How improve system performance?

How improve system performance? By disabling DOS 8.3 naming convention

I briefly mentioned MFT fragmentation in a previous article (Refer How to improve the disk performance (NTFS)? article).

So what is the cause of fragmentation? Well most common cause is too much of use. As with anything excessive use causes fragmentation. Activities of add/update/delete to a section of disk would invariable cause it to fragment. So there is no permanent solution as we can not avoid these acts. As such it is a good idea to use disk defragmenter regularly.

Contiguous data which results from defragmenting disk, improves system performance considerably. But what I am suggesting you here would prolong intervals between defragmentations resulting in more time for your own productive work. OK! This tip is for those folks would never be using a DOS based program nor doesn’t care for connection from DOS based operating systems (example: old games and all things before windows 95).

In Windows XP, two file names are created for each file one is the actual name and another one is 8.3 version of that file name for compatibility with DOS based programs. Now this work name in the name of compatibility takes quite a lot of system resources specifically CPU time and disk space. But this is not it, it also increases your MFT utilization and fragmentation. So the solution is to disable it. How to do this?

Open Registry using Regedit.exe and Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem

In right pane, look for key by the name "NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation" and sets its value to 1. That’s it.

You would see improvement in system performance for sure.

IMPORTANT: This procedure contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article numbers to view the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:

256986 - Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

322756 - HOW TO: Back Up, Edit, and Restore the Registry in Windows XP.