Silent Hunter, Performance and services

[Abd_von_Mumit]

Originally Posted by Brag

Is Fs auto start associated with fsscreen?
Fsscreen is a hell of a good little program for screenies.

I don't think so, as FS Autostart is belived to be done by "Ken Salter", while FSScreen by "Matthias Holzer" (just checked in readmes).

I can assure you FS Autostart is a hell of a good little program too.

Recently I've tested almost 10 various RAM memory cleaners, using softpedia.org as a source. Absolutely none of them had the abilities of FSAutostart, even the top rated ones in the cathegory. My machine is far below the minimal requirements and usually it takes it like 20 minutes to launch a SH3 mission. Usually it fails and CTD's a few times before it finally manages to launch it, to say the truth. Or I'd better say it was so till yesterday. After installing and configuring FSAutostart the game launched much faster and without CTD's. Tried it three times to be sure. It's just marvellous.

[Venatore]

I will definitely download this and give it a go, I'll give feedback and thank you fror sharing this link.

[T.Von Hogan]

I've been using fsautostart for nearly a decade now. It has worked with any game i've set up with it including sh3. It really helps machines that are near or below minimum specs.

[Tobus]

Originally Posted by Nopileo

Umm.. I tried this, and when SH3 started to the menu, neither my mouse nor keyboard responded, so I had to reset the PC. Any tips? Have you used this yourself with SH3?

Well, shutting down drivers/apps for (wireless) mice and or keyboard will do that for ya.:hmm:

[Cohaagen]

Diskeeper 2007 - This improved my FPS average in Half Life 2: Episode One (x16AF/x2AA/High) from around 18/19 to 28 - a strange thing for a defrag utility. I'd had the programme for months and used it occassionally for manual defragging, but it wasn't until I enabled the reccommended "Auto-Defrag" and "I-Faast" option that I saw the huge gains. Diskeeper claims a 22% improvement, but it feels perceptibly more than that. Apparently, you can see up to 80% improvement in read times, with an average of around 15%-20%.

It also works great with GWX. Load times are greatly improved and stuttering is gone. Diskeeper has optimised my files and consolidated all directories, which makes a particularly noticable difference on games which spool lots of data "on the fly" (HL2) and those with complicated directory structures (SH3/GWX).

I couldn't reccommend it more

If anyone tries Diskeeper, let me know how you get on. For full benefit, you should run a manual defragmentation first, then enable Auto-Defrag and I-Faast, then run a boot-time defrag to take care of the MFT and Paging file. Oh, getting rid of Norton Antivirus (and to a lesser extent, McAfee) in favour of AVG or similar also makes a big difference too.


Specs (such as they are ): P4 Northwood 2.8, 1.5gb PC3200 RAM, PNY Nvidia 6200 (PCI version running at 300 core/650 mem), 80gb/7200rpm bog-standard Seagate hard drive, Intel i845 motherboard.

[Cohaagen]

Oh, something else.

Slightly OT, but I got a big boost to my crap "up to 8mb" Orange connection. It was actually 5mbps before they had equipment vandalised at the local exchange box and didn't set the replacement up right. Despite my persistence with their Kafka-esque "customer service" system they tried every goddamn greasy, slippery trick in the manual to avoid fixing the bastard - actually, they cannot repair it direct and must use BT Wholesale which, naturally, costs money they'd rather not spend.

Anyway, enough exposition. The util I used is TCP Optimizer.

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

Try it for yourself, making sure to back up your old settings first. Big improvement in Firefox "Save As" downloads and general browsing. I also highly reccommend Download Accelerator Plus. That's what I used to download GWX 1.03 and 2.0, which is as good a way as any to give it a practical test.

[Sebbe02]

Cohaagen, does FSAutostart work with your Diskeeper?

What does Diskeeper do? Is it a defrag utility for the hard disc or for RAM?

Excuse me for the bad English

Greetz

[Cohaagen]

Nothing wrong with your English, man.

I haven't used FSAutostart, as I've already got about three different programmes that have those sort of features. I can't imagine there being any conflict, as long as you don't remove the Diskeeper service (if you do, you can just run "Services.msc" from the "Run" dialog box and restart it from there).

