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#1
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paging file neccessary or not ?
Dear group,
I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the performance has improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? thanks... Jeremy |
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#2
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paging file neccessary or not ?
"brugnospamsia" wrote in message . uk... Dear group, I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the performance has improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? thanks... it's usually best to just let windows manage your page file,then forget it. trying "tricks" such as ram disks will do nothing at all to help performance. as to the amount of ram you need...that will depend on the apps you run. IE: if you go "heavy" graphics such as video editing, or working on large images with many layers in Photoshop....even a gig of RAM will probably not be enough... but for just "general" use 256 - 512 megs of RAM is usually fine. as far a google desktop search... i think i'd just let it run and index all your files before trying to run an co-current apps. same with AVG... you may want to configure it to run it's checks during a period of time when you are not using your machine... trying to run apps at the same time as a virsu scan can definately be problematic |
#3
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paging file neccessary or not ?
Hi,
The pagefile is necessary, even if you don't page. Many programs will expect it to be there, as memory space is allocated to it as the program is loaded. With 768MB of memory, you likely will not be doing much paging unless you run some really hefty games or do a lot of graphics editing. You can set the initial pagefile size to something small, say 100MB, unless you have need of a memory dump on system failure (which will require that the pagefile initialize at least the same size as the dump). What you may have been experiencing is that the system was previously set to focus on background programs and services, and is now set to focus on programs. This could account for the delay you are seeing. You may enjoy this read on virtual memory management in WindowsXP, it was written by MVP Alex Nichol: http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm -- Best of Luck, Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone Windows help - www.rickrogers.org "brugnospamsia" wrote in message . uk... Dear group, I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the performance has improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? thanks... Jeremy |
#4
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paging file neccessary or not ?
You can't turn off apging.The pagefile is merely on target.
--=20 ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.microscum.com/mscommunity/ "brugnospamsia" wrote in message = . uk... Dear group, =20 I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed = in=20 her new PC. =20 I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of = 266MHz=20 DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out = to be=20 faulty.) =20 I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop = Search and=20 AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) =20 I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in = task=20 manager (as well as just about everything else !) =20 It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit=20 outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using = clunky=20 hard drive instead of speedy RAM. =20 Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the = performance has=20 improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds = 512MBytes no=20 matter how hard I push the machine ..... =20 Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or = any=20 more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? =20 thanks... =20 Jeremy=20 =20 |
#5
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paging file neccessary or not ?
Pagefile is necessary. However, size is arbitrary with at least a minimum of 2MB and windows XP has adjusted mine when I set it too low. Usually, it is set to 2 MB minimum and 1½ times Physical RAM. Some suggestions are 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. In your case minimum could be 2 MB or 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or maximum could be 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or 768 x 3 = 2304 MB. Personally, I don't use this general guide that is documented in MS KB and other sources. I have 512 MB and I set my minimum and maximum to 768 MB. All-be-it, I don't do severe processing (large graphic file processing) and I monitor my pagefile using a utility called pagemon.exe I only use approximately 33% - about 252 MB at the peak use. If you do a lot of intensive graphics manipulation, you need at least 1GB Physical RAM and I would also set the pagefile.sys to the recommended 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. I know you have a bad memory slot but, if you needed to could you up the DIMMs on the slots you have (2-512MB DIMMS)? Here is another technique that some MVPs won't agree with. On my 38GB HD I have C:, D:, E:, F:, G:, (7GB each) and H: (3GB) partitions. I put a 2MB pagefile on each C: - F: partition and 760 MB on the H: partition which is totally dedicated to pagefile.sys with a little extra space. Some may want to know why 7GB on the partitions which has to do with future dual boot restrictions. The 3GB final partition is large enough to expand the pagefile.sys to 3 times the Physical RAM.
"brugnospamsia" wrote in message . uk... Dear group, I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the performance has improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? thanks... Jeremy |
#6
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paging file neccessary or not ?
Let the system manage the pagefile. The pagefile will not prevent your
system from utilizing your full ram when it wants to. -- Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine] (Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested) "brugnospamsia" wrote in message . uk... Dear group, I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the performance has improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? thanks... Jeremy |
#7
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paging file neccessary or not ?
In . uk,
brugnospamsia typed: Dear group, I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. No. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, Not a good thing to do. Page file space is allocated in anticipation of posible need for it. Without a page file, that allocation gets made in real memory (RAM) instead, and that results in locking out some of your RAM, and preventing you from being able to use it. Having a page file present never hurts you and can't improve performance. If you don't need to use it, that's fine, but it's being their doesn't hurt you. It's like the overdraft protection on my checking account. it's there to help me if I need it, but if I don't use it, its being available never hurts me. I find the performance has improved significantly I suggest that you're either mistaken or that it's due to some other factor. It can not be as a result of turning off the page file. and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? How much memory you need depends on what apps you run, but almost everyone needs at least 256MB for decent performance. For some people, for example those who edit large photographic images, more than 256MB--even much more--can be required for good performance. Unless you're running apps that are very memory-intensive, 768MB is significantly more than most people need. Chances are that if you gave away 256MB, your performance wouldn't decrease at all. -- Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User Please reply to the newsgroup |
#8
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paging file neccessary or not ?
