Changing the Default Priority Boost for Foreground Applications

---

It may be desired on some Windows NT computers to improve the responsiveness of background applications. By default, the foreground application is given a priority boost of two levels. This changes the base priority for foreground applications to 10 from the default of 8 in the case of Normal priority applications. If you wish to change this level, follow these steps:

1.	In Control Panel, double-click on the System applet.
2.	In the System Properties dialog box, click on the Performance tab.
3.	The Performance tab contains an Application Performance setting that determines whether foreground applications are given a priority boost over background applications (see Figure 5.26).

You can select from three settings. If the slider is set to None, no boost is given to foreground applications over background applications. This setting is preferred for file and print servers and application servers so that running a utility on the server will not affect any client connection performance. If the slider is set to the middle setting, the foreground application only receives a boost of one over background applications. The default setting is to have the priority boost set to Maximum. This gives a foreground application a priority increase of two over background applications. This is the preferred setting for Windows NT Workstation acting as a client’s workstation.




Common questions about base priorities include how to start an application at a different base priority using the start command with the /low, /normal, /high, or /realtime switches.