Guide to SystemboosterXP

[spasserfan]

Please note that the guide is not completely finished (but close :P ), however everything you need to know on how to use the program is explained. There might be typing errors because I had a little green misprint gremlin running around :sneaky: , but I have skimmed the guide and corrected the worst of them :dance2:

Well here it is… Enjoy! :P

A trial version of SystemboosterXP can be downloaded here (thanks to Zeus_Hunt), the :pirate: has been uploaded to MediaFire.com. The sharecode is /?sharekey=b49e56c8617ca6c3ab1eab3e9fa335caa5c37e6b2c266255 (as stated in his post )

Contents:

1.0 - Introduction

2.0 - Theory

3.0 - Comparison

• 3.2 - Vista Superfetch
  3.3 - eBoostr
  

4.0 - Important notice

5.0 - Improvements

6.0 - Configuration

• 6.1 - AUTO profile
  6.2 - Custom profiles
  
  

7.0 - Changes made to the guide

♦ 1.0 Introduction

SystemboosterXP is a program that utilizes otherwise unused RAM to improve performance. This is done by caching files in memory before they are used. This improves application launch and usage because you do not have to wait for the files to be loaded from the much slower hard disk to the memory (because they are already there). SystemboosterXP does this without eating up all available RAM. You will therefore still have free RAM to launch any program that is not prefetched without a degraded performance (unlike Vista's Superfetch, see comparison below).

SystemboosterXP is a READ ONLY program and DOES NOT ALTER ANY FILES other than its own settings and statistic files.

Here is a list of examples from disktrix telling you what systembooster could performance with:

• Program Launching - SystemBooster helps to launch your programs up to 50% faster - almost as fast as if it was already cached in memory on the first launch.
  
• Internet Browsing - SystemBooster helps read files in your temporary internet folder faster thereby speeding up your internet browsing
  
• Simple Folder Browsing - especially when you are browsing a folder with a lot of files - all happens faster. No more waiting for those thumbnails to draw as you browse big image collections.
  
• Defragging - SystemBooster significantly reduces defragging times.
  
• Game Playing - SystemBooster helps launch games faster and makes a disk intensive game (or any application for that matter) perform faster. Even very highly disk intensive games such as flight simulators and disk intensive photo-sceneries are substantially improved.
  
• Windows XP Desktop - everything happens faster on your desktop. No more watching and waiting for those desktop icons to draw.
  
• File Searching - files are found up to 50% sooner when doing a Windows Search.
  
• All to name just a few
  

♦ 2.0 Theory

The theory of why and how Systembooster is working is partly explained in configuration section. For further explanation about theory of the hard disk I recommend reading the theory section of the Ultimatedefrag manual found here

Here comes some theory written by Zeus_Hunt in this post

The biggest bottleneck that slows all PC's down is your hard disk. It's the only "mechanical" part of your PC and thousands of times slower than the rest of your system. As your processor completes tasks it still has to wait for your hard disk to perform its part of the deal. The overall result is the chugging away of your hard disk and your system spends most of its time waiting for it to catch up.

Disk Time is a measurement, in computer lingo, of the amount of work your hard disk does - just like CPU time. SystemBoosterXP works to reduce your disk time - it helps your hard disk to complete its tasks faster! SystemBooster uses a very simple (embarrassingly simple actually!) fundamental technique that's native to your system's operation. Exactly how it does it - SystemBooster is based upon the principle of "opportunistic prefetching". Most of your RAM is otherwise sitting there unused and wasted.

SystemBooster uses that otherwise unused and wasted memory to store and cache certain prefetched data. So it's already in memory when needed and the hard disk does up to 2/3 less work when data files are called for by programs and applications. When the SystemTray icon is animating, all SystemBooter is doing is reading and prefetching data. That's why it is 100% safe!

Your PC - even with 512Mb RAM has a LOT of spare resources to take advantage of. Go to your Task Manager now. Click on the performance tab. Look at your Physical memory - how much is FREE? 150Mb, 300Mb, 700Mb? Your system is in this state with so much memory available most of the time.

