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AutoSYSTEMini v0.56 beta (english, italian & french only)


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Introducing AutoSYSTEMini... version 0.56 beta

Change log:

v0.56 - 15th March, 2007

- improved RAM value code AGAIN -- i will get it right one day ... :)

- added a proper method to detect your language

- improved the localization.

v0.55 - 15th March, 2007

- improved RAM value code

- removed invalid setting from information file (thanks MDGx)

v0.54 - 13th March, 2007

- added localization support

- changed RAM value code - no more adding 1 to get the correct value - should be right now.

v0.52 - 10th March, 2007

- added program installer and icon

v0.51 - 10th March, 2007

- added FREEMEM.exe - much better tool for finding the RAM size

- added support for French localised editions of Windows.

v0.50 - 5th March, 2007

- initial release

What the frack is it? An automatic and help-guided SYSTEM.INI tweaks installer

What does it do? It is a DOS utility that helps you make the correct choices for tweaking your SYSTEM.INI file on your Windows 98se machine, and does all the work for you. It could even work on Windows 95 & Windows ME but i'm yet to test it on those OSes. And, sorry any non-english speaking peoples using localised versions of Win98se, it aint gonna work for you guys yet -- i'll see if I can't make it universal. EDIT: this now works for English, French & Italian.

Why would anyone go to the trouble? The reason i'm doing this is because the core of this program will appear in the next preview release of Auto-Patcher and i wanted to develop it a bit before release.

Is it safe to use? Yes. It saves your original SYSTEM.INI as a permanent backup and also provides an undo file for your last tweaking session. You can set values On and Off and also completely (and safely) remove the settings. In fact, its probably over-kill the amount of features this little utility has.

Installation instructions? Unzip to any directory (spaces and more than 8 letters are fine) and start the file in the root directory (START_ME.BAT)

What settings can you adjust: - 32BitDiskAccess, ConservativeSwapfileUsage, DMABufferSize, KeyBoostTime, MinTimeSlice, RemovableIDE, Chunksize, MinFileCache, abd MaxFileCache. Other settings are on the drawing board.

What features does it have?

* automatic selection of best settings for your computer based upon installed RAM.

* extensive undo options

* you can set settings quickly and all at once, and also you can set each individual settings manually as well

* User-friendly -- you don't need to know anything about computers to use this program - everything is explained.

* Total program size is 270k. Doesn't install any registry settings, just unzip and use.

Feedback needed - i want to include this program in the next release of Auto-Patcher

language strings ... beware, there's lots! And i'm sorry if i got it wrong ...


