| How To: Tuning Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0 on Windows Vista |
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| Monday, 13 August 2007 | |||||
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On 32-bit Windows Vista computers with 4Gb of memory installed you may enable One of the biggest frustrations when using the Internet (or intranet) is a slow browser. Why is it so slow? You have installed the latest browser software, the latest patches  and security hot-fixes, all the add-ons, you have more than enough memory and are running the latest and greatest offering from Microsoft , Windows Vista, but the Internet browser is still slow. There is a simple answer. All modern browsers adhere to Internet standards by only allowing your browser to download two files at any time from a web server. (RFC2616 defines the maximum number of simultaneous connections for HTTP:/1.1 as two.)That’s nice to know, now, how do we make Internet browsing faster? Information provided here is for reference purposes only. The following hacks do not follow industry standards so please use your own judgement when applying any modifications to your systems. Should you make and changes to your configuration, please ensure that you have made appropriate backups. Tuning Microsoft Internet Explorer 7Microsoft has gone to considerable lengths to make sure that Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 follows industry standards. This, of course, imposes the only download two files at a time rule, amongst others, which will slow down your browsing experience. Luckly there are some registry modifications that can increase the number of files that Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 can download from a web server at a time.This is not the same as a download manger managing the files you download from a website, the files addressed in this modification are to do with the website, for example, images, scripts, CSS, etc. Tuning Internet Explorer – Increase the Number of Download Sessions1. Click on the start butting and type REGEDT32 and click enter to launch the Registry Editor.2. Navigate to the following key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings3. Right click on the registry key and select New DWORD value. Name this new DWORD MaxConnectionsPerServer. 4. Double click on the new DWORD, change the base to Decimal and enter your new value, in this example 10. 5. Right click on the registry key and select New DWORD value. Name this new DWORD MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server. 6. Double click on the new DWORD, change the base to Decimal and enter the same value as in step 4, in this example 10. 7. You registry should look like this {slimbox title=|Click to enlarge|}images/stories/B6K_Images/ie-reg-config.png{/slimbox} 8. Restart you computer for these settings to take effect. If you need to revert to the default browser configuration, just navigate back to this key and delete the two DWORD values you created. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 does not offer pipelining support in WinINET HTTP stack, this may be included in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.
Tuning Firefox – Increase the Number of Download SessionsMozilla Firefox 2.0 adheres to the same industry standards as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, but again it is possible to modify the browser configuration to increase the number of download sessions to increase performance.1. Launch the Firefox browser and type about:config in to the address bar and hit enter. 2. Scroll down through the various configuration options and set the values as follows. To change the value, double click on any of the settings. If the setting is a Boolean value it will toggle when clicked.
{slimbox title=|Click to enlarge|}/images/stories/B6K_Images/ff-config.png{/slimbox} 4. Close Firefox and restart the browser for the new settings to take effect. For additional information on the settings and information on what settings are available, please visit http://kb.mozillazine.org/Knowledge_Base. When making changes to the Mozilla Firefox 2.0 configuration, notice that when you change a default value, for instance network.http.proxy.pipelining, the new setting is highlighted in bold lettering, if you reset the default value the highlighting disappears making it very easy to see the modifications you are making. Notice that the new value status is set to “user set” Mozilla Firefox 2.0 – Reduce Browser Paint TimeAn additional step in tuning the Mozilla Firefox 2.0 browser paint time can improve performance. This may actually slow down Mozilla Firefox 2.0 on slower/older machines as it will be more CPU intensive as the page is rendered as it loads, please use with caution.1. Type about:config in to the browser address bar and hit enter. 2. Right click within the browser window and select New then Integer. 3. For the new integer value, type nglayout.initialpaint.delay and click OK. 4. Enter a value of 0 and click OK. 5. Close Firefox and restart the browser for the new settings to take effect.No Comments.  | |||||
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 06 November 2007 ) | |||||
the PAE boot switch to allow the operating system to see the maximum amount of memory. The BOOT.INI file no longer exists in Windows Vista, to configure boot options you must use the “BCDEdit” boot configuration editor, in Administrator mode obviously, that is included in Windows Vista.
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