Crazy man tweak

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 2:29 am

I just put my TCP/IP protocol driver on my ramdisk (tcpip.sys) edited the nesaccary registry values and woot the net is faster as a result but beware this is for CRAZZY people only

Cornbread · Post by **Cornbread** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 2:37 am

what exactly r u talking about? im crazy, if your serious...i will try it, but i never heard of this.

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 2:55 am

In Windows 2000 what controls all TCP/IP functions is a service called TCPIP now that service is the file tcpip.sys I have made a ramdisk with a bootable image file with the tcpip.sys file on it and have edited my registry to reflect where that tcpip.sys drive is. Since RAM has very much lower latencies then hard disks this speeds up the net cause it can access the protcol driver very fast.

glc1 · Post by **glc1** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 3:06 am

cablenut, did you see a noticeable increase in performance?

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 3:09 am

For me yes

dannjr · Post by **dannjr** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 5:09 am

Ya baby worked for me to

All the Information to this thread can be found here !

Windows 2000 http://dslnuts.com/ramdisk.shtml
As written and supported by Cablenut, Philip and others.

Windows 98 and 98SE here.
http://dslnuts.com/ramdrive.shtml

Both are up to date and this thread and Ramdrives are set just for the OS´s listed. WinXP will be supported in the future.

Thanks for the support
Dannjr
Cablenut team

Aaladar · Post by **Aaladar** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 4:32 pm

Is there a webpage that shows you how to do this and if so does it work with Windows ME?

Lobo · Post by **Lobo** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 4:37 pm

Yes please tell us, I can change my MTU back from 7500, RWIN 999999. don't keep it a secret, hehe

dannjr · Post by **dannjr** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 4:42 pm

So far since it was just found it will only work on win2k...But we're lookin...

Yes please tell us, I can change my MTU back from 7500, RWIN 999999. don't keep it a secret, hehe

Lobo you missed a 9 in the Rwin, and the MTU could be as High as 9000 this way you can have matching numbers...

Lobo · Post by **Lobo** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 4:52 pm

We better hush, looks like we don't have as many stars, hehe

dannjr · Post by **dannjr** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 9:14 pm

It works great with paging when doing regular surfing and pops the download screen right away pings dropped because well less latency for me

[ 02-06-2001: Message edited by: dannjr ]

Brent · Post by **Brent** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 9:22 pm

LOL Cablenut I have to say that is very smart thinking!

I have never thought of doing that before, but thinking about it I can see how it would logically make TCP/IP faster

Neato!

what was your speed increase, how much?

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 9:26 pm

I haven't done any real testing yet I can tell you ping time and response time are greatly reduced.

t · Post by t » Tue Feb 06, 2001 9:53 pm

OK, I found that tcpip file now where exactly do I ram this disk???

jsiu · Post by **jsiu** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 9:53 pm

this sounds good!

but how do you make a ramdisk? is there somewhere in win2k that does this? or one need a 3rd party software? (if so, which is the best?)

second question: where is the registry entry to change the location of the file?

thanks

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 10:29 pm

Guys guys guys hold ON

this is a rather long, and serious process to do this. I will put up a guide after I get V4.0 out the door. Thanks

Lobo · Post by **Lobo** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 10:55 pm

Dear Mr. Cablenut, where do you ram the disk, and be nice

jsiu · Post by **jsiu** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:01 pm

com'on please answer the question.. i don't think the process is THAT long...

Post by **Philip** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:12 pm

Sounds interesting... Here is some info:

The Ramdisk driver can be downloaded from here:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q257/4/05.ASP

1. Extract the inf file from the exe
2. From Control Panel: Add New Hardware > Choose From List > Other Device > Have Disk > Point to the inf file... You should have a Drive Z: after all that.

The path in the Registry for tcpip.sys is:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\
ImagePath=System32\DRIVERS\tcpip.sys

dannjr · Post by **dannjr** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:15 pm

Guy's the process is THAT long... ANd its not a simple .reg file away... It is quite involved and involves more than you think...
We have tested the thing on latency but with it there may be stability issues.. I havnt seen any yet but anything could happen...
My OS is still working....

jsiu · Post by **jsiu** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:16 pm

*sigh* i suppose i must wait then...