Diskeeper 2007 is a hard disk defragger. The basic defrag utility that comes with XP is actually an old, cut-down version of Diskeeper, and as such nowhere near as effective. For it to be really effective you need to give your disk a really good clean out - making sure you've got at least 20% free space - then run manual defrag and set it to "auto-defrag" and "i-faast". I-Faast reorganises your directory structure to make best use of hard disk space, storing data much more efficiently, and places the most important components at the physical beginning of the disk. I can't praise Diskeeper enough.

[Sebbe02]

Thanx!

Downloaded FsAutostart, one more question:

so I stop some processes before running SH3 or Autocad or something... How do I restart those processes afterwards if I want to? And is this necessary, or do you guys just let those processes out?

[Abd_von_Mumit]

Originally Posted by Sebbe02

Thanx!

Downloaded FsAutostart, one more question:

so I stop some processes before running SH3 or Autocad or something... How do I restart those processes afterwards if I want to? And is this necessary, or do you guys just let those processes out?

If you want them to start again after you finish playing, just use "close and restart" option instead of just "close". BUT! If you initiate the game through any other application (like SH3 Commander) then tick the "This Is Not The Main App" option in "Configuration" section.

I prefer just to restart my computer after playing, thus I use "close" option. It's because I'm not sure if FS Autostart is really able to restore the system as it was (in fact I doubt it, as some processes could refuse to be started by non-system application), and before launching my game I switch off ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, almost every proccess that isn't labeled "LEAVE RUNNING (EXTREMELY VITAL)".

[Abd_von_Mumit]

Originally Posted by Cohaagen

Diskeeper 2007 is a hard disk defragger. The basic defrag utility that comes with XP is actually an old, cut-down version of Diskeeper, and as such nowhere near as effective. For it to be really effective you need to give your disk a really good clean out - making sure you've got at least 20% free space - then run manual defrag and set it to "auto-defrag" and "i-faast". I-Faast reorganises your directory structure to make best use of hard disk space, storing data much more efficiently, and places the most important components at the physical beginning of the disk. I can't praise Diskeeper enough.

Wanted to give it a try, but this is not freeware. Too bad.

Is there any good freeware alternative for Diskeeper?

PS.
I've got a few rules that help me live in the internet jungle:
- never pay for a programme you can have for free (why pay for MS Office while you can have Open Office, which is actually much better, and it's developers still find another ways of earning money?),
- never register (on forums, sites) or give away your personal data (including e-mail) just to get a so called "free"ware programme, to download anything etc. (this is the reason I didn't try some SH3 mods/skins - you have to register on forum first in order to download them),
- never use trials, as there is no use to get used to a programme you're not going to buy.

[Cohaagen]

von Mumit-

I agree with you on the registering point. I use a fantastic site called Bug Me Not. You can visit it here:

http://www.bugmenot.com

As for freeware defrag programmes, there's only O&O that I know of:

http://filehippo.com/download_oo_defrag/

I don't think it's anything like as good as Diskeeper, but it costs nowt.

[Abd_von_Mumit]

Originally Posted by Cohaagen

von Mumit-

I agree with you on the registering point. I use a fantastic site called Bug Me Not. You can visit it here:

http://www.bugmenot.com

As for freeware defrag programmes, there's only O&O that I know of:

http://filehippo.com/download_oo_defrag/

I don't think it's anything like as good as Diskeeper, but it costs nowt.

That site seems to be really yuseful, thanks! I'll have a look at the O&O too, nice to know.

[JCB]

FSAutostart looks wery promising, but I´m afraid I don´t really know how to use it. When it shuts down services and do all that wonderful stuff it does, will everything return to normal after a restart? I hope so...

The tutorial on the download page doesn´t tell.


Yes, I am a noob. But I am also a noob with a slow computer...

[Subtype Zero]

Yes, FSAutostart will restart all of your services when you exit Sh3. I've set it up so that FSAutostart loads SHCommander, which then starts SH3.

Best to start with the default settings. You can adjust if needed. The configuration screen has some info about each service to help guide you about which to terminate. You may need to tinker with it a little, but it hasn't crashed my computer yet, so you shouldn't have any probs.