February 28, 1997

                             Windows 95 Tweaks

     This is an unofficial summary of tweaks to your Windows 95
computer some or all of which should lead to increased
performance from your processor and memory intensive software.
     This file was inspired by reports of slowness in the 3.0
release of Arkenstone's Open Book Unbound while running under
Windows 95.
     This document is in no way endorsed by Arkenstone and is
merely  the attempt of one computer user to share some
information with others.
     If you proceed with reading this document and especially if
you make any of the adjustments proposed here, you agree to
indemnify and hold harmless Arkenstone, Inc. and Peter M.
Scialli, Ph.D. t/a ShrinkWrap Computer Products in the event of
any unexpected or unfortunate result.
     These tweaks are neither complete or comprehensive.  The
degree to which they may help in your Windows 95 installation
will vary from user to user, depending on factors such as
computer speed, memory amount and management, hard disk size and
system configuration.
     The first step in trying these adjustments is to make
backups.  No matter how well you know what you are doing, it is
always reasonable to plan for disaster.  A good first step might
be to copy and use the Emergency Recovery Utility files which may
be found on the Windows 95 distribution CD.  The files, which
should be copied to your Windows directory are in a path called
x:\other\misc\eru.  The ERU program is speech friendly and will
let you safely store all your critical system files to a floppy
disk.
     Here are the tweaks as I know them currently:  An easy one
to accomplish is the elimination of the Drivespace and
Doublespace drivers that exist as hidden files on the root
directory of your Windows 95 installation.  This, of course,
assumes that you are not using disk compression.  If you are,
don't erase these files!!
     For those not using disk compression, the doublespace and
drivespace files are read by your system anyway.  There presence
uses memory and can slow things down.  The most efficient way to
get rid of these files is to go to your root directory and use
the dos DELTREE command to eliminate DRV*.* and DBL*.*.  If you
prefer, unhide the files and rename them or move them elsewhere.
As with all tweaks, you will have to reboot the system for the
changes to take effect.
     Here is the next tweak and the first change to a system
file.  If you are uncomfortable editing critical system files,
then you should consider descression the better part of valor and
get a knowledgeable friend to help!
     Using an ASCII text editor, open the SYSTEM.INI file
contained within the Windows Directory.  In that file of
parameters is a section called [36ENH].  Notice the brackets that
define the section name.
     If it is not already there, add a line to this section of
the file that says "LOCALLOADHIGH=1".  If it says "0" then change
it to a 1.  This enables Windows 95 to load all your dos drivers
into upper memory.  If nothing else, your dos applications will
have more room in which to stretch.
     Now for the serious business:  This is going to involve
modifying some system and file management properties and is
potentially a real show stopper unless you like paperweights made
by Intel.  The tweaks listed here have been tested on at least 2
computers and don't seem to have any ill effects, however.  By
now, you have, of course, made your emergency backup disk so that
even if something goes wrong, restoring your system will be a
breeze.
     An easy parameter to change, albeit not one recommended by
Microsoft is the Virtual Memory setting in your system
properties.  Normally, Windows assigns virtual memory
dynamically.  It may, however, improve the efficiency of your
disk usage to set this manually.  Here's how: Go into your system
properties display.  You can get there by highlighting "My
Computer" on the Desktop and then hitting Alt and Enter at the
same time.  You can also get there by going into the Control
Panel and selecting "System".
     Once on the property sheet, you will need to move over to
the right by a few tabs.  You can do this by hitting Ctrl and Tap
together a few times.  The Dialog you want to be in is entitled
"Performance" and your screen reader should give you a way to
know when you are in it.  You can also click the word
"Performance" at the top of the Dialog to get into it.
     Once in the performance dialog use the tab key to get down
to the "Virtual Memory..." setting.  After hitting Enter here,
you will first get a couple of checkbox items from which to
select.  The default item tells Windows to automatically handle
virtual memory.  If you hit the downarrow, you will move the
checkmark to the manual settings position.  Hit tab at this point
to find the edit boxes for minimum and maximum values.  You
should leave the minimum value at "0".  For the maximum value,
put in a number that is about half the size of your available
hard drive space.  This is a value you can play around with to
try to extract greater performance from the system. After making
these changes, click on OK.  You will be asked to confirm the
change in system configuration. You will then have to restart
Windows to get the changes to take effect.  It is doubtful that
you will experience a radical change in OCR speed, but you can
eliminate the most annoying of the delays in the image
acquisition process.