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:31 pm

Philip while that is good info it is not entirley correct. If you just create a RamDisk with the NT ramdisk service and put your tcpip.sys in there , then edit the tcpip service path. You will need to reboot and upon reboot you will lose all the info you had in that ramdisk. This is why you need a 3rd party application that loads a specific image file with the tcpip.sys file on it.

Post by **Philip** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:45 pm

K, sounds right... However a simple script that executes at boot time and copies tcpip.sys to the Ramdisk might take care of that.

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:49 pm

Yes a login script in Win2k would do that either way it is a long and tedious process. I also forgot about adding the AFD sys driver to this is important to networking activites I will tell you when I get back how it is.. *if I get back

[ 02-06-2001: Message edited by: cablenut ]

Post by **Philip** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:52 pm

Hehe... I think I have it figured out, I'd test it now too, just that I'm doing other stuff and can't reboot.

jsiu · Post by **jsiu** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:56 pm

hurry!!!

i think if i click refresh anymore times IE would just die....

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Tue Feb 06, 2001 11:59 pm

Well defintaly afd.sys, and tcpip.sys speeds things up maybe not on the DOWNLOAD side but other things like ping, response, basically anything that depends on time it speeds up.

jsiu · Post by **jsiu** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 12:00 am

cablenut, what RamDrive software do you recommand? i.e. the one you are using right now?

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 12:15 am

Ok here goes the guide since you guys are begging for it:

This is for Windows 2000 only. Only Windows 2000 has the advanced service, and memory managment to run this.

This guide will show you how to put your TCPIP, and WINSOCK services onto a ramdisk to speed things up

NOTE: I'm not sure on how stable this is yet, but I can tell you I haven't noticed any crashes.

1) We will need a program that creates a ramdisk for us. The one I use is RamDiskNT

2) It can be found here http://www.jlajoie.com/ramdskNT/rdNTv12e.exe

3) Now once you have downloaded, installed, and have it running we will need to configure the settings for the ramdisk.

4)

Here we have our ramdisk configuration tool.

5) Use the settings I have on there except you can make any size you want under 'Disk Size' just as long as it is big enough to fit the .sys drivers which are about 600KB total.

6) After you have configured everything according to the picture. You can now start the driver. It will then place the ramdisk at whatever you named it in my computer. My ramdisk is z:\

7) Now we need to get the sys files onto the ramdisk. we will need 'afd.sys', and 'tcpip.sys' they are by default in C:\WINNT\system32\drivers

8) right click on the file and go to copy and paste them into the ramdisk.

9) Now we have the sys files on the ramdisk open your ramdiskNT tool up again and go to 'Save Disk Image' this will save a disk image to c:\ramdskNT.img by default.

10) So now we have a copy of the ramdisk in .img format. We now need to hack up the RamDisk Tools registry options.

11) Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\ramdskNT\Parameters

12) Here we will see several registry entries. We want to edit 'LoadImageOnStart' to a value '1'

13) We want to Edit the 'SharewareKey' to hex: ffffffff

14) Note: if you do not edit the Shareware key ramdiskNT (unregistered) will not load image files on start.

15) Now we will need to point the services to the new path of the sys files.

16) for the afd.sys driver we will need to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\AFD

17) Modify the ImagePath key to refelect where the afd.sys is on the ramdisk. I have mine set to \??\Z:\AFD.sys

18) Note: the \??\ before drive name is crucial for it to work

19) Now onto tcpip.sys go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Tcpip

20) Modify the ImagePath key to reflect where the new tcpip.sys file is. I.e. mine is set to \??\Z:\tcpip.sys

21) You have now configured your computer to run the TCPIP and AFD services on the ramdisk instead of the hard drive

22) Note if you run the config tool after you edit the shareware key you will need to edit the shareware key again.

23)reboot the machine If TCPIP or AFD doesn't start up you did something wrong I suggest just going back and editing those image path values to where they were. You can try and starting it in command line. start > run > cmd. Type net start tcpip, and net start afd

[ 02-07-2001: Message edited by: cablenut ]

dannjr · Post by **dannjr** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 12:30 am

NOTE: Just in case
At least BACK UP THE REGISTRY KEYS BEFORE YOU MODIFY

jsiu · Post by **jsiu** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 12:41 am

side note: the lowest you can set the ram drive to is 33MB, anything less and it will not be formatted to FAT32.