You can create custom profiles for specific games and applications that you want to run or just a default, across-the-board, complete system boost. It works in the background to boost your system and uses between 2 Mb and 50Mb RAM (was around 2Mb on my system), depending on how many files on your hard drive(s) and less than 1% of CPU time. The RAM it uses is taken back by Windows any time Windows needs it back. And that's a rare occurrence anyway.

Note from me: My memory usage is also very low. I think the 50 Mb memory usage is rare, and if you use this guide you exclude all unneeded files/folders from the cache, and therefore minimizing the memory usage.

♦ 3.0 Comparison

♦ 3.1 Vista Superfetch

(Section not completed, more info to come)

Vista's Superfetch is prefetching files until every last piece of memory is used. This will of course degrade performance if you launch a program that is not prefetched to memory already or a memory intensive application, because windows then have to free up memory by paging the prefetched files. SystemboosterXP is using very little memory, and barely noticeable compared to Superfetch.

Another feature that SystemboosterXP has that Superfetch misses is the ability to create custom profiles.

♦ 3.2 eBoostr

(Section not completed, I am still testing eBoostr, and will update section later)

eBoostr has a nice option to specify the amount of memory to occupy, however I haven't yet noticed any improvements despite that I am using a lot more memory for cache than SystemboosterXP used (again SystemboosterXP has low memory usage in comparison, and might also give better performance). I will be testing if eBoostr is building statistics over time that will improve performance later.

Another feature that SystemboosterXP has that eBoostr misses is the ability to create custom profiles.

♦ 4.0 Important notice:

First of all, it is very important to check if the last access timestamps (from now on "LAT") are turned on, otherwise SystemboosterXP is unable to build statistics to prefetch from. To check do the following:

To check whether Last Access Time Stamping is ON or OFF - Go to the Command Prompt (START => ALL PROGRAMS => ACCESSORIES => COMMAND PROMPT) in Windows and type the following:

FSUTIL BEHAVIOR QUERY DISABLELASTACCESS (then hit Enter)

If it returns a value of 0 or "not set" then you do not need to do anything.

If it returns a value of 1 then you need to enter the following:

FSUTIL BEHAVIOR SET DISABLELASTACCESS 0 (then hit enter). (This will enable last access timestamps)

A little info about last access timestamps:

Some antivirus programs and desktop search and indexing programs update the Last Access times of files that they scan and index. Technically this contravenes Microsoft's suggested practice for updating Last Access time stamps since it is not a true "normal use" access. In this instance we suggest that you lobby the maker of your antivirus program or search program to have their products not alter the last access time stamp when doing their scans of your files.

The above only applies to the part of the programs scanning the entire hard disk such an antivirus on-demand scanner, therefore this does not apply to the on-access scanner, because those files are accessed by another program that has already changed the timestamps (unless it scans on-access of another scanner that preserves LAT, and afterwards changes the LATs).

If you use a program that does not preserve last access timestamps, you should search for an alternative or if you really need the program you could disable last access timestamps and reboot before you are scanning your hard disk, and afterwards enable the last access timestamps and reboot .

To help identify programs that do not preserve last access timestamps, I have started this thread

If any of the above does not help, then you could use a custom profile as the default profile, but you would then have to manually choose which files and folders to boost. It is much easier to use the AUTO profile, which also guarantees that the list with files to boost is up to date with the programs you really use.

Here is how you can check if you are using a program that does not preserve last access timestamps:

First a little note from disktrix:

If your flist.db grows to sizes greater than 4 Mb than you should reduce the Days Last Accessed setting. If that doesn't change the size of the flist.db and it is still large then either an antivirus program or indexing program such as Google Desktop Search is updating your last accessed date. Microsoft's recommended policies for programs changing the last access date implies that these programs should not update the last access date. It is not a "true" general use access of those files.

Since there is nothing that we can do with SystemBooster to overcome this since SystemBooster looks at last access we suggest that you use the "Custom" profile setting in SystemBooster.

