System maintenance, any tips?

The output should look something as shown below. You'll note it defrags more then just the pagefile, but pagefile is certainly largest. If it lists 1 Fragment, then, yes, that's the best possible. (All clusters are physically adjacent to each other). And.. (scroll below for more....)

File...........................................................................Cluster(s)............Fragments
C:\pagefile.sys............................................................614400.....................12
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\AppEvent.Evt...............32...........................1
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\default........................256..........................1
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\Internet.evt...................16..........................1
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SAM.............................64.........................1
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SecEvent.Evt.................48........................2
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SECURITY....................64........................1
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\software.....................8256.......................2
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SysEvent.Evt.................32........................2
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\system......................3904........................1

If you have 1 fragment then i'm curiouis how large is the page file. If you could list the physical size (as in MB or GB) adn # clusters listed by PageDefrag

For physical, My Computer ->Advanced-> Performance Settings->Advanced
under Virtual Memory what is list as total paging size?
Click Change.
Are you set for Custom Size? or System managed?
What do you see under total paging file for all drives
... What's the min?
... what's the max?
... What's current allocated?

Finally, how much physical memory you have (you;ll see that when you first start My Computer Proeperties, towards the bottom

Wow

That's way too much!

I'd say do the PageDefrag yourself LookinAround

Mine is 1 Fragment
Running 2Gig of PF (Min and Max), on 3gig of Ram

yes, you're right.

This machine is more my test bed. Have been changing system/hardware/user config settings to experiment on various things of personal interest. And not paid much attention to pagefile frag state in the process.

Wanted to give an example of sample output. Hadn't thought of the actual #'s shown when copying from this machine)

So i should have said its "sample" output vs. "good example" output. (as you note )

yea that's the initial report, i was talking about the one on reboot, The initial one said 180,000 and i cant remember how many fragments.

but now they all say 1, except 1 that says 2. If that makes sence lol

i have 1GB of ram , How do you see you're page file? im running windows xp home. it may be different to what was suggested earlyer

oh by the way there are 4 profiles on this computer that might be why its 180,000

Let’s do the following (I have an XP home test system also so I confirmed these steps should work for you)

1. Confirm you have NTFS formatted disks

- Start->Run, enter diskmgmt.msc
- Look at the file system for your hard drives. Hard drives could be NTFS, FAT16, FAT32. Are they all NTFS?

2. Check those system numbers

=>Right click My Computer. Select Properties.. At the bottom of the System Properties window you see, it should say 1GB RAM?

=> Next, click Advanced tab, then under Performance click Settings button. And then Click the Advanced tab. Towards bottom you see the label Virtual Memory it says total size for all drives. What is that size?

=> Click the Change button (under that size display

- In the window at top labeled Drive: select your hard drive which holds Windows. Should be a column in the Drive window for Paging File Size (MB) and for your drive shows something like nnnn – yyyyy? What are the values shown for nnnn and yyyy?
- In next window down labeled Paging File size for selected drive: what radio button selected? Custom? System? If custom, what values list for Initial and Maximum?:

- And in next window down Total paging all drives: whats the min, recommended and current?

And...

1 fragment is excellent
even 2 is good
just doing the math (i think is right. we'll see how it compares)

if your pagefile is 180,000 clusters on an NTFS formatted disk (and NTFS is preferred) then =

(180,000 clusters) * (4K bytes per cluster for NTFS) = 720MB page file.. which may be small for 1GB RAM. So we'll see how the system settings are set./

i only have 1 hard drive its NTFS, how do i right click my computer

Sorry just me being stupid i shall lay it out like this:

1. Confirm you have NTFS formatted disks - YES

2. Check those system numbers - What system numbers?

=>Right click My Computer. Select Properties.. At the bottom of the System Properties window you see, it should say 1GB RAM? - YES

=> Next, click Advanced tab, then under Performance click Settings button. And then Click the Advanced tab. Towards bottom you see the label Virtual Memory it says total size for all drives. What is that size? - 720mb , yay well done


- In the window at top labeled Drive: select your hard drive which holds Windows. Should be a column in the Drive window for Paging File Size (MB) and for your drive shows something like nnnn – yyyyy? - what is nnn--yyyy ?


What are the values shown for nnnn and yyyy? - no idea you might have to give an example

- In next window down labeled Paging File size for selected drive: what radio button selected? Custom? System? If custom, what values list for Initial and Maximum?:

Custom
- initial 720
- max 1440

- And in next window down Total paging all drives: whats the min, recommended and current?

