You've upgraded to Windows 98 and now you're ready to enjoy its performance benefits. But, like many other users, you may have found that upgrading hasn't produced the enhanced application performance the new OS promised. Nevertheless, Win98 does have the potential to bolster your apps' performance-particularly their launch times. And if you repeatedly launch and close programs throughout the day-especially big, slow-loading apps such as Netscape Navigator or Adobe Photoshop-the time savings can be significant.

One of the key pieces to Win98's performance puzzle is WinAlign, a utility that aligns the contents of program files so they load faster-20% faster (or more). With speedier access to your applications and the data they use, you'll be able to trim unproductive wait times. We'll show you how to use WinAlign-as well as our homegrown, slightly improved (and free) version of the utility-to fine-tune your apps to their peak performance. You'll need Office to run either of these utilities, but we're working on a fix for our version.

Load times are slower with unaligned code because Win98 must copy it from the disk-cache page to a brand new memory page aligned on a 4KB boundary. Aligned programs start faster because Win98 runs the code directly from the disk-cache pages where they were loaded. For more information about the performance and RAM-usage benefits of program-code alignment, see "Win98: Why You Need It," Features, May 1998 and "Get the Most Out of Win98," Features, September 1998.

Launching Pad Aligning and optimizing apps can cut launch times by 20% or more. Using our WMAlign batch file to invoke Microsoft's WAlign utility, I aligned the code for Netscape Navigator 4.05 and significantly reduced the time it took for the program to launch. I used a 333MHz Quantex Pentium II with 64MB of RAM. More details about the testing. Times to Launch Netscape Navigator 4.05 (in seconds) * Optimized means I ran Navigator 10 times so its dynamic load profile would be recorded for use by Disk Defragmenter.

The Tools
At present, Microsoft's WinAlign utility is available on the CD that comes with the Windows 98 Resource Kit. The kit costs $69.99-a bit pricey if all you want is the alignment utility. But Win98 does include a light version of the utility called WAlign that it uses to align any Microsoft Office components on your disk (Win98 Setup prompts you). While WAlign isn't intended for use on other program files, it can be coaxed into doing that chore. We've written a free batch file called WMAlign that simplifies the process of running WAlign for non-Office programs. Download WMAlign from our WinAlign Web site. The site also offers a generous helping of supplemental information, such as FAQ files and tips on using both utilities.

Align an Application
Most of the code in Win98 is already aligned (the core OS components and applets, for instance). However, all the other third-party apps on your disk are probably unaligned-and many might benefit from an adjustment. It's not worth your time to align all your apps, because there's a chance that some will fail to run properly if you do. In particular, the following types of programs should not be aligned: virus checkers, NT system files, cryptographically signed executables, self-extracting EXE files, programs that perform cyclic redundancy checks on themselves and programs that use the EXE file to store configuration data. Instead, concentrate on the apps you run frequently and those with long launch times.

Before aligning an app, check whether the vendor already aligned it before it was shipped. Find the EXE or DLL file you want to check, right-click on it and select Quick View. At the top of the display you'll see the words Dynamic Link Library or Windows Executable. Under the Image Optional Header section, look for values for Section Alignment and File Alignment. If the file has been aligned, both of these values will be 1000. (Hexadecimal 1000 equals decimal 4096, or 4KB.)

Aligning a program's EXE file might technically violate the vendor's shrink-wrap agreement; there's often a clause that prohibits you from modifying a program. This isn't a serious offense, but many vendors will refuse technical support if you align their code, since it's an unauthorized change. If you have problems with an aligned app, don't panic-you can easily restore the original unaligned files (see Bailing Out).

Regardless of which utility you use, aligning a program is easy. For WMAlign, launch a command prompt and use the CD command to switch to the directory where the app's program files are located. Type wmalign *.exe *.dll to align all the program files in that directory. You'll see some messages and dialogs, but the entire process should take less than a minute for all but the largest directories. (Note: If you align only some files-an app's EXE file, but not its DLLs, for example-you won't run into any problems, but you also won't get the best load performance.)

Once WMAlign finishes running, you'll find a log of what it did in WMALIGN.TXT, located in the same directory as the files that were aligned. Check our Web site for details about error messages you might see.

If you install the Resource Kit's version of WinAlign, it will put WINALIGN.EXE into the POWERTOY subdirectory where you installed the Resource Kit. But this means you can't type WINALIGN at a command prompt and have it run, so move the file into C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND. Before running the Resource Kit version, visit our Web site for details on the required syntax and available command-line options.