Warp 4 tuning tips

Also available in Japanese thanks to Toda Haruo.

See also

• Some fundamental OS/2 concepts - intended mainly for beginners, but the experts just might find something new here too.
• My list of Recommended OS/2 freeware

Recent changes

• 1999-08-16: Moved this page to a better server.
• 1998-09-25: Fixed a couple of broken links. (Yes, I'm aware that a few other things on this page need updating. I hope to clean up this page soon, but for now I don't have the time.)
• 1997-08-14: PIIXIDE disk driver. Warning about Windows TEMP directories. Fix for the image association bug.
• 1997-08-14: The "new" graphic is back, but this time it's coded by month, like this:
• 97/05/22: Minor change to CACHE.EXE parameters.
• 97/05/13: Added link to IBM's tuning pages. New suggestion about disabling lazy writes to circumvent a possible HPFS bug. REXX script to deregister IBM Works classes.
• 97/05/13: I've given up on the "new" graphic, it was too hard to keep track of how long it should stay displayed on a new item.

The programs mentioned here are available from the usual OS/2 archive sites. See my list of recommended freeware for more details.

Some useful tools

• One of the best sources of OS/2 tuning information is a freeware program called Config Info (editors/cfginfo4.zip). I have only two disagreements with its recommendations:
  1. It recommends changing the "SET KEYS=ON" in CONFIG.SYS. If you use a command line, even only occasionally, it's best to leave this option ON.

  2. Its recommendations for CACHE.EXE look completely wrong to me. See below for an alternative suggestion.

  (Note: to avoid useless duplication, many of the suggestions of Config Info are not repeated on this web page.)

• Poor performance is often the fault of corrupted and/or obsolete INI file entries. One solution is to run the program CheckINI (util/system/wptool29.zip) every so often.

Changes that everyone needs

• Before making any dangerous changes to your system, back up the crucial system files as follows:
  1. In the Desktop Properties notebook, Archive page, enable "Create archive at each system startup".
  2. Shut down the system, then re-boot.
  3. Go back and disable "Create archive at each system startup".
  You shouldn't leave archiving turned on, for two reasons: it slows down the boot process, and it creates the risk that you'll replace the good archives by bad ones.

  Alternative: there's some software around that lets you create archives in a more direct way, but I haven't tested it.

• The default initial size of the swap file is far too low. My CONFIG.SYS has

       SWAPPATH=E:\ 2048 24576 

  Different values might work better for you, but in all cases that last number should be fairly large.

• When you boot OS/2, the system normally restarts programs that were active the last time the system was shut down. Although this can be a useful feature, it can cause trouble when crashed but unkillable programs keep coming back. There are at least three ways around the problem:
  • Method 1 (best if you want "restart everything" as the default behaviour): on those occasions where you don't want programs to restart, hold down Ctrl/Shift/F1 while the desktop is appearing during startup. (Use the left Ctrl and Shift keys for this.)
  • Method 2 (my preferred method): delete PROGRAMS from the SET AUTOSTART line in CONFIG.SYS.
  • Method 3 (more conservative, and possibly better for beginners): Include the following line in your CONFIG.SYS, just after the SET AUTOSTART line:

      SET RESTARTOBJECTS=STARTUPFOLDERSONLY,REBOOTONLY

• You might like to experiment with the value of BUFFERS in CONFIG.SYS. Increasing the value takes some memory from applications, but that's a small price to pay for improved disk buffering. Suggested value: 100. Note: this assumes that you have one or more FAT partitions. If you use HPFS exclusively, and you're not too worried about the speed of floppy operations, then you can set BUFFERS as low as 3.

• Running CACHE.EXE from CONFIG.SYS can cause problems for some (although not all) people. Run it from STARTUP.CMD instead. (If you don't already have a STARTUP.CMD, create this file in the root directory of your boot partition.)

