DISABLE WRITE BEHIND CACHING

Windows computers ship with “write behind caching enabled”. The cache is a temporary memory location where data is stored until it is written to the computer’s hard drive. This speeds up the computer’s response time which is good for games but bad for databases. When working with a database in a network situation, it’s crucial that the hard drive be updated immediately with the latest information, to prevent data corruption.

To disable write behind caching in Windows 95 & 98:

1. Double click “My Computer”.
2. Double click “Control Panel”.
3. Double click “System”. This opens the System Properties Window.
4. Click the tab labeled “Performance”.
5. Under Advanced settings select “File System”. This opens a window named “File System Properties”.
6. Click the tab labeled “Troubleshooting”.
7. Check the bottom box labeled “Disable write behind caching for all drives”.
8. You will need to restart your computer for changes to take effect.

This must be done on all Windows computers on your network.
See MS Knowledge Base article Q247485

To disable write behind caching in WindowsNT, Edit the Registry as follows:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Rdr
\Parameters\UseWriteBehind

Set to 0

See MS Knowledge Base article Q169742

HOW TO TURN WRITE-BEHIND CACHING OFF IN WINDOWS XP:

1. From the DeskTop select the “Start” Button.

2. From the menu that appears, select “Settings”.

3. From the second menu that appears, select “Control Panel”.

4. In the resulting window, double click on “system”.

5. In the resulting window, click on the ‘Hardware’ tab (at the top of the window), then click on the ‘Device
Manager’ button.

6. Expand the ‘Disk Drives’ icon, then right-click each drive individually:

7. Select Properties.

8. On the ‘Policies’ tab, UN-check the box labeled ‘Enable write caching on the disk.’ This turns this dangerous
feature off on the selected drive.

Repeat steps 7-8 for each drive in your system. Windows XP does not prompt you to reboot after completing this
change.

According to the programmers at Omnis Software, right behind caching is not an issue in Windows NT/2000 (4-12-020