Increase the Disk Cache Size to Improve Performance in Windows

When you access a file on the hard drive, Windows will store this file in the disk cache. When this file will be asked again, the organizer will consult the cache to see if a copy exists. If so, this copy will be used to replace the existing file on the disk access time will be greatly reduced! We will increase the size of the cache to improve disk performance.

This is a kind of trick to the VCACHE for Windows 9x, it allows to authorize the disk cache to take a larger share in RAM.

If you have at least 256 MB of RAM, here's how to increase the disk cache:

• Run regedit (Start, Run ..., type regedit).
  
  
• Go to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Session Manager \ Memory Management
  
  
• Create or edit the DWORD value by assigning LargeSystemCache value 1 (0 is the default).
  
  
• Just leave regedit, and the setting will apply the next time you start the PC.

Warning! Do not apply this trick with the ATI Catalyst drivers due to a bug in these drivers. This bug is apparently solved in version 4.4 of Catalyst (to take with tweezers) ...

Note: this is for For NT4 / Win2000 / WinXP