768mb ram + WinXP + No pagefile = uber fast?

Charliesz · Aug 21, 2003

View total Pgaefile size

Hey guys. Is there any programs/utils available to view the "Total" page file usage in Windows XP?
Or is "Physical Memory" + "Kernel Memory" = total of paging in "Task Manager?

thanks.

Nic · Aug 21, 2003

What happens when you try and use a scanner to scan a large colour photograph? That would generate a file size of several hundreds of megabytes, and probably crash your system. Has anyone tried this? Also when zipping very large files (several gigabytes) your memory usage could go through the roof, as I was constantly getting popups telling me I need to increase my already 1.5GB pagefile. Also, the pagefile speeds up access to programs that you have closed and then restart. I wouldn't recommend switching it off, but its certainly worth a go if it makes your particular system faster. Just my $0.02, and I only have 512MB RAM so I'm going to leave my pagefile as it is.

carl0ski · Sep 7, 2005

Soul Harvester said:

I have been monitoring my pagefile usage over the past few weeks and noticed that "pagefile" usage never went over 150mb, and physical ram itself *NEVER* had more then 300mb in use at one time.

I also noticed, that with a 1gb pagefile, there was a noticeable lag about doing anything.. when you would open a program, when I'd open a directory with many files, when saving things, etc... there was a pause. Not a lot, but noticeable, and enough to irritate.

I set the pagefile to 0mb, restart.

I could not *BELIEVE* how fast things work... NOTHING had a delay in launching. I could log off and log back on within 5 seconds, Unreal Tournament would launch/quit in under 3 seconds each. IE and Mozilla were like lightning. The system on a whole seemed more responsive.

However, I recall when I tried this in Win2k, it bombed out eventually saying out of memory often - But now, quite a bit later and even while encoding a movie, playing music, viewing pages, and using kazaa simultaneously, no issues, still runs obscenely fast.

Anyways, just a thought, those of you with 768mb+ ram might want to give that a try. Soon as I re-enabled pagefile I noticed that tiny bit of sluggishness in everything XP did. Give it a shot, might be nice.

I also have a question. I know that XP forces a certain amount of kernel code to be paged out, I heard there was software that could disable that, force it to not page it out. All I remember was the recommendation for it was 512mb+ RAM. Anyone know what this software is, or what I could modify myself to do it?

Thanks.

my only suggestion you may try

be warned it may leave you computer unbootable if you dont know how to restore a windows machine stop reading.

I used to experiment with RAM drive and windows 2000 , i had 512MB ram and a very slow udma 33 5400rpm hdd .
I created a 100MB Ram drive and moved/created a fixed 100MB Page file to the ramdrive mounted at z:\

Obviously youd want differnet figures to suit your situation.
Why is it dangerous? certain ram disk utilities dont mount the drive before windows accesses an invalid z: drive.

carl0ski · Sep 7, 2005

actually another suggestion since windows doesnt like having the PF off try leaving it on at a setting at the minimum of 2MB.

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768mb ram + WinXP + No pagefile = uber fast?

Charliesz Newcomer, in training

Nic TechSpot Paladin

carl0ski Newcomer, in training

carl0ski Newcomer, in training