It says-

Min allowed 2mb
Recommended- 1485mb
Current allocated - 720mb


Hope that is sufficient

Sorry. Poor wording on my part. just meant to say we were going to look for some system statistics using the instructions which followed

Actually, i have the info i need from the other data. But for the record, in the window labele Virtual Memory is the sub-window with columns labeled Drive, Volume Label, and Paging File Size. From what tell me i would expect Paging File Size colum for your drive to be 720-1440
(for your Custom settings, that collumn should show intial/max values for your custom settings)

Hmm,,720MB pagefile for 1GB RAM is a low number to start at

Which is confirmed as you see recommended is 1.5MB. (Tho off hand i would think windows should;ve at least tried increasing it to your max value. Don't know why it didn;t. Maybe someone else does?

But i would say:
- How big is your drive and how much free space?
- Cause i think you should reallocate your pagefile to be larger
- But before doing that you'd want to remove old stuff you can delete and all the temp/junk files that collect on your computer can be deleted (Can tell you how to do that using some tools). This is to free up more space so...
- Next, when you do a defrag you have better chance at getting LOTS of contiguous, unused clusters available for the last step
- Reallocate and assign a larger pagfile. Hopefully you can get it with only couple fragments... maybe just one again

Firefox clears all temporary files when i close the window and i can easily clear internet explorers history and what not.

Norton 360 has also done a clear out recently aswell as speedupmy pc and registry booster.

My hard drive is 160gb 53 used 90gb free, i moved about 60 gb onto an external hard drive and did a defrag then a couple of days ago. Do i need to do another one ?

How would i go about makeing a larger page file?
Is it safe?
And What should i set it to?

Oh P.S i think the guy who made our pc knew what he was doing, might he have set it low for a reason?

There shouldn’t be any problem re-allocating your pagefile. But nothing ever seems to be 100% safe with computers. Best maintenance you can do are backups. Especially using a product that not just file/folder backup but images the hard drive (so you just restore a hard drive image if you want to.. not just recover files/folders). You can even get Acronis True Image (I use and recommend) for 15day trial and $10 off for $40.

A good temp/junk file cleaner that does it all in one CCleaner. Look at the Windows and Application check boxes when you run it as there are some things you may not want it to delete (e.g. all your Cookies)

For deleting old files. Good tools to try and use 'em to find the BIG files on your disk are JDiskReport and use ExplorerXP. With ExplorerXP

• is a file explorer (like Windows Explorer) but dynamically displays folder sizes (not just file sizes)
• you may have to wait a few seconds for sizes to appear as the tool starts first and then it starts calculating sizes
• You can go to folders and click the Size column to sort by size. Makes it easy to "drill down" and see where the big files are (and if you need em)

As to page file settings.
- I’d say you should have a minimum of 1500MB. A maximum of 2000MB is probably the max you’d ever need.

So for virtual memory set min = max = 2000 and reboot (Since you have plenty of extra disk space give 2GB upfront to the pagefile is no big deal.

Then shutdown and run PageDefrag

as to whoever built them.... maybe they used default settings or i don't know. The web site CCT offered in the earlier post is an excellent tutorial/guide about virtual memory you should read for yourself. and i wouldn't know any reason (given your "lotsa space" hard drive) to start small unless they just left it at default values

and to bomberman
keep meaning to say Hi! and glad you find all this useful. Look forward to seeing you in the forums.

Ok i think we have covered that area, now what about physical memory how do i view the usage of that?

Should i make a new thread? this one is geting a bit big

download/install Process Explorer (it's Task Manager on major steroids!)

Click System Information for various information. Digging thru all the info available through this tool should keep you busy awhile

/*********** Edit *****************/
Should have said "Click View -> System Information

Well prepare to be asked what a load of words meen lol


(nah ill just Google lol)

Google sucks- What does commit history mean?

Could you just tell me what im looking for to find out the ram useage?

The System Info Display

Commit History = a graph of the Commit Charge over time (see it detailed in the numbers below)

google "process explorer" "commit charge" - use the quotes to search for the string "process explorer" rather when without quotes its just two separte words

You'll find its a snap shot of your Virtual Memory (i.e pagefile)

Your RAM usage is also in window with graphs as Physical Memory (e.g. Total amount, how much available) Can search that too and review the Help info availble by clicking Help in the tool