While I won't disagree with your suggestion, you should be aware that
placing the pagefile on a different volume on the same drive can be an issue if paging is heavy. A lot of paging will cause excessive drive head movement as it jumps back and forth between the paging volume and the boot volume. If paging is light, or relatively non-existent, then this won't be a problem. I'm not sure how it would react to a memory dump on system failure. -- Best of Luck, Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone Windows help - www.rickrogers.org "plb2862" wrote in message news:%alUd.24047$Tt.23229@fed1read05... Pagefile is necessary. However, size is arbitrary with at least a minimum of 2MB and windows XP has adjusted mine when I set it too low. Usually, it is set to 2 MB minimum and 1½ times Physical RAM. Some suggestions are 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. In your case minimum could be 2 MB or 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or maximum could be 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or 768 x 3 = 2304 MB. Personally, I don't use this general guide that is documented in MS KB and other sources. I have 512 MB and I set my minimum and maximum to 768 MB. All-be-it, I don't do severe processing (large graphic file processing) and I monitor my pagefile using a utility called pagemon.exe I only use approximately 33% - about 252 MB at the peak use. If you do a lot of intensive graphics manipulation, you need at least 1GB Physical RAM and I would also set the pagefile.sys to the recommended 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. I know you have a bad memory slot but, if you needed to could you up the DIMMs on the slots you have (2-512MB DIMMS)? Here is another technique that some MVPs won't agree with. On my 38GB HD I have C:, D:, E:, F:, G:, (7GB each) and H: (3GB) partitions. I put a 2MB pagefile on each C: - F: partition and 760 MB on the H: partition which is totally dedicated to pagefile.sys with a little extra space. Some may want to know why 7GB on the partitions which has to do with future dual boot restrictions. The 3GB final partition is large enough to expand the pagefile.sys to 3 times the Physical RAM. "brugnospamsia" wrote in message . uk... Dear group, I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the performance has improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? thanks... Jeremy |
#9
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paging file neccessary or not ?
Placing the page file on another partition on the same drive is ineffective.
Placing it on a different drive on a separate controller can help in slow systems with small hard drives, but otherwise offers negligible performance improvement. Please post in plain text. -- Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine] (Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested) "plb2862" wrote in message news:%alUd.24047$Tt.23229@fed1read05... Pagefile is necessary. However, size is arbitrary with at least a minimum of 2MB and windows XP has adjusted mine when I set it too low. Usually, it is set to 2 MB minimum and 1½ times Physical RAM. Some suggestions are 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. In your case minimum could be 2 MB or 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or maximum could be 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or 768 x 3 = 2304 MB. Personally, I don't use this general guide that is documented in MS KB and other sources. I have 512 MB and I set my minimum and maximum to 768 MB. All-be-it, I don't do severe processing (large graphic file processing) and I monitor my pagefile using a utility called pagemon.exe I only use approximately 33% - about 252 MB at the peak use. If you do a lot of intensive graphics manipulation, you need at least 1GB Physical RAM and I would also set the pagefile.sys to the recommended 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. I know you have a bad memory slot but, if you needed to could you up the DIMMs on the slots you have (2-512MB DIMMS)? Here is another technique that some MVPs won't agree with. On my 38GB HD I have C:, D:, E:, F:, G:, (7GB each) and H: (3GB) partitions. I put a 2MB pagefile on each C: - F: partition and 760 MB on the H: partition which is totally dedicated to pagefile.sys with a little extra space. Some may want to know why 7GB on the partitions which has to do with future dual boot restrictions. The 3GB final partition is large enough to expand the pagefile.sys to 3 times the Physical RAM. "brugnospamsia" wrote in message . uk... Dear group, I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the performance has improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? thanks... Jeremy |
#10
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paging file neccessary or not ?
"Ken Blake" wrote in message ... In . uk, brugnospamsia typed: SNIP Having now just set the paging file size to zero, SNIP I find the performance has improved significantly I suggest that you're either mistaken or that it's due to some other factor. It can not be as a result of turning off the page file. Well I'm fairly certain that is all I did. - made the same sort of difference defragging did. I wish Windows had built-in optimisation which would simply tell me if adding an extra GByte of RAM would significantly improve performance ... What I have now done for now ... as a result of Googling (something I should have done before I posted) is allow Windows to manage the paging file, but with some registry tweaks which hopefully are a bit more robust than taking away the safety net. http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?hl...P12%26rnum%3D3 The next thing I'll probably do is put the paging file on a second hard drive. Thanks for all the advice folks. I can see I have a lot of reading to do ;-) Jeremy |
#11
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paging file neccessary or not ?
