Skip to Content
Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks, 2nd Edition
book

Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks, 2nd Edition

by David A. Karp
November 2004
Intermediate to advanced
672 pages
19h 43m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Windows XP Annoyances for Geeks, 2nd Edition

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:

  1. Start by opening the System Information utility (msinfo32.exe) and navigating to System Summary\Hardware Resources\IRQs to view the IRQs in use on your system.

  2. Next, open the Registry Editor (see Chapter 3) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl.

  3. 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., IRQ13Priority for IRQ 13, which is your numeric processor).

  4. Double-click the new value, and enter a number for its priority. Enter 1 for top priority, 2 for 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 ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Windows XP in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Windows XP in a Nutshell, Second Edition

David A. Karp, Tim O'Reilly, Troy Mott

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596008767Errata Page