The files flist.db is located in the program folder of systembooster (usually C:\programs\disktrix\systembooster 2). If the size of this file still is big after you have done the above and ensured that you have deselected all folders, which contain archive material (such as movies, music, compressed files and folders, folders boosted in a custom profile, etc.), then it is almost certain that you have a program that do not preserve last access timestamps.

If the file size of flist.db suddenly grows a lot, then you might have used a program not preserving LAT. This way you can test which programs are not preserving LAT and add them to the above list, this is the way I do it.

♦ 5.0 Improvements:

• 1. To increase the efficiency of SystemboosterXP you need to defragment your hard disk, I recommend using Ultimate defrag, for a guide on how to configure that program see the guide by Shought

here. A defragmented drive greatly reduces the time SystemboosterXP uses for prefetching.
2. The scan and prefetch time (when SystemboosterXP is caching files from disk to memory), will be further reduced if the directories is placed close to MFT (This is an option in Ultimatedefrag):

One important thing that UltimateDefrag does is to place your directories next to your MFT. This helps SystemBooster do its thing - dramatically.

3. Another improvement is to use a defragmenter that has the option to respect layout.ini (again UltimateDefrag has this). Since this place the most used applications at the most outer tracks of the hard disk (giving highest performance, for explanation see theory section), so that SystemboosterXP will be able to prefetch them faster.
4. Since all startup programs is launched at the same time upon boot this is slowing down the boot process. If SystemBoosterXP also is launched at boot and starts to prefetch (or maybe also scan for statistics) while all the other programs is starting up this will not speed up the boot. Therefore I recommend using Startup Faster! (Or a similar program) to set up a boot order, where systembooster is the last application that is launched. This should also improve the overall bootup time. Read more about Startup Faster! In software news here. I could, if you prefer it, write a little program (posting the program ans source) to delay the systembooster startup. Please leave me a comment if you want that.

♦ 6.0 Configuration:

SystemboosterXP uses profiles, the AUTO profile is used for normal use, and custom profiles are used for games or if you have a large program from which you want a smoother experience. To access profiles right click on the tray icon and select "manage boosting…"

Note: Sometimes systembooster is not saving your settings, but if you restart the program when you have made changes in settings, they are saved. So this issue seems to be because systembooster only saves changes when the program is closed, and when you shut down your computer it seems that systembooster is terminated instead of closed. Since the cache is still in the memory you will not have to wait for systembooster to build the cache again after the application restart, it is only refreshing the cache.

The pause feature

If you right click on the trayicon you can select "pause", this pauses any cache activity done by systembooster. You should use this feature if you running a disk intensive application.

♦ 6.1 AUTO profile

Edit the AUTO profile and tick "boost only selected folders", then tick all the drives you want SystemboosterXP to boost. Afterwards you have to untick all the folders containing archived files, large games (those are you boosting using a separate profile) and files you do not want to be cached (such as movies, music, compressed files and folders, folders boosted in a custom profile, etc., also see archive section in the Ultimatedefrag thread here. Otherwise you might get a degraded performance, because systembooster has to scan more of the hard disk to build statistics (takes longer time), and it might also cache files not used by the user (longer prefetch time and cached files, that won't be used).

Boost only files accessed xx days ago

This option specifies the period in which used files will be prefetched. Disktrix this to be between 7 and 45 days where 30 is a good ideal value (standard). Of course this depends on how often you use your computer, if you use your computer less frequently you could go for a higher value (for example if you only use your computer every 3 days this will give SystemboosterXP 10 days out of the 30 days to build statistics from).

Note: If you just reinstalled Windows or used a program not preserving LAT, you should set this to 1 day, and every day increase with one:

2 days from above event: Boost files accessed 1 day ago

3 days from above event: Boost files accessed 2 day ago

And so on until you reach your setting (or the standard value)

Scan period

Specifies the interval in which systembooster scan for statistics, let it be at 1 when you increase the above option as described. I suppose you could change it to a higher value when you have reached the ideal (or your setting) in the above option, but if the scanning does not bother you just leave it alone.