  The best parameter values for CACHE.EXE depend on your usage patterns and application mix, so it's not easy to give hard-and-fast rules. As an indication, however, here's what I have in my STARTUP.CMD:

   DETACH E:\OS2\CACHE.EXE /MAXAGE:7500 /DISKIDLE:1000 /BUFFERIDLE:10000
  
   EXIT

  Note 1: this affects only HPFS cacheing, you don't need CACHE.EXE in a FAT-only system. (But I imagine that there aren't many FAT-only systems left out there, now that most people realise the limitations of FAT.)

  Note 2: the on-line help for CACHE says that DISKIDLE must be greater than BUFFERIDLE. You should ignore this, it's a documentation error. For most people DISKIDLE should be a lot smaller than BUFFERIDLE.

• In your PATH, DPATH, and LIBPATH, remove references to any nonexistent or unneeded directories, and try to order the entries such that the most-used directories are near the beginning. (In the case of LIBPATH, the first entry should be ".") Note that many inconsiderate application installation routines try to jump the queue by putting their own additions at the beginning of the path; these are usually good candidates for moving to the end. (If the developers are so sloppy, it's probably software that you won't want to run very often.)

  Remark: some programs don't like their directories to appear after the 512th position in the path. (But you'd be crazy to let it get that long in the first place.)

Speeding up desktop operations

• The default folder view is the slowest possible choice. To open folders faster, go to the Icon View page of the folder's Properties notebook, and changed "As placed" to something else - I suggest "Multiple columns". (I also prefer to enable the "Always maintain sort order" option, but that's just a personal preference.) If you don't particularly need the icons - because, for example, everything in that folder has the same icon anyway - then change the Icon display to "Small size" or "Invisible", depending on your own preferences.
  To make these changes stick for all new folders, make the changes in the Folder template.

• This next point isn't a speed issue, but now that I think of it: lots of people don't know how to change the default view of a folder. The way to do it is to go to the Menu page in the Properties notebook, click on "~Open as", then click on "Properties", and then change the "Default action" field. Note: changing the default will also change the default for any new subfolders of this folder, but you can always go back (if you wish) and change the Properties of the subfolders.

• There's no reason that I can see for having both "Folder" and "New folder" on your "Create another" menu choices. Go to your "Programs" folder, open the Properties of "New folder", and remove the "Template" check mark. (Alternatively, if there's a second folder type that you'd like to have - e.g. a modified folder called a "Cabinet" - then rename "New folder" and change its properties appropriately. But any such template really belongs in your Templates subfolder - I suspect that somebody forgot to delete it from "Programs" before preparing the distribution version of Warp 4.)

• Bitmaps as folder backgrounds are OK if you like that sort of thing (e.g. I use them in folders that I create for my children), but they do have some effect on performance. To improve performance, open the desktop Properties notebook, go to the Background page, and select "Color only". Change the colour to something you like. (If you have 256 colours or fewer, then I suggest that you choose the "Solid color", even though this limits your choices.) Once you've settled on your preferred colour combinations, you can go to the scheme palette and set up your own scheme. Hint: for the icon text background, one of the options permitted is "Transparent color".

• You can improve performance by disabling folder animation (System Setup/System/Window) and disabling system sounds (System Setup/Sound/Sound). There's also a slight advantage in setting System Setup/System/Logo to "none".

• You don't really need all those schemes in the Scheme Palette, and they use up quite a few INI file entries. Unfortunately I haven't yet worked out how to delete the unwanted schemes. (If you delete them, they somehow manage to re-create themselves.) Suggestions, anyone?

• The Warpguide cue cards are probably helpful for beginners, but for the rest of us they're a nuisance. To disable them, open Assistance Centre/WarpGuide/Properties, and turn off the "Assist me ..." checkbox. For a more complete removal, "Selective Uninstall" will let you uninstall the WarpGuide.

• (This next one doesn't have a big effect on performance, so it's optional.) In the System Setup/System notebook, I suggest the following changes:
  • Confirmations page: turn off most of the check marks, and retain only those for which a mistake would be serious.
  • User interface page: turn off VIO mouse actions, and turn on Asynchronous Focus Change. (And do not enable Full Window Dragging unless you have a fast processor.) Warning: if you need copy-and-paste to work in command windows, then you might need to keep VIO mouse actions enabled.
  • Print Screen page: Disable, unless you really need it.

