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paging file neccessary or not ?



 
 
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  #16  
Old February 28th 05, 12:50 PM
plb2862
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default paging file neccessary or not ?

Because I have an older system with the 8 GB barrier in the BIOS. All boot
sectors need to be located within the first 8 GB to boot with this AMI BIOS.
Linux use the BIOS only for booting. All you have to do is, to install the
boot-Partition within the BIOS limit and the rest of the disk is available
after their IDE-drivers have loaded.

Here are some limitations of the older system BIOS:

AMI-Barriers:

Until end of 97, beginning of 1998 the BIOS was limited to 8 GB.


(2 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB) on Phoenix equipped systems.

AWARD-Barriers:

Date Barrier
Until End of 1994 504 MB
Until End of 1997/Begin of 1998 8 GB
Until Mid of 1999 32 GB




"Rick "Nutcase" Rogers" wrote in message
...
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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  #17  
Old February 28th 05, 06:23 PM
Ken Blake
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default paging file neccessary or not ?

In ,
Colin Barnhorst typed:

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.



Yes, a second controller is best of all, but even if it's a
second physical drive on the same controller, you can often save
on drive head movement.

But this all assumes significant use of the page file. For many
of us with relatively modern machines, we have enough RAM for the
page file to be little used. If that's case, it hardly matters
where the page file is.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup



"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



  #18  
Old February 28th 05, 07:59 PM
Colin Barnhorst
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default paging file neccessary or not ?

Yes, a lot of lore about the page file comes from hardware starved Win9x
days. These days the hardware has far outrun the software and most of what
I read about in this newsgroup about the page file is just plain urban
legend.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
"Ken Blake" wrote in message
...
In ,
Colin Barnhorst typed:

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.



Yes, a second controller is best of all, but even if it's a second
physical drive on the same controller, you can often save on drive head
movement.

But this all assumes significant use of the page file. For many of us with
relatively modern machines, we have enough RAM for the page file to be
little used. If that's case, it hardly matters where the page file is.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup



"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





 




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