Over the last couple of months I gathered the following tweaks for a better performance insight the virtual machine, besides disabling / uninstalling useless services and devices:
- Disable the pre-logon screensaver:
Open Regedit
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
Change the value of “ScreenSaveActive” to 0. - Disable updates of the last access time attribute for your NTFS filesystem, especially for i/o intensive vm’s this is a real boost:
Open CMD
fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 - Disable all visual effects:
Properties on your desktop
Appearance -> Effects
Disable all options. - Disable mouse pointer shadow:
Control Panel -> Mouse
Click on the tab “pointers” and switch “enable pointer shadow” off.
So if you’ve got an addition, please post it and I’ll keep updating this blog post!
Another way to do step two is in the registry itself:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
Value Name: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: 1
… but your command line way is “safer”!
Quick question on steps 3 & 4: The methods that you outline only affects the current person logged in; do you know of a way to set this for the entire machine? I haven’t found an obvious group policy setting to do as such.
I usually copy the administrator profile to the default user profile.
Can you document the useless drivers and services?
If it’s Active Directory using Group Policy is the best approach.
With Virtual Consolidated Backup and Backup Exec you can only do incremental or differential backups based on a file’s last modified date because you cannot change the files archive bit during the backup. Will step 2 of these tweaks cause any problems with this kind of backup?
Jaron,
I don’t think it will cause a problem because the incremental/differential backups look at the time the file was modified, not accessed if I remember correctly.
I have made many attempts to run the FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess o. So far i have had no success in getting into the site and nothig happens
how do you mean getting in to the site? it’s a “0” (zero) by the way and not an o.
I usually disable turning off the screen (Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\Edit Plan Settings) , aka Screen Blanking whenever I can. It’s no performance increase but slows down usability a tiny but — and just annoying when it’s a VM . 😉