Windows 95 greatly reduces the system resource limitations that many users experienced with Windows 3.1. Windows 95 also cleans up resources that have not been freed to help reduce system resource limitations. When Windows 95 determines that an application that owned certain resources no longer needs those resources in memory, it deallocates remaining data structures, freeing the resources for use elsewhere in the system.
Wherever possible, Windows 95 is self-tuning, adjusting cache sizes or other elements of the system environment to provide the best performance for the current configuration. Windows 95 can also detect when the drivers loaded or other performance-related components are not providing the optimal performance.
Windows 95 reports the current performance status, including whether 32-bit, protected-mode components are being used.
If the performance status shows that real-mode components are being used for any device — and especially for disk drivers — you need to solve all the problems that prevent protected-mode drivers from loading. For information, see Chapter 19, "Devices." This chapter describes methods for optimizing or solving problems related to virtual memory, file system, or graphics performance.