Speed up Windows 98, 95 and ME

First, bring up the "run" box. Type in, msconfig hit enter (msconfig is not available in Win 95). Click the start up tab. Un-check everything, except your anti-virus or any program you want to load at start up. Click apply, OK, then let it restart. Remember, don't have things loading in start up that you can load when you need them. It is better to put them in your quick launch. In fact after this click and drag all the icons on your desktop and put them in quick launch (not My Computer, Recycle Bin, My Documents) and then delete the icons from your desktop. Then check all the programs listed in your start menu and delete all the ones you don't need, use, or have in quick launch. Empty recycle bin. Oh! While you're at recycle bin, right click on it and click properties. Slid the size of folder arrow down to 5% and click apply.

Change the Typical role of your computer

Select Start > Settings > Control Panel

Open System, select the Performance tab, and click on File System under the Advanced Settings header

On the Hard Disk Tab, select Network Server as Typical role of this computer.

When you use the Network Server setting, VFAT allocates memory to record the 64 most recently accessed folders and the 2729 most recently accessed files.  This consumes approximately 16KB of memory.  In short, it gives you more memory to use.

While you are there click the Floppy Disk tab and un-check the box that is there. Then click the CD-ROM tab and slide the bar down a notch or two.

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 - This setting has different meanings depending on which version of Win9x you are using. It wasn't even introduced as a setting until Windows 98 came out; so don't bother with this one if you are still running Win95. If you are running Win98 or 98SE, this setting will force the computer to use the swap file in a "conservative" way, which in other words is the same way as Windows 95 did. If you are running on Windows Me (this is one of the big speed tweaks for Win Me, particularly if you have more than 128 Mb of RAM), this setting will tell Windows not to use the swapfile at all until all of the RAM is used. After the entire RAM is used, the computer will push off the most infrequently used data to the swap file. This setting goes under the [386Enh] section in your system.ini file. Bring
up the run box and type in, system.ini hit enter, find the [386Enh] section and add the line ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 just below it. Should look something like this:

[386enh]

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

woafont=dosapp.FON

EGA80WOA.FON=EGA80WOA.FON

EGA40WOA.FON=EGA40WOA.FON

CGA80WOA.FON=CGA80WOA.FON

CGA40WOA.FON=CGA40WOA.FON

 Don't forget to save it after you make the changes.

Finally, Turn the sounds off for: Exit Windows, and Start Windows in the Sound Folder of Control Panel because if anything happens to these files your computer will not start or shutdown.

I hope this will help.  Let me know it any of it is unclear.  When in doubt, don't do it!