     Here is another tweak: In the File System properties Dialog
where you were for the above changes, move over to the
Supplemental Cache Dialog by hitting Control and Tab together one
time.  Hit the tab key to get to the scrollbar that lets you
adjust the size of your CD ROM cache.  The default value is quite
large, something like 950K.  Hit the left arrow to decrease the
CD ROM cache size as low as it will go.  This should be 64K for
2X CD ROMS and about 214K. for faster units.  My informal
understanding of this parameter is that the CD ROM cache helps to
smooth things out while playing CD based music at the same time
as engaging in other system activities.  You should not notice
any change in your CD ROM performance.  You may, however, notice
a change in your scanner speed.  Apparently, the CD ROM cache can
engage in some degree of conflict with SCSI port memory usage.
This change, by the way, will require that you restart Windows
before it will take effect.
     OK, here is the big one.  This tweak is the most difficult
to perform, but has the most noticeable result on most systems.
In the File System properties that we have been dealing with, you
will notice some check boxes which correspond to the statement
"The Typical Role of this Computer is".  For most of us, your
computer will have come configured with this value set to
"Desktop System".  Use the downarrow key to move the check mark
to the "Network Server" choice.  If you have the "B" version of
Windows 95, that's all you need to do.  If, however, you have an
"A" release you will need to modify a flaw in the system
Registry.
     When dealing with the Registry, you want to take all the
warnings I mentioned at the start of this document and multiply
their seriousness by a factor of at least 1000.  By messing up
the Registry, you can lose all the data that is near and dear to
you.  However, if you have used the ERU program to make backups,
there should be no problems.
     Changing your system property to that of a Network Server
changes the way in which disk caching is done.  Unfortunately,
someone at Microsoft typed incorrect values into the Registry
when it came time to define the caching parameters in version
"A".
   There are two ways to work on the Registry, First we will look
at the Registry Editor.  From the Run line of the Start Menu in
Windows 95, type "REGEDIT"  The Registry Editor will come up.  It
displays Registry entries in a complex tree structure.
     Use the Downarrow key to Highlight the entry marked "Key
Local Machine".  Once it's highlighted, hit the Right Arrow to
enter into the branch.  Now, use the Downarrow again to highlight
the word "Software".  Hit the Right Arrow again to enter into
that branch.  When you hit the Downarrow now, you will see a list
of software brand names.  Highlight the word "Microsoft".  Hit
the Right Arrow again.  Now use the Down arrow to highlight the
word "Windows."  Hit the Right Arrow again to enter another list.
Highlight the phrase "Current Version".  Hit the Right Arrow.
Now, move down with the Downarrow key to the word "FSTEMPLATE".
Hit the Right arrow again  Now, hit the Down arrow until you here
the word "Serve".  The status line should say "Network Server".
At this point, hit the tap key until you here the words Namecache
and Pathcache.  These two values are the reverse of what they
should be.  The correct value for Path cache should be "40 00 00
00".  Note the spacing. The correct value for Namecache should be
"A9 0A 0
accessed much less often.  OCR processing, among other things,
will proceed much more quickly.
     With respect to Open Book itself, there are some settings
that will move things along as well.  The Scanfix setting can be
turned off during the reading of most normal text.  It is most
helpful for reading inverse or oddly colored and contrasted text.
     You can use the HP1.BAT file contained on the scanner
drivers disk to change your scanner engine over to the original
HP Accupage driver rather than the HP Accupage2 driver which is
the default.  Because Open Book 3 uses the "Language Analyst"
program, the Accupage2 driver is a bit of overkill and doesn't
seem to improve recognition very much.  It does, indeed slow
things down quite a bit.  In contrast, Open book 2.X was greatly
assisted with the use of Accupage2.
     Please note, if you have an HP ScanJet 2CX, the Accupage
driver may prevent the scan head from seeing all 14 inches of the
flatbed.  This won't be a problem on other scanner models.
     To make things really speedy, set Open Book's contrast to
"Normal" as your starting value.  You may find, as I have, that
Autocontrast is of much less value than it used to be.  Normal
contrast works very well in most situations.
     That's all the tweaks I know of for right now.  I'll try to
make other ones available as they become known to me.  Also,
Arkenstone will eventually publish an official list of tweaks.
The tweaks do not have the same result on every system.
Arkenstone, from what I understand is trying to make a more
systematic document that can guide you in knowing which changes
will help the most for a given configuration.
     Finally, don't call me for Tech support on this stuff!  This
is all I know!  If you wish, you can Email me at
72456.2140@Compuserve.com.
Good luck