Over a year now and no failures and no speed issues, It must be a fluke
although the point of having 2MB on each of the partitions helps in keeping the system from crashing. It took a lot of research to find this solution. And what I'm left with is a primary partition that can handle all (without going over 7GB - so I can dual boot) of my OS primary programs without slowing the system down. In my case it works and is efficient and that may be because this system does Office documents and e-mail and not any intense graphic manipulation. "Rick "Nutcase" Rogers" wrote in message ... While I won't disagree with your suggestion, you should be aware that placing the pagefile on a different volume on the same drive can be an issue if paging is heavy. A lot of paging will cause excessive drive head movement as it jumps back and forth between the paging volume and the boot volume. If paging is light, or relatively non-existent, then this won't be a problem. I'm not sure how it would react to a memory dump on system failure. -- Best of Luck, Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone Windows help - www.rickrogers.org "plb2862" wrote in message news:%alUd.24047$Tt.23229@fed1read05... Pagefile is necessary. However, size is arbitrary with at least a minimum of 2MB and windows XP has adjusted mine when I set it too low. Usually, it is set to 2 MB minimum and 1½ times Physical RAM. Some suggestions are 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. In your case minimum could be 2 MB or 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or maximum could be 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or 768 x 3 = 2304 MB. Personally, I don't use this general guide that is documented in MS KB and other sources. I have 512 MB and I set my minimum and maximum to 768 MB. All-be-it, I don't do severe processing (large graphic file processing) and I monitor my pagefile using a utility called pagemon.exe I only use approximately 33% - about 252 MB at the peak use. If you do a lot of intensive graphics manipulation, you need at least 1GB Physical RAM and I would also set the pagefile.sys to the recommended 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. I know you have a bad memory slot but, if you needed to could you up the DIMMs on the slots you have (2-512MB DIMMS)? Here is another technique that some MVPs won't agree with. On my 38GB HD I have C:, D:, E:, F:, G:, (7GB each) and H: (3GB) partitions. I put a 2MB pagefile on each C: - F: partition and 760 MB on the H: partition which is totally dedicated to pagefile.sys with a little extra space. Some may want to know why 7GB on the partitions which has to do with future dual boot restrictions. The 3GB final partition is large enough to expand the pagefile.sys to 3 times the Physical RAM. "brugnospamsia" wrote in message . uk... Dear group, I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the performance has improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? thanks... Jeremy |
#12
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paging file neccessary or not ?
It is more useful if the second drive is on a different controller (SATA
drives always are) so that you can get asynchronius read/writes. -- Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine] (Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested) "brugnospamsia" wrote in message .uk... "Ken Blake" wrote in message ... In . uk, brugnospamsia typed: SNIP Having now just set the paging file size to zero, SNIP I find the performance has improved significantly I suggest that you're either mistaken or that it's due to some other factor. It can not be as a result of turning off the page file. Well I'm fairly certain that is all I did. - made the same sort of difference defragging did. I wish Windows had built-in optimisation which would simply tell me if adding an extra GByte of RAM would significantly improve performance ... What I have now done for now ... as a result of Googling (something I should have done before I posted) is allow Windows to manage the paging file, but with some registry tweaks which hopefully are a bit more robust than taking away the safety net. http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?hl...P12%26rnum%3D3 The next thing I'll probably do is put the paging file on a second hard drive. Thanks for all the advice folks. I can see I have a lot of reading to do ;-) Jeremy |
#13
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paging file neccessary or not ?
"Colin Barnhorst" wrote in message ... It is more useful if the second drive is on a different controller (SATA drives always are) so that you can get asynchronius read/writes. luckily I have an unused RAID conroller on my Abit motherboard and a couple of 40GByte drives. (not sure if I'm going RAID per se though) -- Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine] (Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested) "brugnospamsia" wrote in message .uk... "Ken Blake" wrote in message ... In . uk, brugnospamsia typed: SNIP Having now just set the paging file size to zero, SNIP I find the performance has improved significantly I suggest that you're either mistaken or that it's due to some other factor. It can not be as a result of turning off the page file. Well I'm fairly certain that is all I did. - made the same sort of difference defragging did. I wish Windows had built-in optimisation which would simply tell me if adding an extra GByte of RAM would significantly improve performance ... What I have now done for now ... as a result of Googling (something I should have done before I posted) is allow Windows to manage the paging file, but with some registry tweaks which hopefully are a bit more robust than taking away the safety net. http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?hl...P12%26rnum%3D3 The next thing I'll probably do is put the paging file on a second hard drive. Thanks for all the advice folks. I can see I have a lot of reading to do ;-) Jeremy |
#14
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paging file neccessary or not ?
