

attempting to write to the paging file, VMM tries to write the page data to the paging

file on the controller that is the least busy.

Second, you can enhance performance by moving the paging file off the drive that

contains the Windows XP Professional %systemroot% folder (by default, the Windows

folder), which avoids competition between the various reading and writing requests. If

you place a paging file on the Windows XP Professional system partition to facilitate

the recovery feature, which is discussed in the section entitled “How to Configure Startup

and Recovery Settings” later in this lesson, you can still increase performance by creat-

ing multiple paging files. Because the VMM alternates write operations between paging

files, the paging file on the boot partition is accessed less frequently.

Third, you can enhance system performance by setting the initial size of the paging

file to the value displayed in the Virtual Memory dialog box’s Maximum Size box,

which eliminates the time required to enlarge the file from the initial size to the max-

imum size.

Note When applying new settings, be sure to click Set before clicking OK.

How to Configure User Profiles

Each user account in Windows XP has an associated user profile that stores user-

specific configuration settings, such as a customized desktop or personalized appli-

cation settings. Understanding how user profiles function and how to control them

lets you effectively manage the user’s desktop environment.

Windows XP supports three types of user profiles:

■

Local A local user profile is available only on the system on which it was cre-

ated. A unique local user profile is created and stored on each computer that a

user logs on to.

■

Roaming Roaming profiles, which are stored in a shared folder on a network

server, are accessible from any location in the network.

■

Mandatory Mandatory user profiles are roaming user profiles that users cannot

make permanent changes to. Mandatory profiles are used to enforce configuration

settings.

Where Local User Profiles Are Stored

Windows stores local user profiles in the Documents And Settings folder hierarchy on

the %systemroot% drive. When a user logs on to a Windows XP system for the first

time, Windows creates a folder in Documents And Settings that matches the user’s user

name. Within each user profile, several files and folders contain configuration informa-

tion and data. These files and folders include the following:

■

Application Data Contains application configuration information. Applications

that are Windows XP–aware can take advantage of this folder to store user-specific

configuration settings. This folder is hidden.

■

Cookies Contains cookie files, which Web sites usually create to store user

information and preferences on the local system. When you return to a site, the

cookie files allow the site to provide you with customized content and track your

activity within the site.

■

Desktop Contains files, folders, and shortcuts that have been placed on the

Windows XP desktop.

■

Favorites Used to store shortcuts to locations that a user has added to the Favor-

ites list in Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer.

■

Local Settings Holds application data, history, and temporary files (including

temporary Internet files). This folder is hidden.

■

My Documents Used to store documents and other user data. My Documents is

easily accessible from the Start menu.

■

My Recent Documents Contains shortcuts to recently accessed documents and

folders. You can also access My Recent Documents from the Start Menu. This

folder is hidden.

■

NetHood Holds shortcuts created by the Add Network Place option in My Net-

work Places. This folder is hidden.

■

PrintHood Contains shortcuts to printer folder items. This folder is hidden.

■

SendTo Contains shortcuts to document-handling utilities, such as e-mail appli-

cations. These shortcuts are displayed on the Send To option on the action menu

for files and folders. This folder is hidden.

■

Start Menu Holds the shortcuts to programs that are displayed in the Start

menu. One way to modify the Start Menu is to add or delete folders and shortcuts

to the Start Menu folder within a user’s profile folder.

■

Templates Contains template items. Created by user applications and are used

by those applications when a user creates a new document. This folder is hidden.

■

NTUSER.DAT The user-specific portion of the Registry. This file contains configu-

ration changes made to Windows Explorer and the taskbar, as well as user-specific