:ENGLISH
SET TexVe=Verify this program correctly identifies how much RAM you have
SET TexAf=MB installed on your computer
SET TexMa=set manually
SET Tex01=version
SET Tex02=Welcome to Soporific's SYSTEM.INI Tweaks Installer
SET Tex03=This will tweak your SYSTEM.INI to take advantage of your modern hardware
SET Tex04=The installer will record your current settings
SET Tex05=and save them to an undo file that you can use
SET Tex06=to restore your original settings if you need
SET Tex07=The settings you can adjust are
SET Tex08=Press any key to continue
SET Tex08a=or
SET Tex08b=to quit
SET Tex09=Now making your original undo file
SET Tex10=Now loading your computer's current settings
SET Tex11=Now loading saved settings
SET Tex12=Choose a number to change each setting
SET Tex13=Automatically load the best settings using your computer's RAM value
SET Tex14=current computer
SET Tex15=defaults for Windows 98
SET Tex16=high
SET Tex17=extreme
SET Tex17a=performance
SET Tex18=last
SET Tex18a=undo file
SET Tex18b=reboot
SET Tex19=original
SET Tex20=save Settings
SET Tex20a=make
SET Tex20b=install tweaks
SET Tex21=display Information on all the settings
SET Tex22=Quit the program
SET Tex23=Environment space used
SET Tex24=It seems you haven't yet verified
SET Tex25=this program correctly identifies
SET Tex26=the amount of RAM installed
SET Tex27=on your system
SET Tex28=Press any key to do this now
SET Tex29=Now checking to see how much RAM you have
SET Tex30=This program thinks you have
SET Tex31=of RAM available to Windows
SET Tex32=You can confirm this now by going to
SET Tex33=Start - Settings - Control Panel - System
SET Tex34=
SET Tex35=If this is not correct you can manually
SET Tex36=enter in the correct amount so that the
SET Tex37=rest of the program will produce settings
SET Tex38=appropriate to your computer
SET Tex39=Is this amount correct
SET Tex40=Oh well, that's why there's an option to manually set your RAM size
SET Tex41=Please enter your RAM size in megabytes
SET Tex42=You cannot enter nothing for this setting. Please enter something
SET Tex43=Your selected RAM size of
SET Tex44=has been recorded and will be used in all
SET Tex45=calculations that use the size of your installed RAM.
SET Tex46=If you make a mistake, just run this option again.
SET Tex47=This will install your original undo file
SET Tex48=You are about to make changes to your SYSTEM.INI file
SET Tex49=Are you sure you wish to continue
SET Tex50=Your original undo file has been installed
SET Tex51a=This will install
SET Tex51=your current
SET Tex52a=undo file
SET Tex52=Now making your original
SET Tex53a=Now loading
SET Tex53=your computer's current settings
SET Tex54=saved settings
SET Tex55=Choose a number to change each setting
SET Tex56=has been installed
SET Tex57=the information file for SYSTEM.INI settings
SET Tex58=settings from this computer
SET Tex59=Are you sure
SET Tex60=Please Note
SET Tex61=This will now install your selected tweaks
SET Tex62=If your system refuses to load on reboot
SET Tex63=restart in SAFE MODE and run the undo file
SET Tex64=If you aren't sure if you know you can boot into SAFE MODE
SET Tex65=Check this first!!! As long as you can boot into safe mode, there
SET Tex66=is no settings you can make that will stop the computer starting up
SET Tex67=Continue installing tweaks
SET Tex68=to continue
SET Tex69=to go back
SET Tex70=Settings have been saved
SET Tex71=The undo file has been created
SET Tex72=The INF file has been created
SET Tex73=Now installing tweaks
SET Tex74=tweaks have been installed
SET Tex75=Setting Name
SET Tex76=Valid values
SET Tex77=recommended
SET Tex78=Information
:: ie Press: 0 for OFF
SET Tex79=Press
SET Tex80=for
SET Tex81=Recommended settings
SET Tex82=to Delete this setting entirely
SET Tex83=to go back
SET Tex84=default is
SET Tex85=off
SET Tex86=to automatically configure this setting based upon your RAM
SET Tex86a=to automatically choose the best setting
SET Tex87a=You have
SET Tex87=less than
SET Tex88=of RAM installed
SET Tex89=This means it is recommended that we set
:: SET Tex90=
SET Tex91=or more
SET Tex92=Enter nothing
SET Tex93=Please enter the new
SET Tex94=buffer size
SET Tex95=This value is invalid
SET Tex96=Please enter a value between
SET Tex97=and
SET Tex98=value
SET Tex99=default
SET TexRe=Reboot now
SET Tey00=to Input the figure manually
SET Tey01=As your computer's RAM is
SET Tey02=setting is
SET Tey03=Best to set to
SET Tey04=Using a guide of
SET Tey05=This enables 32 bit access to your hard disk
SET Tey06=You computer will run at reduced performance with this off
SET Tey07=Disabling is useful for troubleshooting
SET Tey08=This forces the system to use as much of the computer's
SET Tey09=physical memory as possible, before using your hard disk
SET Tey10=Recommended for computers with 256mb of RAM or over
SET Tey11=Affects communications with peripherials including
SET Tey12=sound card FM/wavetable, MIDI playback-recording
SET Tey13=and disk read-writes
SET Tey14=Specifies the time in seconds an application runs with
SET Tey15=increased priority when it receives a keystroke. Makes the
SET Tey16=keyboard more responsive when running multiple applications.
SET Tey17=Sets the minimum time period that each process has
SET Tey18=access to the CPU. Lower values improve multi-tasking
SET Tey19=but decrease overall performance, & visa versa.
SET Tey20=To turn on support for removable
SET Tey20a=drives
:: like as in "turn on support for removable drives like Iomega, Syquest, etc"
SET Tey21=like
SET Tey22=depends on RAM
SET Tey23=Specifies size of each block of memory buffer in bytes
SET Tey24=Use larger chunks if you have lots of RAM
SET Tey24a=but too big will work against efficiency
SET Tey25=It's a good idea to use values that are multiples of
:: min as in minimum
SET Tey26=min
:: max as in maximum
SET Tey27=max
SET Tey28=Vcache is the Windows disk-caching virtual device driver
SET Tey29=Provides excellent disk performance, so don't use others.
SET Tey30=eg SmartDrv, etc... unless directed to by MDGx of course
SET Tey31=Excellent
SET Tey32=load settings
SET Tey33=install
SET Tey34=of
SET Tey35=It seems you haven't yet made an undo file
SET Tey36=language
SET Tey37=detected

AutoSYSTEMini_0.56.zip

Edited by soporific
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Just tested it. Since I didn't have much time to provide feedback about Autopatcher recently, I thought I'd do that one!

Seems nice. The readme about all the functions is really useful. Guess it took you time to compile all that stuff!

