NetGrammer (Les' Blog Network)

Quick Aero Glass Speed Tip

2012-01-30T18:45:00.000-08:00

The transparent glass effect in Windows 7 looks very nice but on some computers that have underpowered video adapters users will see a performance hit when running the transparent glass effect. Animations are slow and choppy and simple tasks like moving around windows on your screen is not very smooth. One way to speed up Windows 7 and keep the benefits of Aero, such as animations, flip 3D and taskbar thumbnails, is to disable glass transparency.This helps significantly on my Windows 7 netbook that does has a weak integrated graphics chip.

    1. Click on the desktop and select Personalize.

    2. Click Windows Color.

    3. Uncheck Enable Transparency.

    4. Click Save changes.

Improve Sync Performance In iTunes For Windows

2012-01-30T18:40:00.000-08:00

On my PC the longest part of the sync process in iTunes with my iPhone or iPad is the device backup. Taking up to an hour at times I can live without a backup. Especially since I jailbreak my devices which makes ever restoring a backup after an OS upgrade a bad idea.

There are two methods to disable the device backup feature. First, I'm going to show you the manual tweak.

Manual Method
Apple made it very difficult to disable the automatic device backup feature manually by burying the setting deep in a configuration file. In order to make the change you will need a good XML text editor. I suggest using the free Notepad++ that you can download here.

First, make sure iTunes is closed and create a backup of the iTunes Preferences file located in C:\Users\Your Username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\ called iTunesPrefs.xml.

Open up C:\Users\Your Username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iTunesPrefs.xml in your text editor and go to the <key>User Preferences</key> section.

Then copy and paste the code below just after the <dict> node of the User Preferences section as shown below.

<key>DeviceBackupsDisabled</key>
<data>
dHJ1ZQ==
</data>

Save the file and start iTunes. The device backup should now be skipped when syncing.

Automated Method

If you want a fully automated approach there is a free app called iPhone Backup Switch that you can download from here.

Just run the utility and when iTunes is closed click the Disable iPhone Backup in iTunes button.

Improve SATA Hard Disk Performance (Convert From IDE to AHCI)

2012-01-30T18:34:00.000-08:00

Every hard drive in a modern computer is connected to the system through a storage controller. This controller typically can communicate with the hard drive via a number of different interface protocols. For maximum compatibility many computers are configured in the BIOS to use the older IDE interface protocol to communicate with modern SATA hard drives. This setting is acceptable for the average computer user but IDE lacks support for new technologies such as native command queuing (NCQ) and hot-plugging hard drives (add or remove drives without restarting the computers).

Intel invented a new storage controller interface known as AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) that supports these new technologies with modern SATA hard drives. If you have a hard drive that supports NCQ, it is worth a try to see if your disk performance improves with your workload.

The main problem preventing users from changing the storage interface protocol from IDE to AHCI in the past has been blue screens that could only be cured by undoing the BIOS change or reinstalling Windows. The cause of the problem is the mass storage driver installed when Windows was first setup. Since IDE was enabled at install only the IDE storage driver was configured in Windows. With the AHCI driver missing, Windows cannot read from the hard drive and throws a BSOD with error code 0x0000005B.

Now there is an easy solution that will allow you to switch between IDE and AHCI in the bios and Windows will boot without any problems. The key is to enable the AHCI driver in Windows before you make the setting change in the BIOS.

For most users this will work:

1. Open Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci.

2. Right click on the Start registry DWORD and select Modify.

3. Set the value to 0 and click OK.

4. Now the Start setting should be set to 0.

    5. Reboot and enable the AHCI setting in your BIOS.

If you are using a RAID adapter or other interface try the following:

    1. Open up Registry Editor and naviage to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV OR HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor.

    2. Repeat the steps above.

Not all users will see a major performance improvement with AHCI and a SATA hard drive but NCQ can be very helpful under the right workload. Post your experience and setup in the comments below.