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Windows 98 - Speed up hard disk access: Increase cache

November 25, 2013
Updated: December 6, 2021
Quick overview:

Windows liest Dateien ihrer Festplatte im Voraus um sie dann bei tatsächlichem Bedarf schneller einzusetzen. Sie werden dann im Arbeitsspeichers des Rechners behalten weil dieser wesentlich schneller als die Laufwerke sind von denen Sie gelesen werden. Der Teil den Windows für solche Dateien reserviert nennt sich Cache - also nennt man den Cache, welcher Daten im Voraus einnimmt auch Read Ahead Cache.

Unfortunately, modern programs need so many files that this nice feature is overwhelmed. But you can increase this cache in the registry.

1. Click on Start > Run and enter the command regedit in the command line, which will take you directly to the program for editing the Windows registry.

2. Go to the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ CurrentControlSet\Control" one after the other. If you now click once on "FileSystem", you will see several values in the right-hand window. Only the value "ReadAheadThreshold" is important for us. If it is not there, right-click on a free area in the pane and select "New" > "Binary value". Now click on this value again with the right mouse button and select "Change". Now enter "00,00,20,00" and click on "OK".

Done! Your Windows is now using exactly 2 megabytes as a read-ahead cache. And the great thing about this is that it does not permanently load the RAM because it then empties this cache. A restart completes this important change to the system.

NOTE FOR NEW PUBLICATION: This article was produced by Sandro Villinger and comes from the Windows Tweaks archive, which has been built up since the late 1990s.

Founded Windows Tweaks as a teenager in the 90s. His helpful PC tricks made it Germany's most visited Windows site (at the time Sandro looked like this). He then went on to write elsewhere, for example for PC-Praxis, Computer Bild and PCWorld in the USA. Microsoft also poached him from us. Now Sandro is back, finally sharing his tweaks here again. For a stress-free digital everyday life. You can reach Sandro via e-mail.

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