• The on-line registration apparently works for some people, but is a nuisance for many. To get rid of it, go to OS2\INSTALL\Installed Features and open the "Inventory" object. From this you can uninstall "Art" and be rid of the dancing elephant forever. Of course you should also choose "Remove this window" the next time you get the "Welcome to OS/2" time-waster.

• If you don't use VoiceType - e.g. because you tried it and discovered that your processor was too slow - you should deinstall it, because it has some overhead even when it's not in use. You can remove it either with "Selective Deinstall", or via OS2\INSTALL\Installed Features\Inventory. After the removal you'll have to manually edit CONFIG.SYS to remove a nonexistent directory from the HELP path, and run CheckINI to remove the registered classes that the de-installer forgot to remove.

• A sparsely populated desktop behaves better than one covered in icons. Move all your icons into folders, keep as few folders as possible on the desktop, and rely on either the WarpCenter or PC/2 to get at the things you've put in the folders.

• Video drivers have a major influence on desktop performance, so in principle you should upgrade (where possible) to the latest version for your hardware. The catches are that (a) there are so many video cards out there that nobody, to my knowledge, has managed to coordinate the information about which upgrades are worth getting; and (b) the drivers produced by video card manufacturers are frequently buggy, and inferior to the drivers that came with your OS/2 CD-ROM. Experiment with this if you're brave, but be prepared to back up to the original drivers.

• You're probably not prepared to change your screen resolution - since for most us readability is more important than speed - but you might consider experimenting with the number of colours. As a general rule, 256-colour modes will be the fastest, 32K or 64K colours give an overhead that might or might not be acceptable, and 24-bit colour is likely to slow things down quite a bit. The precise trade-offs, however, vary a fair bit between video cards.

Disk drivers

• My disk operations seem to have gone a little faster since I replaced IBM1S506 by the PIIXIDE driver. (Look for piixos2.zip in system/drivers/storage at Hobbes.) Warning: it's less generic than IBM1S506, so might not work on your hardware. Be prepared to back out again if it prevents your system from booting properly.

• There may be a bug in the bus-mastering option (which is disabled by default in some OS/2 versions, and enabled by default in others. It depends on things like which fixpack level you're up to). The symptom is that, periodically, the disk becomes busy for no apparent reason, and this ties up the processor to the point where user input is blocked for several seconds. According to some reports, this problem can be solved by adding the /!BM parameter to the IBM1S506 line in CONFIG.SYS. My own experience: I've experienced this problem intermittently, but my testing so far has been insufficient to say whether or not the /!BM option makes a difference.

• The IBM1S506 driver also has a "set multiple support" option, which is enabled by default in Warp 4, and also in Warp 3 with fixpack 26 or later. This option seems to interfere with time-critical operations like serial input. You can turn it off with the /!SMS switch.

   BASEDEV=IBM1S506.ADD /A:0 /!BM /U:0 /!SMS /U:1 /!SMS

Remark: My own experience tends to suggests that there's some deeper problem here: something in the file system is effectively preventing multitasking which a disk operation is in progress. The above measures reduce the impact of the problem but don't really get at the root cause, which is (I believe) some sort of design error inside OS/2.

My reason for believing this is that the WPS also goes "dead" when a SCSI operation is in progress, or when you copy a file to or from a floppy disk. (This last case is particularly noticeable.) This did not happen in Warp 3 - there's something new in Warp 4 that makes the file system a processor hog.

Leonard Pennock (lpennock@cig.mot.com) has done some tests, on an HPFS/SCSI system, that tend to suggest that the slowdowns can be cured by turning off lazy writes. This didn't give any improvement on my system; but it's something you can easily try on your own system, to see whether it makes a difference. (The appropriate command is "CACHE -Lazy:OFF". You don't have to re-boot to do this.) If it does help, it could mean that there is a bug in the implementation of HPFS lazy writing. I'd be interested to get feedback on whether this works for other people.

