System Hardware
Not every performance problem can be fixed from within Windows. Here are some things you can do to your hardware to improve performance.
Managing IRQ Priority
Most components directly attached to your motherboard, including PCI slots, IDE controllers, serial ports, the keyboard port, and even your motherboard's CMOS, have individual IRQs assigned to them. An IRQ, or interrupt request line, is a numbered hardware line over which a device can interrupt the normal flow of data to the processor, allowing the device to function. Windows XP allows you to prioritize one or more IRQs (which translate to one or more hardware devices), potentially improving the performance of those devices:
Start by opening the System Information utility (msinfo32.exe) and navigating to
System Summary\Hardware Resources\IRQsto view the IRQs in use on your system.Next, open the Registry Editor (see Chapter 3) and navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl.Create a new DWORD value in this key, and call it
IRQ#Priority, where#is the IRQ of the device you wish to prioritize (e.g.,IRQ13Priorityfor IRQ 13, which is your numeric processor).Double-click the new value, and enter a number for its priority. Enter
1for top priority,2for second, and so on. Make sure not to enter the same priority number for two entries, and keep it simple by experimenting with only one or two values at first. Some users have gotten good results prioritizing IRQ 8 (for the system ...
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