Improvements have also been made to the Shut Down procedure to accelerate it.

Accelerated application launch

Application launch time has been improved too. This will only work if you convert your drive to FAT32. The FAT32 format is an improved file system (32-bit as opposed to 16-bit) and allows the hard drives to be formatted into 4Kb clusters. Using these smaller clusters, files can be placed physically closer together on the drive, thus reducing the time taken to load. An invisible program called Taskmon.exe runs constantly and watches any Create_Process routine so that any time an application is loaded it can track which files are loaded by the application. Then when the Maintenance Wizard or Disk Defragmenter are run, the log file feeds the list to the defragmentation engine and the application files can be re-ordered on the hard drive so that all application files are sequential, thus improving loading time. See also improved memory management to see how Windows 98 uses less memory when running applications.

Windows Scripting Host

Scripts - mini-programs that are 'hosted' by other programs - are one of Microsoft's key developer technologies. You can write scripts to control the Office applications (Word, Excel etc), and the Internet Explorer browser. The Windows Scripting Host (WSH) brings scripting to the Windows desktop, allowing you to execute script files by double-clicking on them as if they were .EXE file programs. See Windows Scripting Host.

MapCache and WinAlign

Windows 98 also includes improved memory management that means that applications actually use less memory than under Windows 95. MapCache and WinAlign work together to provide this improved system.

MapAlign ensures that EXE and DLL files that are aligned on 4K boundaries (see accelerated application launch and FAT32) don't occupy two pages in memory (one in the cache and one in the process's virtual address space as they do under Windows 95). Upon a page fault from a Win32 based application, the page is copied from disk to cache (Vcache) and the process's virtual address space creates just a pointer to the 4K cache page. The code is now executed from the cache and more code remains resident. In order to retain optimal caching while reducing memory usage, the cache grows dynamically. The result is less time to fault in pages (so quicker program execution) and less memory usage.

As many files are compiled with 512 byte boundaries, MapAlign cannot deal with them. To get around this WinAlign is a small executable that will restructure an executable's file's sections so they are aligned on 4K boundaries. It does this by writing a new section table after the headers and then writes out the file's sections with each one starting on a 4K boundary. The new section table is updated with this information and restoration information is stored in the Registry.

The result is a slightly larger file, but one that can use MapCache's features. Certain files cannot be re-aligned and as there is no way of checking for these files, WinAlign uses an include list of files it can re-align. At the end of the setup for Windows 98, WinAlign is run and checks for Microsoft Office. If it is found, it re-aligns the files. It is also added to the Scheduled Tasks, as Tune-up Application Start, to be run every month. Checking and aligning files are both quick. Application developers are being told of the new development so that future versions can comply with the new method. All the Windows 98 binaries come prealigned.

ASF file format

Windows 98 ships with NetShow, because it is part of the Internet Explorer 4 suite. This means that support for the Active Streaming Format, already used to send multimedia across the WWW, is supported. Microsoft has already announced that it considers ASF and its descendents (new versions have already been announced as updates to Windows 98 before the OS is even released) to be the new default multimedia format for Windows, replacing the AVI file format, though that is still supported with the ActiveMovie player.

Lower CPU usage with CD-ROM drives

The processor time used when accessing files from the CD-ROM can be reduced from 30% to 10% which will not increase transfer time, but will free up processor time so that a significant improvement should be seen in applications that are both CPU and CD-ROM intensive. Most notably, of course, this means games. This is possible by use of the DMA access mode, which requires appropriate hardware.

Scandisk improvements

Protected mode Scandisk has been improved so that it is faster, and real-mode has had improvements made to its caching scheme. The result, according to Microsoft, is a 50%+ improvement to times on FAT32 drives, so that re-starting after an improper shut down has been accelerated. See also Accelerated boot time.

Registry enhancements

The key node table for the Registry is now kept in compressed form in memory so it uses less memory. This is done by the Registry Checker looking for free space in the Registry, and compacting the space if it is excessive. The effect is that it reduces the amount of memory used by the registry and improves boot time.

Another change is the way in which the Registry is updated. Under Windows 95, if a change was made the entire Registry was read in order to calculate a new checksum. Under Windows 98 only changed data is touched in order to re-calculate.

Windows Driver Model (WDM)

The WDM is a new standard for the drivers that are used by Windows to access hardware. It is a unified system which means that any drivers written for hardware to run under Windows 98 will also run under Windows NT 5 when it is released, and vice versa. It has been implemented by adding the kernel from the NT Services (a part step to the re-unification of disparate Windows flavours) through a virtual device driver (called, appropriately, NTKERN.VXD). This method allows Windows 98 to use all the legacy Windows 95 drivers to access hardware and be forward compatible with WDM drivers.

DirectX 5