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 1:04 am

Yes I just tried this I set it down to 16MB while it was trying to use my 128MB image file it kept bluescreening in Windows so I had to boot from bootdisk and remove the ramdiskNT service from the OS and restart and set it up all again this time with a 33MB disk.

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 1:05 am

I wouldn't recommend a size of 128MB it eats to much of the memory pool and causes other problems. 33MB is good for systems with 256MB of ram or more.

[ 02-07-2001: Message edited by: cablenut ]

jsiu · Post by **jsiu** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 1:29 am

I know this has been said before, but please remeber to backup your registry.

I have just returned from a semi-heart attack trying to use this tweak... with the RAM drive on and the registry edited, i rebooted the machine only to find that I have lost my video... as in, i can see NOTHING on the screen after window boots.

I had to go into safe mode and import my backup registry to get the system back. I don't know why this tweak doesn't work for me... but i don't think i want to try again... just yet.

Jesse23 · Post by **Jesse23** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 1:52 am

w00t! Once again Dannjr and cablenut you guys are DA MAN!! I never have seen web pages load soo fast! And my pings are lower!

Thanx a Bunch guys!

Virgil · Post by **Virgil** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 2:26 am

Hmm, maybe there is a way to do this the Windows 98SE way? I think you have something serious here, Cablenut

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 2:58 am

Me and phillip are working on a better way. If we can get it to do what we want it will be much better.

cablenut · Post by **cablenut** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 3:30 am

Ok guys we have figured it out!!

NOTE: This will slow down the startup process by 3 Minutes or more due to it has to start TCP/IP services upon startup. Make sure to BACKUP your registry before doing this.

The ramdisk program we will use is:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/win2000ddk/sample01/1/NT5/EN-US/Ramdisk.exe

MS Ram Disk

1) Download this file and extract the contents somewhere.

2) The contents include source files, the sys file, and the .inf file

3) Control Panel > Add New Hardware > Choose From List > Other Device > Have Disk > Point to the inf file...

4) We then need to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Ramdisk\Parameters

5)

6) The only thing we want to worry about is 'DiskSize' and 'DriveLetter'

7) 1MB is 1,048,576 bytes so if you wanted 2MB ramdisk you would enter a decmial value of 2,097,152. Drive letter of course means what drive letter the RamDisk makes itself.

8) So the next time we reboot our ramdisk will be whatever we made it. I made mine 1MB and Drive Letter Z:\

9) So before I rebooted I would also have to due some other things.

10) First I need to edit the TCPIP, and AFD ImagePath entries like this:

The \??\ before the drive letter is crucial.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFD
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip

In those key is where the 'imagepath' key is we want to edit these to reflect where are new sys files will be on our ramdisk.

11) Now we need to make a login script to copy the needed sys files and start the services. Create a new text file and the require text is:

@echo on

Echo Starting TCP/IP Services

copy c:\winnt\System32\DRIVERS\tcpip.sys r:\
copy c:\winnt\System32\DRIVERS\afd.sys r:\
net start tcpip
net start afd

notice on the copy command I have r:\ after it change this to whatever drive you made it. Save the text file and rename it as login.cmd.

12) Now we need to auto start the login.cmd file. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and create a new string value name it whatever you want. Modify it to reflect where your .cmd file is you just made.

13) Now we have everything ready to restart and start the process.

14) when you reboot and login. It will then run that script file. It will TAKE a long time to start TCPIP probably from 3-5Minutes. After it runs the script file you should be set and able to work fastly on the internet.

Prey521 · Post by **Prey521** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 3:39 am

Sweet Cablenut and Philip, thank God that I'm still up at this hour and am the first to see it

hoov · Post by **hoov** » Wed Feb 07, 2001 11:10 am

Cablenut & Dannjr you guys are incredible !! Just a quick question. If you had to make a guess, how much % better performance do you think this ramdisk tweak will provide?

Thanks again,
(Your Win2K tweak rocks)

SG Broadband Community

Crazy man tweak

Crazy man tweak

Ramdisk and Ramdrive