OS/2 Warp

 

OS/2 Warp By Christopher Relf

Achieving warp speed

Some of the installation defaults for OS/2 enhance appearance rather than performance, and by changing various parts of the system configuration, you can get your system performing at warp speed.

Before we start
Some of the changes suggested this month could be dangerous for your system -- if you make a mistake, you may be left with a crippled system and OS/2 may not start at all. You should make a system backup of any sensitive files and create an OS/2 archive. To do so, right-click on the desktop and select Properties. Then, on the Archive page of the Properties notebook, enable 'Create archive at each system startup'. You'll need to restart your system for a backup to take place (it could take several minutes depending on your system) and then disable this feature.

Faster startups
To dramatically decrease startups, you need to look at archiving. If you leave it on all the time, it slows down the boot process immensely, and creates the risk of replacing useful archives with corrupt ones. For this reason, it's good sense to only archive when your system is healthy, so you will have a useful point to retreat to if it all goes awry. If you like to archive more often, it is more useful to use an archiving utility that allows you to select the files that you want to back up and also when to do it, rather than archiving the whole system at every startup.
When you boot OS/2, the system restarts programs by default that were active the last time the system was shut down. If you like this feature, but on the odd occasion don't want all of the objects relaunching, you can hold down Ctrl-Shift-F1 after the driver load screen until the desktop appears (you may need to hold them down for a few seconds). If you'd rather a more permanent solution, remove the PROGRAMS switch from the SET AUTOSTART line of your CONFIG.SYS file. You can play around with other items in the SET AUTOSTART line, but don't delete the FOLDERS switch -- this automatically opens any folders that were open when you last shut down and the OS/2 desktop is classified as a folder object.

A faster desktop
The default folder view for the desktop is the slowest possible choice. To open folders faster, go to the Icon View page of the folder's Properties notebook, and change 'As placed' to something else (for example, 'Multiple columns'). If you don't particularly need a graphical representation of your objects, then change the Icon display to Small Size or Invisible. Rather than setting each folder individually, you can make universal changes in the Folder template.
Bitmaps as folder backgrounds can be useful, but if they are of no use, open the desktop Properties notebook, go to the Background page, select 'Color only', and adjust the colour to your choice. If you have a system that supports only 256 or fewer colours, then select 'Solid color' for even better performance. Another almost useless setting is the folder animation. To switch it off, open System Setup, then System and Window. To streamline it even further, you can disable the system sounds as well -- open System Setup, then Sound.

Speeding up system usage
WarpGuide cue cards can be helpful for beginners, especially those that are used to other operating systems, but they can quickly become a nuisance. To disable them, open Assistance Centre, then WarpGuide, Properties and turn off the 'Assist Me . . .' checkbox. Rather then simply disabling the cue cards, you can fully uninstall them using the System Selective Uninstall utility.

Online prompts
Although useful in the US, the online registration utility that pops up periodically can be a real nuisance for the rest of us. To uninstall it, open the Inventory object from X:\OS2\INSTALL\Installed Features, where X:\ is your OS/2 boot drive. From this, uninstall Art and be rid of that dancing elephant forever.

Don't hear voices
If you don't use VoiceType, uninstalling it is a good idea, as it uses a little system overhead, even when not in use. You can remove it either with Selective Uninstall, or by using the OS2\INSTALL\Installed Features\Inventory. After removing VoiceType, you'll have to manually edit your CONFIG.SYS to remove the VoiceType directory as well.

Next month we'll continue our look at optimising your Warp system for speed, including tips on video and disk drivers, temporary objects and speeding up Windows support.

Christopher Relf can be contacted via email at christopher.relf@mBox.com.au. For a complete list of APC OS/2 columns, see http://apcmag.com/


© Australian Consolidated Press 2001. All rights reserved.