Boost only when system is idle

If ticked Systembooster will only boost when the system is in an idle state. I would recommend leaving this deselected because it is only the first boost that takes time. This is when systembooster is loading the files into memory, afterwards systembooster only has to "update" the files to prevent them from being unloaded from memory by the windows memory manager (old unused files are unloaded, but these files are unused because they are cached to be launched from memory instead of the disk). But if you think systembooster is slowing you down because of disk activity you can check this option.

Boost period

Determines how often systembooster will do subsequent boosts. 15 minutes is recommended as a good default value by disktrix. Each time systembooster boosts it caches the data to memory. Windows empties its cache on a oldest file used basis, so if the boost period is too long Systembooster's cache may be removed from memory and systembooster loses its effectiveness.

Keep this value between 5 and 20 minutes.

♦ 6.2 Custom profiles

Custom profiles are used if you have a specific program that you want to perform better or as a last option if you have problems with last access timestamps and therefore is unable to use the AUTO profile(see section 3.0: preparation of this guide).

Folders to boost

Here you choose the folders that your specific program uses, normally in the programs folder. Remember also to choose the settings folder(s) located in the documents and settings folder (usually placed in the folders named "application data" under every user folder, including the all users folder), since most programs and newer games stores their settings etc. there.

Profile name

Name says it all :dance2: . Give the profile a name :D

Boosting priority

Determines how much processor time that is devoted to the boosting. Below normal is the recommended option by disktrix; however you could choose low if you notice any problems.

Refresh rate

Determines how often systembooster refreshes the cache

High:

Systembooster will refresh the cache every minute

Normal:

Systembooster will refresh the cache every 2 minutes

Adaptive:

The refreshing frequency will be adapted based upon whether systembooster has detected that the files has been dumped from the memory cache.

Normal is recommended by disktrix. I guess this is because the adaptive feature means that systembooster has to reload the files from disk to memory, and therefore using resources. On normal setting systembooster will refresh the cache when the files are still in memory, and therefore not using resources, but only prevents the files from being unloaded from memory.

Boost only when system is idle

Use this feature only if you are experiencing degraded performance because Systembooster's I/O activity is slowing down I/O activity from other programs, and using the settings "low" in boosting priority and "adaptive" in Refresh rate did not help.

♦ 7.0 Changes made to the guide

17-06-2008: added this section, added a line to item 4 under 5.0 Improvements, added "pause section" under 6.0 configuratio

18-06-2008: Added Theory section written by Zeus_Hunt in this post,and a minor update in the layout

23-06-2008: Added a note on how to get the program referring to Zeus_Hunt's post

27-08-2008: Link and share code to program and fix added by Shought

[Marik]

what the..., is everyone making guides now :P

I'll re touche some of your post just to improve the looks of the tut, won't be changing nothing

[Sonar]

what the..., is everyone making guides now :lmao:

I'll re touche some of your post just to improve the looks of the tut, won't be changing nothing

Looks better now its cleaned up (Y)

[spasserfan]

what the..., is everyone making guides now ;)

I'll re touche some of your post just to improve the looks of the tut, won't be changing nothing

Thanks, I moved the comparison section out of the theory section and moved back the VistaSuperfetch and eBoostr sections as subsections, since they are not subsections to the theory section. That way you still get a nicer look, but with correct order :)

About the indentations, the reason why I did this to all text except the headings was to make it easier to scroll down looking at the left side to find the section to read. But if you prefer them removd I will just leave them as is.

I like the coloring you added thanks :lmao:

As far as I can see, that was what you did... any spell checking ? :)

[Marik]

As far as I can see, that was what you did... any spell checking ? :)

nope :lmao:

[shought]

I think you should enable 'Only boost when system is idle' whilst gaming :) Or encoding movies, stuff where your HD will be the bottleneck.

[spasserfan]

I will, but i will first have to use it for a week or so, right?

In theory this is extremely helpful, but i can't actually 'see' what files are in my memory can i? That's a bummer.