Anyway, I've encoutered several problems. It detected only 1mb of RAM... So I told the prog I have 1gb.

I choosed the High performance preset and it wrote the values correctly. Then I tried to tweak some settings and it worked fine.

However, it failed to save and install. It displayed several "error creating file" or something like that and ended with an error. :}

Don't worry, this app is on the right way! Keep up your work!

Ask if you want more info / reproduction of the error.

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Just tested it. Since I didn't have much time to provide feedback about Autopatcher recently, I thought I'd do that one!

Seems nice. The readme about all the functions is really useful. Guess it took you time to compile all that stuff!

Anyway, I've encoutered several problems. It detected only 1mb of RAM... So I told the prog I have 1gb.

I choosed the High performance preset and it wrote the values correctly. Then I tried to tweak some settings and it worked fine.

However, it failed to save and install. It displayed several "error creating file" or something like that and ended with an error. :}

Don't worry, this app is on the right way! Keep up your work!

Ask if you want more info / reproduction of the error.

Can you send me a screenshot of the DOS window when you type

 MEM /A/C

at the command line? The code is trying to determine the RAM from this info and because its probably different for you (localised version?), i'll need it so i can get it to work for you... I only need it from "Memory Summary:" onwards so don't worry about pausing the screen and sending more than one shot.

I should be able to find the other bug from what you already said (but if you want to send me a screenshot of that be my guest.)

Thanks for the feedback.

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Ok, here's mem in action. Never liked that thing. There's a freemem with freedos I think if you're interested. Anyway :

memac6.png

And here's the error:

I'll check out freemem, thanks for the tip.

And yep, localisations aren't supported in AutoSYSTEMini as such but maybe it won't be too hard -- i'll look into other methods that don't cause these errors.

EDIT:: i've had a quick look at the code --- i'm not sure why its stuffing up. The only thing i can think of is that the directory doesn't exist that the code is trying to write to. It was supposed to be already created as a folder in the package you downloaded. I do admit to not adding error-checking for the folder to make sure it was there (which i will now add) so lets at least rule that out ... i'll release 0.51 in a day or so for you to test.

I'll be adding my first ever language option in any program i've ever done if we can get this right for you...

Edited by soporific
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Free MEM.EXE from FreeDOS is here, in case you're interested:

* MEM.EXE v1.11 16-bit DOS mode memory viewer improved Microsoft MEM.EXE

replacement for MS-DOS 5/6/7/8 + Windows 3.1x/9x/ME [also part of FreeDOS:

http://www.freedos.org/], highly customizable:

http://freedos.sourceforge.net/mem/

Direct download [88 KB, free GPL]:

http://freedos.sourceforge.net/mem/mem111.zip

HTH

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Change log:

v0.52 - 10th March, 2007

- added program installer and icon

v0.51 - 10th March, 2007

- added FREEMEM.exe - much better tool for finding the RAM size

- added support for French localised editions of Windows.

Thanks to glock_94 and MDGx for the FREEMEM tip. Its now used to find the RAM.

Edited by soporific
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I tried hard to disconnect with my problems for a little while, so I grabbed this app and analyzed it a bit. Here's some considerations:

In SYS_inst.bat: why don't you create a menu for the user to choose his system language manually from a list of choices, and then just direct the code to validate ONLY that choice, returning to system language menu on error. I consider this to be easier than checking each possible language one after another, waiting for a match. I'd create this chunk of code myself for you, if my mind would be clear enough.

Just an idea: instead of "This value is invalid. [...]" when bad value was input, why not present the user with a message like: "Value out of range. Would you like to use (D)efault, (C)urrent or (O)ptimal value instead, or (R)eturn to manual value input?". It might be a good alternative, if the user is unsure as to which value to set.

What I feel would be very helpful, is always having the current value displayed on screen, for each of the possible items, when one is selected. E.g.:

Setting name: 32BitDiskAccess

Current value: OFF

Valid values: ON, OFF (recommended: ON)

......

Please note that I wrote all this just by looking at the batch code; I haven't run it yet. So I may be wrong at some point.

[EDIT] Now I have run it, without making any changes, though, just to see how the menu looks.

Grrrr... it found 1mb (why not MB ?) of available RAM, when I do have 240MB. And my system is English. I manually input the correct amount, which was saved. On a second run of the program, I ran the check again, and again it told me I have 1mb. Why wouldn't it take into account the value saved during the previous run and when discrepancy found, just say: "Current check indicates you have X amount of RAM, however on a previous check you manually input a value of Y MB RAM. Which value is correct? (O)ld/(D)etected/(N)one". On O, old value would be used; on D, the newly detected value will. On N, user will be prompted to manually enter the correct value.

mem /a /c shows a bogus 67,698.688 Bytes of total RAM, 250,949,280 Bytes of which (ha!!!) free, while FREEMEM.EXE does show the correct amount of 245,696 kB.

