Counter Strike 1.6 Steam/Non Steam Server Setup, Tutorials, maps, guides and tricks: How to Create Fastest CounterStrike Server

Hi Folks.... I bet you none of the availible sites gives you this trick for Fastest CounterStrike Server.

Servers Supported (Tested ,Both Steam and SteamLess):

CounterStrike 1.6
CounterStrike Condition Zero
CounterStrike Source

Scenario:

Now a days SSD's (Solid State Devices) is a Buzzword, very high speed harddisk having accesstime as low as 0.1 ms (normal 7200rpm drives have 16ms)....Just Imagine if you host your CounterStrike Server in such a SSD... will definatly give u r end users boost in Ping,fps,Smoothness,Stability,Connectivity ... and much more...!

Advantages:

Low Ping
High Frames per Second (FPS)
No Game Crashs
Better Connectivity
Smooth Game Play (even if ping is High)

Disadvantages:

SSD's are Very Costly

The Deal:

We Know anything closest to SSD is our very own RAM sticks , yes they too have accesstime as low as 0.1ms which is blazingly fast...!

So what if we can use our regular DDR1/DDR2/DDR3 RAM(it doesnt matter which DDR version you have, it only matters that you should have atleast 1Gb RAM installed in your system) as harddisk (HDD, like you see harddisk partitions in When you open MyComputer icon,located on Desktop).

The Assumptions:

Before we proceed further, the author assumes that you successfully created you CounterStrike Server (which is nothing but a folder ) ..... Otherwise read this How to Create CounterStrike 1.6 Server in Windows XP Tutorial.

You have Atleast 1Gb RAM of RAM installed (Right Click on MyComputer and Click Properties....and See if it shows RAM greater than or equal to1GB).
You have paused/stopped all your torrents/Downloading tasks.
Close Any Programs/Opened windows you running (:P Donot Close this window , as you are still reading this article :P)
You have DOT NET framework installed . else use google.com to find it !

The Procedure:

You have successfully created your CounterStrike 1.6 Server (folder, which we name it here as HLDS)
Download RAMDISK.ZIP (Its absolutly free/opensource and legal) to u r dekstop.
Extract the contents of RAMDISK.ZIP on Desktop and Double Click ramdisk.exe
Click "Install Ramdisk" button (U r PC may hang or crash... so be warned)
If PC crashes then restart it...and proceed to step 6
Open MyComputer icon check if u can see a harddisk with letter R: , it is our RAM drive.
Again on Desktop open ramdisk.exe file...now increase DiskSize (Bytes)to 512M .... click Apply button... you should see "success" button in few (10) seconds.
Open MyComputer , See if capacity of R: disk has increased to 512Mb from 16Mb....Copy your HLDS folder to R: Disk (u will see that it will copy very fast)
Now go to R:\HLDS\ and run hlds.exe (notice how fast it executes :P)
Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc together and locate hlds.exe in Process tab and Right Click on hlds.exe and change its priority to realtime.

Thats it Folks....Now you have the fastest CounterStrike Server Created in no time...!

Providing your players

1. Zero Lag

2.Lowest Pings

3. Real Hardware Server (Xeon QuadCore) like experiance.

Conclusion:

You can not only apply this trick for CounterStrike but also anything which u think takes lots of time to load , so that they can load faster then you could have imagined.

Caution:

Never install anthing (if u think it is important) directly on RAM DISK R:\ ....... just copy the installation folder to the R:\drive and then execute it from there.

Suggestions:

We may use following Softwares to load faster

1.Firefox/Crome/Safari/Internet Explorer 7/Opera or any browser in R:\

2.Point tmp folder to R:\ drive.

3. Steam and Its Associated applications.

4. Photoshop/Adobe image ready/ or any other Memory Hogging Application...!

Alternatives:

Here are the Best Found (not free) Alternatives to ramdisk

Software Level

Hardware Level