Internet applications

• Web browsers can sometimes leave rubbish in temporary directories, especially if they crash due to a lost modem connection. If you're having this trouble, put the line

     del %tmp%\*.* /n

  into your STARTUP.CMD. This takes care of garbage left by WebExplorer. With older versions of Netscape, you might also need

     del \mmos2\inettemp\*.* /n

• If you use "Dial other Internet providers", put

       SET HOSTNAME=something

  in your CONFIG.SYS. (The actual value of the "something" is not important.) For some people, this cuts one minute off the time taken by the dialler.

• To the best of my knowledge, the only difference between the "Modem" and "LAN" versions of the Internet utilities is that the Modem versions call LINKUP. LINKUP is the program that reminds you that you haven't yet started the dialler. If you can live without LINKUP (I can, gladly), you might as well get rid of all the "Modem" internet utilities, and use the LAN versions exclusively - even if you're not connected to a LAN.

• If there's an ftp server that you visit frequently, you can take advantage of the FTP Folder feature that's new in Warp 4. Open your templates folder, then open "Templates for Internet". Drag an "FTP host" template to the desktop, and fill in the Properties notebook appropriately. I don't use this feature for most of my ftp transfers, but I do use it for fast access to my office PC from home.

Windows applications

• To get a more responsive mouse in a Windows program: open the WINOS2 properties (on the Session page of the Properties notebook), increase IDLE_SECONDS slightly, and change IDLE_SENSITIVITY to approximately 95. Note: many people will tell you to change this setting to 100, but in my opinion that's a bad choice. It will make that particular application hog the processor, at the expense of everything else that's running.

• If you've installed Fixpack 1 and/or Netscape, you probably have a corrupted SEAMLESS.DLL, and this can cause Windows applications to misbehave. (Typical symptom: you can run a Windows application once, but the system locks up on a second attempt.) You can restore the original SEAMLESS.DLL from CD-ROM as follows:
  1. Shut down OS/2, reboot it and type Alt/F1 when the white square appears at the top left of your screen. When you get the list of options, type F2 to start a command-line session.
  2. Type the following command, where F: is your CD-ROM drive.

     UNPACK F:\OS2IMAGE\DISK_5\BUNDLE /N:SEAMLESS.DLL

• Before installing any Windows application, delete all files in \OS2\MDOS\WINOS2\TEMP. (This directory is normally supposed to be empty, but sometimes the programs that use it don't clean up properly.) If you have multiple operating systems installed, you'll also need to clean out the contents of any other TEMP or TMP directory that exists on your system and that might be used by some version of Windows. Rubbish left in the temporary directories can, for some mysterious reason, cause an installation to set up incorrect options. (One very common symptom is that the application tells you that it can't run SHARE.EXE - even though SHARE.EXE is never needed under WinOS2.)

The WarpCenter

• The WarpCenter can prevent your system from booting up properly (which is one reason why you should keep an archived desktop). The problem is timing-dependent, therefore it can show up after minor changes to a previously working system. There are two different ways in which I've seen the problem manifest itself:
  1. The system locks up completely just as the desktop is appearing on the screen (so that, typically, you get a screen containing nothing but the desktop background); or
  2. There's an error message, as the WarpCenter is starting up, that the CD-ROM drive is not ready, and then there are missing entries in the Window List.
  The remedy is to remove WARPCENTER from the AUTOSTART line in CONFIG.SYS. With luck you'll still be able to start the WarpCenter from the Startup folder, but you'll have to experiment a little: the results depend on the order in which the WarpCenter is started up.

  The safest course is to wait until all disk activity has died down, and then start the WarpCenter from the desktop.

  Fixpack 1 seems (with my limited testing so far) to have solved Problem 1, but it doesn't help with Problem 2.

• On the WarpCenter/Properties/Monitors page, disable the system activity and disk space monitors. I can't prove that these are buggy, but I have my suspicions. Remark: experimentation tends to suggest that monitoring continues even with this option turned off, so I'm not totally sure that this recommendation does any good.

• I've seen reports that the WarpCenter works better if you change the Display page settings to put the WarpCenter at the bottom of the screen, and enable it only when the mouse is above it. I haven't noticed myself that this gives any improvement - I think it depends on what video card you have - but you might like to try it.

