Thought I'd share my game shortcuts/tips - anyone else?

[neeyo]

I have batch files on my desktop for all my games, especially newer and more demanding ones that like every meg of free ram and free cpu cycle.

The basic template looks like this:

@ECHO OFF
taskkill /im explorer.exe /f
taskkill /im PSFree.exe /f
taskkill /im daemon.exe /f
taskkill /im mbm5.exe /f
**EXAMPLE taskkill /im otherprogram.exe /f **
start "FS2004" /HIGH /WAIT /DE:\FS2004 E:\fs2004\fs9.exe
start explorer.exe

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Explanations incase anyone needs 'em:

taskkill - built in xp app for the cli that kills a program, the /im switch kills the name as it appears in the task manager. My biggest one is explorer.exe, essentially killing the xp gui until the program is completed, then starts it back up again... take a look at your task manager and see how much memory explorer is eating... anyware from 10 - 30+ megs.

start - uses the xp way of starting a new program. /HIGH gives it high priority (REALTIME priority will probably bork it up, since xp will try to run the game first... even before, say, recognizing your usb mouse inputs, keyboard, or incoming network traffic). /WAIT is the kicker - it holds its place in the batch file until my game is closed down, then the next line is executed.

Basically, I use it to kill all my systray progs (AV, firewall (if I had one), other goodies), kill explorer to free up some ram, play my game, and go back to explorer.
Other stuff to kill: ICQ, AIM, etc.

Just thought I'd share my tip. Sorry if I wasted your time

 

[kuyaglen]

So could you post a pic of the properties for whatever game(s) you use this for? Far Cry, BF:V, UT2K4, 3DMark perhaps?

-Thank You

 

[AgentxofxChaos]

Yeah batch files are pretty nice, useful that is for sure. I do that every now and then for a few games, kill a few progs like Objectdock etc. when starting games etc., then have em start back up once i exit the game. Pretty basic, but pretty useful as well. never thought of killing explorer though, interesting idea.

 

[Eidolon]

Yeah, that's pretty clever. I never thought of using taskkill on explorer.
Fortunately, memory-wise, I'm doing okay. But I can think of a number of friends who could benefit from that. Thanks!