anyway, I found this site: Tweeking XP
The install guide has a number of serious inaccuracies, such as the part about enabling UDMA66 on Intel chipsets (that is a pre Win2k SP2 issue, and the key is no longer read with more recent service packs). That key is also only read when Win2k's standard IDE drivers for Intel chipsets is being used, and is ignored if you have third-party drivers installed, such as Intel's.
NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation set value to 1
This is a horrendously bad idea. There is no performance advantage, and it breaks quite a few app installers.
I strongly advise against using this install guide!Infact, it's got me thinking about writing a "Windows myths explained" article on the tech reference part of my site :-)
It sugest to turn off write caching for better performance, I find this counter intuitive. Why?
It's just plain dumb. There are two reasons why one might want to switch off write caching: To ensure an even higher level of data integrity*, or because the machine/disk exhibits compatibility issues as a result of the option being enabled.
* - and even then I've never hobbled a system in that way, because if data integrity is so important then A: you should be using decent, stable hardware and B: you should configure the system correctly so it won't crash and lose critical data! Any system where I might
possibly consider such a tweak is also usually one where performance is needed as well, so it throws that option out the window.