Well as Systembooster scans your hard disk for last access timestamps it should be able to give you a boost the first time you use the program. But if you just reinstalled windows (or used a program "violating" section 4.0 of this guide) the timestamps of all files will be set to almost the same time, and therefore you might not notice that big a difference, although you from day to day gradually gain an improvement (you might not notice the small difference from day to day, but maybe later you can see the difference before and after SystemboosterXP)

Concerning the second question: If you use Process Explorer by sysinternals (download here ) you will be able to at least see all the handles and dlls that systembooster (or any other application for that matter) loads. Actually process explorer is way better than the windows default taskmanager, and you can actually set it to replace that. Ilike that way I am able to see all the processes in a treeview, and all the extra info I can get. Furthermore it is showing you the exact memory usage of a process (taskmanager shows you a false value if you minimise a program, because it "think" that the programs then uses less memory)

[spasserfan]

I think you should enable 'Only boost when system is idle' whilst gaming :) Or encoding movies, stuff where your HD will be the bottleneck.

Well when doing very disc intensive operations, where you do not need you are not working on your computer you should use the pause option in systembooster

:frusty: Forgot to mention that :D

Conserning the gaming I wrote this:

Boost only when system is idle

Use this feature only if you are experiencing degraded performance because Systembooster's I/O activity is slowing down I/O activity from other programs, and using the settings "low" in boosting priority and "adaptive" in Refresh rate did not help.

And I will still recommend to check this feature only if you notice any lack, because boosting only if system is idle might cause the cached files to be either paged or unloaded from memory. The situations where the HDD is the bottleneck is those where you need the cached files the most since they can be read directly from the memory and therefore leaving more free I/O-activity the other ressources and therefore reduces the impact from the bottleneck

[shought]

The situations where the HDD is the bottleneck is those where you need the cached files the most since they can be read directly from the memory and therefore leaving more free I/O-activity the other ressources and therefore reduces the impact from the bottleneck

Totally agree with you on almost everything except for, you probably guessed, the above. Normally you would, but when encoding a movie or playing a game the game will have to wait for read time. The game will need to read a new level when you enter one. In normal situations you are totally right, but the one i mentioned was an exception :)

I was wrong about the movie, at least partially, because when encoding a movie the CPU tends to be the bottleneck.

[spasserfan]

The situations where the HDD is the bottleneck is those where you need the cached files the most since they can be read directly from the memory and therefore leaving more free I/O-activity the other ressources and therefore reduces the impact from the bottleneck

Totally agree with you on almost everything except for, you probably guessed, the above. Normally you would, but when encoding a movie or playing a game the game will have to wait for read time. The game will need to read a new level when you enter one. In normal situations you are totally right, but the one i mentioned was an exception :)

Would you be kind to explain this again? I do no think I am getting your point. When encoding a movie you are totally right, execpt the fact that you should not use "boost only when system is idle" but actually pause systemboosterXP.

When running a game you should use a custom profile to only boost the folders used by that game. As I wrote under custom profiles, you should use adaptive refresh rate, and if you still notice lack because of the bottleneck then you should use the option "boost only when system is idle". I wrote it this way because not all games will lack if you run systembooster without the option "boost only when system is idle", and that is a fact, because I have been playing games that way without any lack.

[shought]

Nvm, i agree ;) When you play a game, you should pause it :(

I misunderstood you, or you misunderstood me, i don't know anymore, i don't care :fun: All i want is firefox, but their damn site is offline :)!

Edit: Got it now :frusty: :D

[spasserfan]

Nvm, i agree :P When you play a game, you should pause it :D

I misunderstood you, or you misunderstood me, i don't know anymore, i don't care :P All i want is firefox, but their damn site is offline :P !

Edit: Got it now :P :D

Then I got it before you :P

Back on topic, I would not recommend pausing when playing a game (only if anything else does not help).

Her is what you should do: First if you notice anything with a particular game, set the boosting priority to low in the game's custom profile, if that does not help, select adaptive under refreshrate, if that did not help you either then you should select the boost only when system is idle option. As a last option if nothing of the above helped you is to pause systemboosterXP when playing the game.

