Speed up IE/FF/Opera dramatically

[xtknight]

Utility:

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Contig.html

Commands:

[*]Opera: contig -v "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\cache?"
[*]IE: contig -v "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*"
[*]FF: contig -v "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\%USERNAME%\Cache"

Notes:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Opera usually takes ages to load after you've visited a lot of pages and have some tabs you want to load. Here's a fix for that.

Put this program (Contig) somewhere and make a batch file in that same location. Then put in the batch file:

contig -v "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\cache?"

Run the batch file (or schedule it with Windows scheduler) and it will dramatically speed the startup of Opera by defragmenting the cache. It didn't take long at all on my PC, maybe 10 seconds. Enjoy your fast Opera.

My results: 269 fragments to 1. It's obvious why this would speed it up. All this does is make the cache contiguous so your hard disk can access it easier (aka defragmenting). Contig can just pinpoint one file or folder, which is a lot more useful than defragmenting your whole drive, much of which won't benefit from it. Might as well just defragment something that will benefit, like this.

Here's the IE command:

contig -v "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\*"

It just rearranges the main folders, not every individual file in the cache but it still seems to speed things up a lot. Again, it takes about 10 seconds to do this, and it will probably save you a lot more than that each time you use IE or Opera.

I'd post an FF tip but I'm not sure where FireFox stores it's cache and I haven't used it enough to be sure I was defragging the right thing.

This should do it for FF, but I'm not 100% sure.

contig -v "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\%USERNAME%\Cache"

Results:

 

[MrChad]

Firefox cache is here:

%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.ho4\Cache

Although, the profile name may vary from system to system.

 

[xtknight]

Damn, don't think I can make a wildcard for contig with that.

It seems to write to two cache folders, one by my user name and one 'default.something'. Awkward.

It's hard to say, but this might do it for FF:

contig -v "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\%USERNAME%\Cache"

It doesn't seem to be writing to the 'default' folder, only the username one, so I think that'll do it.

 

[flexy]

nm

 

[Auric]

So this would be useful if you don't have a good disk defragmenter and also don't regularly wipe the cache... perhaps such users should lower the maximum cache size.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Auric
So this would be useful if you don't have a good disk defragmenter and also don't regularly wipe the cache... perhaps such users should lower the maximum cache size.

But then if you wipe the cache, there's no point in having cache in the first place. This way it will just make your cache a lot faster to access.

 

[klah]

There's a FF utility that keeps it in memory at all times; loading takes 1 second.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffpreloader/

 

[Mojoed]

Doh, these tips don't help me. My profile/cache is on another drive, and it's automatically cleared every time I close the browser.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Mojoed
Doh, these tips don't help me. My profile/cache is on another drive, and it's automatically cleared every time I close the browser.

Your browser should already be speedy (as possible) then. Data is written unfragmented by default.

 

[Mojoed]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: Mojoed
Doh, these tips don't help me. My profile/cache is on another drive, and it's automatically cleared every time I close the browser.

Your browser should already be speedy (as possible) then. Data is written unfragmented by default.

Thanks for the tip though, I'm gonna apply this to my dad's old beast of a PC.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Have you guys heard of Firefox Preloader? It pretty much loads some of firefox in the memory (like 12mgs for me) so when you launch firefox, it loads very quickly. Here's a link: Linky

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
Have you guys heard of Firefox Preloader? It pretty much loads some of firefox in the memory (like 12mgs for me) so when you launch firefox, it loads very quickly. Here's a link: Linky

That made a huge difference to my FF loading time.

 

[BlueWeasel]

[Edit] Double post :|

 

[flexy]

without going too much into detail whether this makes sense or not.
(Do they want us to defragment this folder EACH time before we start FF ?_

I made a batch like this:

contig -v "C:\Documents and Settings\flexy\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\3vokyt6f.default\Cache"

the above mentioned paths are wrong..check your cache paths in FF with "about:cache" typed in FF. Then use this and make a batch file and put shortcut on desktop etc.

ANYWAY....get "fasterfox"...this is a nice extrension for FF with the suual tweaks (pipelining etc.)..and they ALSO recommend that you
do NOT have a greater disk-cache than 75MB (!).

If the cache stays in that reasonable size (before i had like 500MB) then looking thry the cache doesnt take too long...and i THINK that normal harddisk defragging (like once/week) with perfectdisk etc. should be fine.

I really dont see the point to have a program which claims "speeds up browsing"....but then requires to run it every once in a while. Then you can as well defrag your whole HD "once in a while" with the same effect.

Nevertheless interesting

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: flexy
without going too much into detail whether this makes sense or not.
(Do they want us to defragment this folder EACH time before we start FF ?_

I made a batch like this:

contig -v "C:\Documents and Settings\flexy\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\3vokyt6f.default\Cache"

the above mentioned paths are wrong..check your cache paths in FF with "about:cache" typed in FF. Then use this and make a batch file and put shortcut on desktop etc.

ANYWAY....get "fasterfox"...this is a nice extrension for FF with the suual tweaks (pipelining etc.)..and they ALSO recommend that you
do NOT have a greater disk-cache than 75MB (!).

If the cache stays in that reasonable size (before i had like 500MB) then looking thry the cache doesnt take too long...and i THINK that normal harddisk defragging (like once/week) with perfectdisk etc. should be fine.

I really dont see the point to have a program which claims "speeds up browsing"....but then requires to run it every once in a while. Then you can as well defrag your whole HD "once in a while" with the same effect.

Nevertheless interesting

I don't think most people defrag their hard disks on a regular basis (I don't). The point is why would you defrag your whole hard disk when you can just defrag a couple folders that would actually benefit?

Well this is my cache folder:
Cache Directory: C:\Documents and Settings\unknown.UNKNOWN-055114F\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\unknown\Cache

My user name is 'unknown'. It works for me?

I say just schedule it to run every morning or something. It takes a very short amount of time. It helped a lot for my Opera.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: xtknight
I don't think most people defrag their hard disks on a regular basis (I don't). The point is why would you defrag your whole hard disk when you can just defrag a couple folders that would actually benefit?

When the partition is defragged regularly there will only be "a couple folders" that are fragmented so it only takes moments to complete. HDD's are the primary bottleneck. Using a good defragger makes a beeg difference, optimizing all files (including registry hive), folders, pagefile and MFT.