Virtaul Memory Settings

[nickblears]

Windows XP PRO
AMD ATHLON 850
SERVICE PACK 1
512MB RAM



C Drive for System
D Drive for Doc's & Pic's


Should I let Windows handle my Virtual memory ?

Tried setting to 768 for min...not sure how to judge the max?

Do I need a paging file on D Drive?

Just trying for best performance...not a game player !

Have turned all the eye candy off.

Any help or advice would be appreciated>

merry Christmas to all

[Abhoth]

The only thing I really change on an XP installation, in respect to Virtual Memory, is to alter the maximum to match the minimum... so min and max are the same and then no resizing takes place.... 768 should be good for you. Some say double it... Generally it's as you have it RAM size + half of RAM and there you have 768.

[labyrinth]

Try this thread:

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm

It'll answer those questions and a few more.

[Philgo]

I'm happy to leave it to Windows, I feel that if adjusting the virtual memory made any difference, then Microsoft would have done it during setup.

I have played with it in the past and I've never noticed any difference, maybe there was with Win95 but not nowadays.

[Abhoth]

Originally posted by Philgo
I'm happy to leave it to Windows, I feel that if adjusting the virtual memory made any difference, then Microsoft would have done it during setup.

In particular... "Microsoft would have done it" ... To be certain there is a huge leap from Win95 to WinXP. And to be certain they've learned... but to assume they would have done it, I don't think so. IMHO

[Philgo]

Hi Abhoth, I feel that if the mighty Microsoft, knew of an easy way of speeding up their O/S, then surely they would have adopted it.

I've tried loads of different tweaks over the years and I have concerns that a lot of them actually cause more harm than good, so I'm very happy to leave a lot of things be.

I do have my own list of settings that I use after a clean install, but nothing to radical. I have found by trial and error my ideal setup and I'm happy, lets face it we do have to respect Microsoft a little bit.

Anyway this is my opinion based on my experience, for what its worth.

[Abhoth]

And I have respect for that opinion... and actually do agree with you. Many tweaks out there, best to use caution and know how to undo it! Or remember what we did.
I also have plenty of respect for MS. But not going to 'trust' them to do the most to optimize my PC or install. MS is producing an OS that is used across a wide array of hardware. In many cases they take the 'generic' route. Best to make is work for all, not work great for a few... know what I mean.
And tweaks to the OS have become less and less critical with newer hardware advances and price drops... not as much ROI.
Such as tweaking VM... with WinXP all I do now is set it to a 'fixed' size, previous incarnations of Windows would benefit from more extensive tweaking... but little ROI in XP.
As with any tweaks... care must be taken as you and I have both learned. Can't whine too much about Windows when we've twitched a bit too hard and it doesn't like us any more! ;-) We do get better at fixing what we just broke though!

[Raz]

posted by Philgo

I feel that if the mighty Microsoft, knew of an easy way of speeding up their O/S, then surely they would have adopted it.

I have to pretty much agree.

Compared to a lot of you guys on this board, I'm pretty much of a "newbie". I've only been using a computer for a little over three years, but being retired, I spend a lot of time on my computer.

I've tried every tweaking program that has a free trial period, and just about every tweak that's been posted on about 10 "Tips and Tweaks" sites, and while I agree you can make a lot of cosmetic changes to Windows (98SE and XP), and add some convenience, with shortcuts not included in the OS, for example, I don't know of a single performance tweak that has really made a measureable difference in performance.

Fom my experience, my only advice for better performance is a hardware upgrade.

[labyrinth]

I agree with this entire thread.
Don't fix it if it ain't broke.
If you don't mess with it you will never learn. That dichotomy, has gotten me into trouble and has taught me how to fix things. Knowing when to leave well-enough alone is something that I wish was more my nature. I just have to dick with it, but as I get older, I'm realizing more and more what the last poster said. "You need faster, better....upgrade.

[The Elder Geek]

Originally posted by Raz



Fom my experience, my only advice for better performance is a hardware upgrade.

What Raz said above, and avoiding the temptation of every "Let's put some lipstick on this pig and see who'll send us some cash" program that comes down the computing highway.

Three AV programs, two firewalls, seven chat clients, four graphics programs, every popup killer known to man, and a few Kazaa type programs and we wonder why XP runs like crap?

I enjoy fiddling around with the tweaks just for the pure fun of it, but when it comes to system performance and stability, less really is more.

I'll be glad when Microsoft finally comes out with a Windows product that has no backward compatibility, runs only software designed for that particular OS version, and the only dialog box that pops up when non-compatible hardware attempts to install is one that says "No Damn Way. Uninstall Current OS and Revert to XXXXX."

It won't ever happen because of the cry that would go up from consumers, but it's Christmas and I can hope that magical box will appear under the tree.

Merry Christmas To All - And To All A Stable OS