paging file neccessary or not ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

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outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky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
 
brugnospamsia said:
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outdated expectations of hardware and might be unneccesarily using clunky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...
Click to expand...


it's usually best to just let windows manage your page file,then forget it.
trying "tricks" such as ram disks will do nothing at all to help
performance.

as to the amount of ram you need...that will depend on the apps you run.
IE: if you go "heavy" graphics such as video editing, or working on large
images with many
layers in Photoshop....even a gig of RAM will probably not be enough...
but for just "general" use 256 - 512 megs of RAM is usually fine.

as far a google desktop search...
i think i'd just let it run and index all your files before trying
to run an co-current apps.

same with AVG...
you may want to configure it to run it's checks during a period of time
when you are not using your machine...
trying to run apps at the same time as a virsu scan can definately
be problematic
 
Hi,

The pagefile is necessary, even if you don't page. Many programs will expect
it to be there, as memory space is allocated to it as the program is loaded.
With 768MB of memory, you likely will not be doing much paging unless you
run some really hefty games or do a lot of graphics editing. You can set the
initial pagefile size to something small, say 100MB, unless you have need of
a memory dump on system failure (which will require that the pagefile
initialize at least the same size as the dump). What you may have been
experiencing is that the system was previously set to focus on background
programs and services, and is now set to focus on programs. This could
account for the delay you are seeing. You may enjoy this read on virtual
memory management in WindowsXP, it was written by MVP Alex Nichol:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
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.
 
Let the system manage the pagefile. The pagefile will not prevent your
system from utilizing your full ram when it wants to.
 
In
brugnospamsia said:
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.

No.


Having now just set the paging file size to zero,
Click to expand...


Not a good thing to do. Page file space is allocated in
anticipation of posible need for it. Without a page file, that
allocation gets made in real memory (RAM) instead, and that
results in locking out some of your RAM, and preventing you from
being able to use it.

Having a page file present never hurts you and can't improve
performance. If you don't need to use it, that's fine, but it's
being their doesn't hurt you. It's like the overdraft protection
on my checking account. it's there to help me if I need it, but
if I don't use it, its being available never hurts me.

I find the
performance has improved significantly
Click to expand...


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.

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 ?
Click to expand...


How much memory you need depends on what apps you run, but almost
everyone needs at least 256MB for decent performance. For some
people, for example those who edit large photographic images,
more than 256MB--even much more--can be required for good
performance.

Unless you're running apps that are very memory-intensive, 768MB
is significantly more than most people need. Chances are that if
you gave away 256MB, your performance wouldn't decrease at all.
 
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

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

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.
 
Rick said:
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.
Click to expand...

While I see your point, having the pagefile off the boot partition might
even be _preferable_ if heavily used program and data files are also placed
off the boot partition.
I'm not sure how it would
react to a memory dump on system failure.
Click to expand...

If there's no page file on the boot part: The system will fail. If there
_is_ a page file on the boot part: The system will write debug data and
fail. I'm sure the average user will not give a shit either way ;o)
 
Placing the page file on another partition on the same drive is ineffective.
Placing it on a different drive on a separate controller can help in slow
systems with small hard drives, but otherwise offers negligible performance
improvement.

Please post in plain text.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
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.
 
Ken Blake said:
In brugnospamsia <[email protected]> typed:






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.
Click to expand...

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?h...1&selm=OaNDCKIxCHA.2564%40TK2MSFTNGP12&rnum=3

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
 
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.
 
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.
 
Colin Barnhorst said:
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.
Click to expand...
luckily I have an unused RAID conroller on my Abit motherboard and a couple
of 40GByte drives.
(not sure if I'm going RAID per se though)



--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
brugnospamsia said:
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?h...1&selm=OaNDCKIxCHA.2564%40TK2MSFTNGP12&rnum=3

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
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
But would you put the pagefile on a raid array?

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
brugnospamsia said:
Colin Barnhorst said:
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.
Click to expand...
luckily I have an unused RAID conroller on my Abit motherboard and a
couple of 40GByte drives.
(not sure if I'm going RAID per se though)



--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
brugnospamsia said:
In brugnospamsia <[email protected]> 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?h...1&selm=OaNDCKIxCHA.2564%40TK2MSFTNGP12&rnum=3

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
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Why the 7GB partitions for dual booting?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
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
 
In
Colin Barnhorst said:
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.
Click to expand...


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


 
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.
 
Back
Top