Windows 9.x/3.1 32-bit Guide

Why run everything 32-bit? 32-bit is twice as much data as 16-bit. Think of pipes. If a bigger pipe can hold twice the liquid as another pipe, the bigger pipe can allow twice as much liquid to flow through it at any given time. Letting your system handle everything 32-bit will allow your computer to do twice as much in the same period of time as opposed to running everything under 16-bit.

• Win9x:
  • Well, you're in luck. Win9x is a 32-bit operating system. You won't have to do much of anything. To check if everything is running 32-bit, double click (while holding down the ALT key) on My Computer (if you didnt' name it something else). Click on Performance, and if the File System and Virtual Memory says it's running 32-bit, you're in fine shape.
  • But my system says it's running (some or all) under compatibility mode! Well, there are a few reasons why your system might not be running everything 32-bit.
    1. Virus: Yes, I said the V-word. Common viruses that cause this are the NYB boot-virus and the Monkey.B boot-virus (you might have something else, but these were once fairly wide-spread). While they are fairly harmless and transparent, they are nevertheless viruses and you should remove it. Scan your system with any popular virus program (McAfee, F-Prot, NAV, etc.). If it notifies you that you've got a boot virus, get a clean bootup disk from a friend and remove the virus. Once you've cleaned the virus off your system, everything will run 32-bit. It'll even fix some device conflicts you may have been experiencing (most likely some disk controller conflict). If your CD-ROM drive suddenly disappears, this is probably the reason why.
    2. Old equipment: If you have an old CD-ROM drive or disk controller, it may not permit you to run them 32-bit. Solution? Upgrade!
    3. 16-bit DOS Drivers: If you're loading old 16-bit DOS drivers (most likely for your CD-ROM), then it forces Win9x to access your drive in 16-bit mode. Solution: Remove the device driver(s) (and MSCDEX.EXE) from your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. Win9x has its own 32-bit virtual drivers which allow it to access your CD-ROM in 32-bit protected mode. However, this means you won't be able to access your CD-ROM if you quit out of Win9x.
    4. Disabled: 32-bit support may have been turned off. Click on the File System (at the bottom left of the Performance window), then Trouble Shooting. Make sure you don't have checks next to anything (particularily the Disable protect-mode hard disk interrupt handling and Disable all 32-bit protect-mode drivers). Note: While write behind caching may speed up some disk operations, if your system tends to lock up or crash, you may want to consider disabling this feature. If your system locks or crashes before the cached data was written to hard disk, the data is lost forever.
• Windows 3.11 for Workgroups (WFW):
  • This might involve a bit of work. The first thing you'll need to do get Win32s from Microsoft if you haven't already. Even though there is an option in WFW to use 32-bit disk access without Win32s, WFW doesn't actually run 32-bit until you get Win32s and install it. It's a free update; do yourself a favor and download it. After installation, you'll still need to enable to features by going to the Control Panel and Double clicking on the Enhanced Icon. Click on Virtual Memory, then Change (this is a good time to make your swap file permanent as well. Temporary swap files slows down system performance), and enable 32-bit disk access as well as 32-bit file access. If you have 16 megs or above, use 2048K for your file cache. It'll greatly improve your system performance. If you have 8 megs or below, 512K or 256K would probably be best.
  • After saving and restarting windows, you should check to see if everything is running 32-bit by going back to the Enhanced Icon and clicking on Virtual Memory. If it still says using 16-bit, then you'll need to do some further trouble shooting. Note: The FASTDISK driver that comes with WFW is old and does not handle drive sizes larger than 504 megs. If your drive size is larger than 504 megs, you'll have to use the drivers that came with your hard drive. If you don't have any drivers or disks, you'll need to contact the manufacturer and get the drivers. Another reason that everything is still running 16-bit is that IFSHLP.SYS is not loaded in your config.sys. You can load it by adding DEVICE (or DEVICEHIGH) = C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS in your CONFIG.SYS.
• Windows 3.1:
  • I don't know. Email me if you know. I'm not even sure you can run it 32-bit. As far as I know, it's not possible. It's probably about time you upgraded your OS.

One of the slower component of your computer is your hard drive (slowest is your modem, then your CD-ROM). To greatly improve your system performance, you should run some type of disk caching utility. DOS and Windows (all versions) come with its own disk caching utilities. They cache the most often used and need data in RAM so that when the data is needed, it is read from RAM instead of your hard drive (thus bypassing the slowest part of your computer).

• SMARTDRIVE: This is the disk caching utility that comes with DOS. It is 16-bit, and it works fairly well. There is no performance gain after 2048K and is the default size.
  • If you are running Win9x, you should disable smartdrive because it interferes with Win9x's disk caching utility. You can disable SMARTDRIVE by removing the entire line containing SMARTDRV.EXE in your AUTOEXEC.BAT. If you quit to DOS, you can enable SMARTDRIVE by typing SMARTDRV /X
  • If you're running Windows 3.11 for Workgroups (WFW), you should disable SMARTDRIVE while running windows. WFW also comes with its own disk caching utility (FASTDISK). You can do this by adding 2048 0 after SMARTDRV.EXE in your AUTOEXEC.BAT. If you have 8 megs of RAM or less, you might want to add 256 0 instead (if you find that your favorite games are giving you insufficient memory errors).
• FASTDISK: This is the disk caching utility that comes with WFW. To change the cache settings, you'll need to double click on the Enchanced Icon in your Control Panel. Click on Virtual Memory, then Change. You'll find the file cache size at the bottom of the window. The optimal setting is 2048K (I'm guessing; most caching utilities' perfomance tapers after a certain point) if you have 16 megs of RAM or above. and 256K if you have 8 megs of RAM or below. NOTICE: If you have only 8 megs of RAM or below, you will notice a signicant speed DECREASE in disk performance if you assign more than 256k (maybe 512k) of cache to FASTDISK. The reason is that windows starts using virtual memory (your hard drive) to cache your hard drive data. Doesn't make much sense does it? The truth is that if you only have 8 megs of RAM, you should probably stick to 256k of disk cache (or buy more RAM).