Edited by Drugwash
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Italian localizations of strings:

:LANG_ITA
:: the text of ALL variables in this label can be changed to the language of origin.
SET MEMmsg=Memoria totale
SET AutoLoad=Automaticamente le migliori impostazioni utilizzano il valore della RAM
"%LOCATE%\bin\FREEMEM" | Find /i "%memmsg% " >nul
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 goto LANG_ENG
goto GOSTART

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Nice idea, but unfortunately your program doesn't work at all for me.

I'm using 4DOS as a command interpreter.

When i run AutoSYSTEMini.exe it installs fine, then i get to the introduction screen and the last lines are:

Now making your original undo file...
T" 1.5

After a couple keypresses i get:

T" .5

Now loading your computer's current settings...
T" 1.5

then some error messages scroll too fast that i can't read them, and finally i reach the menu.

I press "V" to check if it detects my RAM and i get:

Now checking to see how much RAM you have...
T" 1.5

After i press a key, the output is:

Syntax Fehler
NSET 2.1 © 1997 Horst Schaeffer - s. DOK Datei
ASET: Warning: syntax error!
ASET: Warning: syntax error!
ASET: Warning: syntax error!
ASET: Warning: syntax error!
ASET: Warning: syntax error!
C:\PROGRA~1\AUTOSYS\code\SYS_Inst.bat [1055] Unknown command "1"
ASET: Warning: syntax error!
ASET: Warning: syntax error!
ASET: Warning: syntax error!
ASET: Warning: syntax error!
Deleting C:\@@_tmp.txt
1 file deleted

This program thinks you have mb of RAM available to Windows.

You can confirm this now by going to your Control Panel then 'System'

If this is not correct, you can manually enter in the correct amount
so that the rest of the program will produce settings appropriate to
your computer.

Is this amount correct? [Y/N]

Then i press "N" and it starts an endless loop of this:

INPUT ver 1.2  © 2000, Horst Schaeffer
Syntax: INPUT [line,column] [prompt] varname [options]
Options:
/E edit current variable
/S edit: cursor at end, clear if 1st key is ASCII
/Ln limit input length=n
/U uppercase, /I insert, /P password, /N numeric only, /F flush buffer


You cannot enter nothing for this setting. Please enter something!

I've also tried to run Start_Me.bat from the original M$ command.com prompt, but it just closes the DOS window.

The previous version has similar issues.

HTH

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Ok. Just tested the new version deeply. And...everything runs perfectly!

It detected the right amount of RAM, installed everything fine and used the backup to restore the original file.

So what can I say... your program rulez !!! :thumbup:

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Nice idea, but unfortunately your program doesn't work at all for me.

I'm using 4DOS as a command interpreter.

It's about time i made my DOS programs 4DOS compatible. Is there some information i can see that will see where i can work around incompatibilities? Can you send me anything? you can get my email via my profile...

A curious thing, the program detects 257 MB of RAM, system properties of Revolutions Pack Lite 256 MB of RAM.

Why?

Ah ha!! i'm busted ... here's the relevant bit of code...

:GET_RAM

:: this function tries to calculate how much RAM you have installed

:: returns with %NEXT1%

:: first see if there is a manual RAM size file

IF EXIST "%LOCATE%\files\your_RAM.txt" goto MAN_RAM

SET MyFile=C:\@@_tmp.txt

"%LOCATE%\bin\FREEMEM" | Find /i "%memmsg% " > "%MyFile%"

"%LOCATE%\bin\NSET" /P40 TempVar=$0 < "%MyFile%"

"%LOCATE%\bin\ASET" TempVar := SUBALL('K','','%TempVar%')

"%LOCATE%\bin\ASET" TempVar := SUBALL(',','','%TempVar%')

"%LOCATE%\bin\ASET" MyRAM := %TempVar%/1024

"%LOCATE%\bin\ASET" MyRAM := ROUND(%MyRAM%)

:: we have to add 1 to the number, why i don't know.

"%LOCATE%\bin\ASET" MyRAM := %MyRAM%+1

"%LOCATE%\bin\ASET" MinVal := %MyRAM%*128

"%LOCATE%\bin\ASET" MaxVal := %MyRAM%*256

:: goto CHUNK_1

Where am i going wrong? why can't i use the value from FREEMEM normally? I would love to be able to get the right answer without having to add 1...

is it rounding down weirdly or something?

EDIT:: no, i think i can see the problem ... i'm using the wrong value ... back soon

Edited by soporific
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