[shought]

Used your guide now and SystemBooster seems to be working great! Firefox and Live Messenger load way faster, you can really see the difference.

I would not recommend pausing when playing a game (only if anything else does not help).

Her is what you should do: First if you notice anything with a particular game, set the boosting priority to low in the game's custom profile, if that does not help, select adaptive under refreshrate, if that did not help you either then you should select the boost only when system is idle option. As a last option if nothing of the above helped you is to pause systemboosterXP when playing the game.

Hmmmm, I just pause it whilst gaming. To avoid any lag at all, don't know if it helps, but I don't care.

They should however upgrade it man! The program. It's really old and could use some really helpful new features. Like and if, then option. If FEAR.exe is loaded then start loading ....(Maps, sounds) this way when you run a game you don't have to wait for maps to load. Or don't they get loaded in the RAM but totally in Video RAM?

And for example: I always start Firefox, right after Firefox I start Live Messenger and then Winamp. If I would configure it to start loading Winamp and Messenger files whilst loading Firefox already it would even give further improvement. But I don't really see a big chance of Systembooster being upgraded any time soon, because they're probably to busy with UD and it hasn't been updated since what, 2005?

[shought]

Lol, downloaded Process Explorer from Sysinternals and it shows me SystemBooster is only using 7.6 MB RAM and 40 MB Virtual Memory... That can't be right, can it? I can also see that my memory isn't filled up at all. There's loads of free memory.

My bad:

You can create custom profiles for specific games and applications that you want to run or just a default, across-the-board, complete system boost. It works in the background to boost your system and uses between 2 Mb and 50Mb RAM (was around 2Mb on my system), depending on how many files on your hard drive(s) and less than 1% of CPU time. The RAM it uses is taken back by Windows any time Windows needs it back. And that's a rare occurrence anyway.

Note from me: My memory usage is also very low. I think the 50 Mb memory usage is rare, and if you use this guide you exclude all unneeded files/folders from the cache, and therefore minimizing the memory usage.

But I feel like SystemBooster is not totally taking advantage of the resources provided by my PC :D Update it, update it! :dance2: There's also no option you can check to make it use more, or set a max/min value.

[spasserfan]

Used your guide now and SystemBooster seems to be working great! Firefox and Live Messenger load way faster, you can really see the difference.

(...)

Hmmmm, I just pause it whilst gaming. To avoid any lag at all, don't know if it helps, but I don't care.

They should however upgrade it man! The program. It's really old and could use some really helpful new features. Like and if, then option. If FEAR.exe is loaded then start loading ....(Maps, sounds) this way when you run a game you don't have to wait for maps to load. Or don't they get loaded in the RAM but totally in Video RAM?

And for example: I always start Firefox, right after Firefox I start Live Messenger and then Winamp. If I would configure it to start loading Winamp and Messenger files whilst loading Firefox already it would even give further improvement. But I don't really see a big chance of Systembooster being upgraded any time soon, because they're probably to busy with UD and it hasn't been updated since what, 2005?

[spasserfan]

Lol, downloaded Process Explorer from Sysinternals and it shows me SystemBooster is only using 7.6 MB RAM and 40 MB Virtual Memory... That can't be right, can it? I can also see that my memory isn't filled up at all. There's loads of free memory.

My bad:

You can create custom profiles for specific games and applications that you want to run or just a default, across-the-board, complete system boost. It works in the background to boost your system and uses between 2 Mb and 50Mb RAM (was around 2Mb on my system), depending on how many files on your hard drive(s) and less than 1% of CPU time. The RAM it uses is taken back by Windows any time Windows needs it back. And that's a rare occurrence anyway.

Note from me: My memory usage is also very low. I think the 50 Mb memory usage is rare, and if you use this guide you exclude all unneeded files/folders from the cache, and therefore minimizing the memory usage.

But I feel like SystemBooster is not totally taking advantage of the resources provided by my PC ;) Update it, update it! :w00t: There's also no option you can check to make it use more, or set a max/min value.