But would you put the pagefile on a raid array?
-- Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine] (Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested) "brugnospamsia" wrote in message k... "Colin Barnhorst" wrote in message ... It is more useful if the second drive is on a different controller (SATA drives always are) so that you can get asynchronius read/writes. luckily I have an unused RAID conroller on my Abit motherboard and a couple of 40GByte drives. (not sure if I'm going RAID per se though) -- Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine] (Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested) "brugnospamsia" wrote in message .uk... "Ken Blake" wrote in message ... In . uk, brugnospamsia typed: SNIP Having now just set the paging file size to zero, SNIP I find the performance has improved significantly I suggest that you're either mistaken or that it's due to some other factor. It can not be as a result of turning off the page file. Well I'm fairly certain that is all I did. - made the same sort of difference defragging did. I wish Windows had built-in optimisation which would simply tell me if adding an extra GByte of RAM would significantly improve performance ... What I have now done for now ... as a result of Googling (something I should have done before I posted) is allow Windows to manage the paging file, but with some registry tweaks which hopefully are a bit more robust than taking away the safety net. http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?hl...P12%26rnum%3D3 The next thing I'll probably do is put the paging file on a second hard drive. Thanks for all the advice folks. I can see I have a lot of reading to do ;-) Jeremy |
#15
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paging file neccessary or not ?
Why the 7GB partitions for dual booting?
-- Best of Luck, Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone Windows help - www.rickrogers.org "plb2862" wrote in message news:P_vUd.27779$Tt.16466@fed1read05... Over a year now and no failures and no speed issues, It must be a fluke although the point of having 2MB on each of the partitions helps in keeping the system from crashing. It took a lot of research to find this solution. And what I'm left with is a primary partition that can handle all (without going over 7GB - so I can dual boot) of my OS primary programs without slowing the system down. In my case it works and is efficient and that may be because this system does Office documents and e-mail and not any intense graphic manipulation. "Rick "Nutcase" Rogers" wrote in message ... While I won't disagree with your suggestion, you should be aware that placing the pagefile on a different volume on the same drive can be an issue if paging is heavy. A lot of paging will cause excessive drive head movement as it jumps back and forth between the paging volume and the boot volume. If paging is light, or relatively non-existent, then this won't be a problem. I'm not sure how it would react to a memory dump on system failure. -- Best of Luck, Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone Windows help - www.rickrogers.org "plb2862" wrote in message news:%alUd.24047$Tt.23229@fed1read05... Pagefile is necessary. However, size is arbitrary with at least a minimum of 2MB and windows XP has adjusted mine when I set it too low. Usually, it is set to 2 MB minimum and 1½ times Physical RAM. Some suggestions are 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. In your case minimum could be 2 MB or 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or maximum could be 768 x 1½ = 1152 MB or 768 x 3 = 2304 MB. Personally, I don't use this general guide that is documented in MS KB and other sources. I have 512 MB and I set my minimum and maximum to 768 MB. All-be-it, I don't do severe processing (large graphic file processing) and I monitor my pagefile using a utility called pagemon.exe I only use approximately 33% - about 252 MB at the peak use. If you do a lot of intensive graphics manipulation, you need at least 1GB Physical RAM and I would also set the pagefile.sys to the recommended 1½ to 3 times Physical RAM. I know you have a bad memory slot but, if you needed to could you up the DIMMs on the slots you have (2-512MB DIMMS)? Here is another technique that some MVPs won't agree with. On my 38GB HD I have C:, D:, E:, F:, G:, (7GB each) and H: (3GB) partitions. I put a 2MB pagefile on each C: - F: partition and 760 MB on the H: partition which is totally dedicated to pagefile.sys with a little extra space. Some may want to know why 7GB on the partitions which has to do with future dual boot restrictions. The 3GB final partition is large enough to expand the pagefile.sys to 3 times the Physical RAM. "brugnospamsia" wrote in message . uk... Dear group, I was in the process of advising a collegue on how much RAM she needed in her new PC. I have a system with an Athlon 1.33GHz processor and 768 MBytes of 266MHz DDR RAM. (I originally fitted a whole GByte but one of my RAM slots turned out to be faulty.) I have been having performance issues when running Google Desktop Search and AVG antivirus. (delays when clicking on shortcuts etc) I realise now I don't understand the meaning of the "memory meter" in task manager (as well as just about everything else !) It occured to me that my XP Pro might have configured itself to suit outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky hard drive instead of speedy RAM. Having now just set the paging file size to zero, I find the performance has improved significantly and the PF Usage meter now never exceeds 512MBytes no matter how hard I push the machine ..... Is there a way to make Windows take full advantage of all my RAM or any more I choose to fit ? (RAM disk perhaps) Or can I give my spare 256MBytes away ? thanks... Jeremy |
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