Paging File and Mem. Management in XP

[ProfessorU]

The suspect is an Athlon XP 2100+ with 1.5GB of unregistered RAM
OS is Windows XP Professional.

I've been having a terrible time getting After Effects 6.5 pro to work with large video projects, so I checked my memory info. During typical use I would have approximately 800-1000MB of physical ram used and 800-1000MB of the paging file used (according to task manager). The program seems to 'stall' and then refresh all its windows. If I flush all the caches from AfterEffects, the problem goes away for about a minute and then comes back.

I thought this was odd, since the paging file is supposed to only fill up when RAM is full. I tried an experiment and disabled the paging file in XP. Of course, I rebooted, and according to XP's settings in the control panel, the paging file was disabled. But task manager still registers a paging file!!! Allegedly it's 1900MB. And when I run AfterEffects I have the same performance issues.

Windows recognizes that I have 1.5GB installed and it tests ok.

So my issue is twofold. One, what's going on with the PF, and two, how can I get WinXP to better manage memory so I can go back to work?

I'm no newb, so don't go easy on me!

[Steve R Jones]

Many times when you disable virt mem and reboot, the file simply doesn't get deleted.

Are you letting Windows manage the swap file? If Not, what do you have it set to?

[ProfessorU]

I originally let windows manage the file. On all my older systems I used a fixed file size, double my physical memory.

I doubt I'd be able to delete pagefile.sys or whatever the file is called if Windows is using it.

[ProfessorU]

I think today I'm going to install a MS server OS as a dual-boot and see how much of my problem is OS and how much is shoddy app programming. Any other ideas would be appreciated, too!

[Steve R Jones]

The page file won't be/shouldn't be in use after you disable it. I've moved my file from drive to drive before and have found the old file still sitting there.

Have you looked on After Effects web site in case this is a common problem?

[ProfessorU]

yes, I can't seem to find anthing on the adobe site or anything else.... just tips for optimizing PF and swapfile settings and the like. I also tried the MSKB, and their only response is that they don't recommend disabling the paging file.

Stupid me, there is version 6.5.1 update online, I'll try that, too.

I'll see if I can find pagefile.sys. But I'm going to be surprised if I can delete it while the OS is running. I might not be back until Monday... so thanks for any weekend replies in advance!

[ProfessorU]

Well the version 6.5.1 has a little checkbox in the memory management window... prevent DLL filespace fragmentation or something along those lines. Evidently, I'm not the only person who had a problem with this.
I still have no idea what's going on in the paging file! Can anyone duplicate this?
Thanks.

[CincyJim]

The pagefile is a hidden system file in C: pagefile.sys. I had disabled it on my other XP OS but cannot remember how I did it.

IT CAN BE DONE!

[photolady]

I'm just going to close this one because I've already warned you CincyJim to not resurrect old posts. This one is two years old and I'm sure the OP has found an answer by now.