As I wrote under comparison, eBoostr has this nice feature, however I would prefer systembooster since it is using way less resources and actually giving a better result. But that is definetely something to add in a future version :afro:

[shought]

Used your guide now and SystemBooster seems to be working great! Firefox and Live Messenger load way faster, you can really see the difference.

(...)

Hmmmm, I just pause it whilst gaming. To avoid any lag at all, don't know if it helps, but I don't care.

They should however upgrade it man! The program. It's really old and could use some really helpful new features. Like and if, then option. If FEAR.exe is loaded then start loading ....(Maps, sounds) this way when you run a game you don't have to wait for maps to load. Or don't they get loaded in the RAM but totally in Video RAM?

And for example: I always start Firefox, right after Firefox I start Live Messenger and then Winamp. If I would configure it to start loading Winamp and Messenger files whilst loading Firefox already it would even give further improvement. But I don't really see a big chance of Systembooster being upgraded any time soon, because they're probably to busy with UD and it hasn't been updated since what, 2005?

Firstly, the reason why I would recommend not to pause when playing a game is that you loose the improvement in the game. If you are using a custom profile for the game (otherwise you should read this guide again and start using it :P) you will get all the needed gamefiles in the memory and only these, if you are using the adaptive option you should not notice any difference.

Secondly, as you say, it has not been update for some time now, however it is still amazing what such "old"(!) program can do, and the fact that there is practically no bugs (well there is the one with saving the settings, but that is easy to "fix" as I explained in the guide ;))

I see ;) I'll just keep to my gaming profile now ;) A shame though that it won't select that profile automatically when I start my games(which I should be able to specify, update, update! :P)

Yeah, true. For an 'old' program this does work very good, that's due to the fact that the idea behind the program is just great.

[shought]

Lol, downloaded Process Explorer from Sysinternals and it shows me SystemBooster is only using 7.6 MB RAM and 40 MB Virtual Memory... That can't be right, can it? I can also see that my memory isn't filled up at all. There's loads of free memory.

My bad:

You can create custom profiles for specific games and applications that you want to run or just a default, across-the-board, complete system boost. It works in the background to boost your system and uses between 2 Mb and 50Mb RAM (was around 2Mb on my system), depending on how many files on your hard drive(s) and less than 1% of CPU time. The RAM it uses is taken back by Windows any time Windows needs it back. And that's a rare occurrence anyway.

Note from me: My memory usage is also very low. I think the 50 Mb memory usage is rare, and if you use this guide you exclude all unneeded files/folders from the cache, and therefore minimizing the memory usage.

But I feel like SystemBooster is not totally taking advantage of the resources provided by my PC ;) Update it, update it! ;) There's also no option you can check to make it use more, or set a max/min value.

As I wrote under comparison, eBoostr has this nice feature, however I would prefer systembooster since it is using way less resources and actually giving a better result. But that is definetely something to add in a future version ;)

Aha, I see, but I guess using eBoostr along SystemBooster wouldn't be such a great idea, would it?

Used eBoostr on my laptop to add some memory from a flash drive, really gave me a big performance increase back then, but now I've got a desktop with 2GB I have no need for such a program. Didn't know the new version included new handy features like specifying the value of RAM to be used.

[spasserfan]

(...)

Aha, I see, but I guess using eBoostr along SystemBooster wouldn't be such a great idea, would it?

Used eBoostr on my laptop to add some memory from a flash drive, really gave me a big performance increase back then, but now I've got a desktop with 2GB I have no need for such a program. Didn't know the new version included new handy features like specifying the value of RAM to be used.

Since both programs should cache files in memory for other programs to use they should not fight with each other like antivirus. If one of the programs cached a file the other should not touch it. I think using them both would just be waste of memory. I tested eBoostr with 512 mb cache, and systembooster actually made my computer qiucker with far less memory used than eBoostr. eBoostr also installs a service that run in the background, and beside that you also has to run the controlpanel (trayicon) for the program to cache anything.

[shought]

(...)

Aha, I see, but I guess using eBoostr along SystemBooster wouldn't be such a great idea, would it?