• If you have a Drives object in the WarpCenter, it will be very slow to open because of access to removable media. I suggest that you create a "Hard drives" folder in your OS/2 System folder; put shadows of the hard drives in this new folder; and drag that to the WarpCenter. Similarly, create a "Removable drives" folder. You can then delete the original Drives object from the WarpCenter.

• If you want lots of WarpCenter objects, add extra trays. Note that you can cycle through the trays by clicking on the blank space that's reserved for adding new objects.

• Try adding one or more of the following to your CONFIG.SYS:

       SET KILLFEATUREENABLED=ON
  
       SET SCFINDUTILITY=E:\OS2\APPS\PMSEEK.EXE               
  
       SET SCUSEPRETTYCLOCK=ON   

  The first of these allows you to kill misbehaving programs with a Ctrl/left click on the WarpCenter task list (second button from the left). The second replaces the almost-useless "Find objects" by a faster and more useful program. The third changes the appearance of the WarpCenter clock.

Deregistering unwanted classes

There are several alternative tools for deregistration. The one I recommend may be found in the archives as wpsutil/dereg.zip.

• If you don't use the Advantis dialler, you can deregister the classes AdvDialer, AdvUser, AdvAccount, AdvReg, and AdvCust.

• If you don't use Ultimail, you can deregister IBMUmailWPS. If you later change your mind, you can re-register it by running tcpip\UMAIL\makewps.cmd. (This deregistration, followed by re-registration after rebooting, is also a useful way to regenerate the Ultimail desktop objects when - as often happens, for some reason - they stop working.)

• In Warp 3 you could improve system performance by deregistering the IBM Works classes. To do this in Warp 4, use the REXX script ftp://www.pmoylan.org/pages/software/IWDEREG.CMD, which was passed on to me by Heinz Siry. I haven't been able to judge whether this gave a significant improvement.

  (P.S. Heinz: I couldn't reply to your e-mail, your reply address is set up incorrectly.)

• The registered class "Ezplay" is, to the best of my knowledge, needed only by those users who have plug-and-pray hardware. If you don't have such hardware the corresponding DLL is not installed, but (due to an installation bug) the class is registered anyway. I've been told that the class browser in Unimaint can get rid of it, but if you don't have Unimaint then you'll just have to live with it. Luckily this bug doesn't seem to have any serious consequences.

Removing unnecessary files

• If your only internet connection is via a modem, then you can comment out (or delete) the following lines from CONFIG.SYS.

      REM DEVICE=C:\IBMCOM\LANMSGDD.OS2 /I:C:\IBMCOM /S
  
      REM DEVICE=C:\IBMCOM\PROTMAN.OS2 /I:C:\IBMCOM
  
      REM RUN=C:\OS2\SMSTART.EXE
  
      REM CALL=C:\IBMCOM\PROTOCOL\NETBIND.EXE
  
      REM RUN=C:\IBMCOM\LANMSGEX.EXE
  
      REM DEVICE=C:\MPTN\PROTOCOL\AFOS2.SYS
  
      REM DEVICE=C:\MPTN\PROTOCOL\IFNDIS.SYS
  
      REM CALL=C:\OS2\CMD.EXE /Q /C C:\MPTN\BIN\MPTSTART.CMD >NUL
  
      REM DEVICE=C:\IBMCOM\MACS\NULLNDIS.OS2

• Now that OS/2 is no longer distributed on floppies, it's unlikely that you'll have any more use for XD-formatted disks. You can remove the XDFLOPPY device driver with

      REM BASEDEV=XDFLOPPY.FLT

  (If you need that driver back, just take out the REM again.)

• If you've installed the Application Sampler, you have an extra device driver (SDCS) that doesn't get used for anything except Showcase. Once you finished browsing through the CD, run "Remove" in the Application Sampler folder. (You can always reinstall it later if you need to.)

