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Tweaking Windows 98

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Although this is probably the most important Control Panel of them all, Microsoft has left it pretty much alone. All the main tabs remain the same with the exception of an addition to the IDE drive handling in the Device Manager tab. This now enables you to turn on DMA access for IDE drives so as to be able to get much better access from them and reduce CPU usage. This is simply enabled by one tick box in the drive's Properties. If you enable this on an incompatible drive, there is the possibility of data loss. See also IDE improvements
The only other change is made in the Performance tab where some improvements are available, if applicable, in the File Systems advanced tab. You can now set Windows to check for floppy drives added every time it boots and under Removable Disk set it to use write-behind caching for optimal performance from removable drives. The option to disable this write behind caching for all drives still exists in the Troubleshooting tab.

The other tabs are identical to Windows 95. General gives an overall picture of the system being run, Device Manager gives access to all the hardware and drivers used on the system (this is not covered here because you need to be an expert to use this; if you don't know how, don't touch it), hardware profiles allows you to set up different profiles for times when different hardware may be attached to your machine. The Performance tab, other than the documented changes remains the same, with an overview of the system resources being used and an indication of any problems that may be stopping your PC from performing at top rate. The three advanced tabs remain for setting file system usage - read ahead on CD-ROMs and disk drives, the slider control for hardware acceleration of graphics and the Virtual Memory button for adjusting the swap file virtual memory (a part of the hard drive that is used as virtual RAM when physical RAM is used up). Swap file usage has been reduced in Windows 98 thanks to improved memory management. See also Advanced Audio Settings
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