Used eBoostr on my laptop to add some memory from a flash drive, really gave me a big performance increase back then, but now I've got a desktop with 2GB I have no need for such a program. Didn't know the new version included new handy features like specifying the value of RAM to be used.

Since both programs should cache files in memory for other programs to use they should not fight with each other like antivirus. If one of the programs cached a file the other should not touch it. I think using them both would just be waste of memory. I tested eBoostr with 512 mb cache, and systembooster actually made my computer qiucker with far less memory used than eBoostr. eBoostr also installs a service that run in the background, and beside that you also has to run the controlpanel (trayicon) for the program to cache anything.

I think we should reserve engineer both of the programs and take what's best out of both of them. ;) I think if we'd made SystemBooster use 128 MB of RAM at any time it would have a great performance increase. They should make a dialog like with the Pagefile in which you are allowed to either pick a fixed value or a value like 128 - 256(this would be handy for instance when different profiles use different amounts of memory). But who am I to tell them what they should do? I'm just some guy/kid(your pick) who is thinking that this would improve the program... :D

But think about it: I've got 2 GB RAM and 62,5 % of it(1256 MB) is sitting there doing nothing all the time! If nearly half of this(512MB) would contain files like Messenger, Winamp, Firefox and other programs I frequently use, that would improve loading times of these programs drastically.

What I think is weird about SystemBooster is that when I select Winamp, Firefox and Messenger to be boosted the cache size of SystemBooster is still 3-4 MB, but all Messenger, Firefox and Winamp files that are used when opening these programs are much more... How come?

[spasserfan]

(...)

Aha, I see, but I guess using eBoostr along SystemBooster wouldn't be such a great idea, would it?

Used eBoostr on my laptop to add some memory from a flash drive, really gave me a big performance increase back then, but now I've got a desktop with 2GB I have no need for such a program. Didn't know the new version included new handy features like specifying the value of RAM to be used.

Since both programs should cache files in memory for other programs to use they should not fight with each other like antivirus. If one of the programs cached a file the other should not touch it. I think using them both would just be waste of memory. I tested eBoostr with 512 mb cache, and systembooster actually made my computer qiucker with far less memory used than eBoostr. eBoostr also installs a service that run in the background, and beside that you also has to run the controlpanel (trayicon) for the program to cache anything.

I think we should reserve engineer both of the programs and take what's best out of both of them. ;) I think if we'd made SystemBooster use 128 MB of RAM at any time it would have a great performance increase. They should make a dialog like with the Pagefile in which you are allowed to either pick a fixed value or a value like 128 - 256(this would be handy for instance when different profiles use different amounts of memory). But who am I to tell them what they should do? I'm just some guy/kid(your pick) who is thinking that this would improve the program... ;)

But think about it: I've got 2 GB RAM and 62,5 % of it(1256 MB) is sitting there doing nothing all the time! If nearly half of this(512MB) would contain files like Messenger, Winamp, Firefox and other programs I frequently use, that would improve loading times of these programs drastically.

What I think is weird about SystemBooster is that when I select Winamp, Firefox and Messenger to be boosted the cache size of SystemBooster is still 3-4 MB, but all Messenger, Firefox and Winamp files that are used when opening these programs are much more... How come?

I am not a technician from disktrix and can therefore not answer your question, however a disktrix forum to answer these questions and post new suggestions is really needed. :D

[spasserfan]

729 views and Shought is the only one replying? Come on, let me know what you think ;)

[shought]

729 views and Shought is the only one replying? Come on, let me know what you think ;)

And he made me do it! *Point finger to spasserfan* ;) He would send me 3 PM's in less than a hour, if I didn't reply. Hehehehe, common guys, give the man some feedback! Otherwise I'll start going (even more) mad!

I think your guide is great spasserfan, the only thing that needs upgrading is (here it comes!!!) the program itself. Dissapointed, huh? Sorry, couldn't leave it ;)

[spasserfan]

729 views and Shought is the only one replying? Come on, let me know what you think :)

[topmoxie]

Does this system booster have a fix yet and what do you think of it, is it any good