• If you don't run DOS/Windows TCP/IP programs, then you can remove the DOS TCP/IP support. The relevant lines in CONFIG.SYS are:

     REM DEVICE=C:\tcpip\bin\vdostcp.vdd
  
     REM DEVICE=C:\tcpip\bin\vdostcp.sys
  
     REM RUN=C:\tcpip\bin\VDOSCTL.EXE

Miscellaneous

• The "Create Utility Diskettes" operation appears to be buggy. To solve the problem, ensure that the first disk already contains one or more unwanted files - this will cause a reformat, after which the disks will be created correctly.

• Many people have complained that they can't work out how to override the default associations for image files. This is a known bug in Warp 4. (Correction: a known feature. Only the users call it a bug.) A fix for this problem is available at http://www.quickmotion.com.

• Here's a fast copy-and-paste technique that is not well documented. Drag with the left mouse button depressed to highlight the text to be copied. While the left button is still down, click on the right mouse button. Now go to the destination (which might be in another application). Press the right mouse button at the insertion point. While the right button is still down, click on the left mouse button.

Dealing with a noisy phone line

Any phone line has a certain amount of line noise, so you can expect an error like this now and then. (The software requests a retransmission when it detects the error, so you haven't lost anything except a bit of speed.) But if you're getting many such errors, you have a problem - especially when the connection degenerates to a "lost carrier" condition, at which point you've lost your connection.

There are actually several likely causes of modem data corruption:

• Line noise and signal distortion. This might be the result of poor house wiring (do you lose your connection each time the refrigerator turns on?), but it's much more likely to be something in the telephone system over which you have no control.

• A poor-quality modem. Some modems are better than others at extracting the signal from the noise. Most present-day modems should be OK, but you have a right to be suspicious of something you picked up for almost nothing at a garage sale.

• A misconfigured modem. Many of us don't have the patience to figure out all of the details in the modem initialisation string - most likely we just copied the string from someone else, without checking it. Still, it wouldn't hurt to go through your modem manual, to see whether you're using parameter settings that aren't a good choice for the model that you're using.

• Problems at the server end. If you used to have a good connection, but it's now markedly degraded, a very likely cause is an equipment fault in the server, or data loss due to an overloaded server. You can suspect this cause if many other users noticed the degradation at about the same time. If that's the case, get the service provider to fix the problem, or switch to another provider.

• Timing problems at your end. No matter how good your operating system, or how fast your hardware, there eventually comes a point where you're asking it to do too much, and it loses data because it can't keep up. Sometimes this is because you're running too many concurrent applications. Sometimes it's because your processor is too slow. Sometimes it's because interrupts are disabled for too long (typically because of slow disk operations). On older computers, it can be because the serial port controller has inadequate buffering. In all such cases, you might be able to improve performance by reducing the speed of modem data transfer.

• I include the parameter setting S10=255 in my modem initialisation string, to make the modem ignore brief losses of carrier. This can help, assuming that your modem supports this option, in the case where the line is subject to occasional short-duration losses of signal.

• Making the COM port speed (page 4 on the settings notebook) too high can be counterproductive; if the software can't keep up, data gets lost. For most people, the best value is 57600, but a lower value sometimes gives better results.

• Suggestion from Leon Kiriliuk (which also works for me): If you have a slow processor, and you have Warp 4 or Warp 3 with fixpack 26 or later, and you are getting an excessive error rate on modem transfers, then you might need the /!SMS option in the IBM1S506.ADD disk driver. See the earlier "Disk drivers" section for details.

• Jarmo Paavilainen reduced his modem error rate with the command

     MODE.COM COM1 57600,N,8,1,TO=ON,IDSR=ON,ODSR=ON,RTS=TOG

  Neither of us can explain why this should help.

• From Brian Juergensmeyer: If your line noise is really bad, to the point where outgoing traffic rarely succeeds, try reducing the MTU (SLIP) or MRU (PPP) to a very low value, e.g. 296. (The value is on page 2 of the "Dial other providers" notebook.) If this helps, experiment with smaller or larger values until you've found a reasonable compromise.

Other sites with tuning and setup tips

• Melissa Woo's "Stupid OS/2 tricks".
• Timothy Sipples' Warped World.
• Clear & Simple sells software that will automate the tuning process. This site also has a free video benchmark program.
• IBM's OS/2 tuning pages.