DISABLE Virtual Memory!!! Improved permormance??? Help!

[Whitedog]

After playing with this all weekend, I've come to conclude that Win2k manages your memory quite well without this line. In fact, I don't think it affects it at all (You guys are right about that only being for 16-bit crap).
However, setting your pagefile to a low number only causes windows to tell you "it had to increase it" when it needed to.

Win9x (Me) on the other hand benifits from these setting Quite Well! I pumped up my computer at home running WinMe with 384megs ram, added the line in system.ini and DISABLED virtual memory! I ran the crap out of Everything all weekend long and never had Any problems! System ran GREAT! Everything loaded fast! Games that normally Thrashed the hard drive for swapping Never hickuped once!

I recommend Anyone that runs 9x upgrade Memory and Disable swap file!

Win2k users... well, take it from me, if you have 256+ megs memory, the ABSOLUTE largest you need for pagefile is 50megs. I reduced minimum to 2 megs... loaded about 12 (large) programs, opened 65megs in Excel files, 120megs in powerpoint files, 30megs in Photoshop files...etc... and my pagefile only grew to 44 megs...

Have fun all!

 

[Zenmervolt]

At the very least, you should switch to a fixed size swap file. The standard variable size swap file forces Windows to constantly recalculate the disk space needed and alter the swap file size as well. Fixed size swap files eliminate the effort that Windows puts into claculating the size and altering it, though they don't affect the swapping in and out of physical memory much. Still I noticed a slight performance increase after setting the swap file on my K6-II 500MHz to 1024MB. Abmittedly it helps that I have a 7200RPM drive hooked up but it still faster than the same HDD with a variable swap file. Probably got the noticable increase only because of that computer's small amount of RAM though (64MB).

Aaron Meyer

 

[PCAddict]

Adding that line seemed to make my system a bit pepper as well. Good tip.

 

[The Stigenator]

WoundedWallet

I did that.. but was not satisfied at 256-256 so I went 2 - 128. I am happy. the system is running smooth.

 

[WoundedWallet]

Whitedog, "the ABSOLUTE largest you need for pagefile is 50megs".

So that you know that some people may need more than that. I have 384 and I managed to get my pagefile to over 200MB by working on two movies with Flash.

But I have to admit that I haven't noticed much change regarding speed with this change. Besides I have that stupid warning everytime I boot. So this edit may not be worthwhile in w2k like you said. I'll have to time it to see if I have any improvement so far.

The_good_guy, unless you need the space on your drive I think that you should have your maximum at least the same size as your RAM. I read somewhere that you need that space for memory dump in case of a crash. I have this feeling that you have 256MB of RAM, that's why I'm saying this.

 

[Linh]

hmm, somehow didn't see the other posts

 

[osage]

Pardon my ignorance, but where exactly do I find this system ini. file?
Do you do this with regedit or what? give me a hint
thanks

 

[Ben]

It's the system.ini file.

Just do a file find for "system.ini".

It's located in the Windows directory.

You can edit the file using notepad.

 

[osage]

Thank you sir

 

[Sir Fredrick]

The line apparently does not work in Win2k, as it still hits the swapfile before it has run out of physical memory.

 

[LocutusX]

Win2K will ALWAYS use the pagefile - that is how it's DESIGNED.

 

[WoundedWallet]

<< The line apparently does not work in Win2k, >>

excuse me fellas but I beg to differ. I wen through 380MB of RAM before my pagefile started increasing.

It is true that w2k asked for 5MB after boot. And it is also true that I still had near 5MB left of physical RAM when the pagefile got active. But I consider 5MB too small of an amount to be counted.

So it does work in W2k, but I haven't seen any noticeable improvement. Maybe if do a test with and without that line I could say for sure what happens. But I don't feel like rebboting right now, I may fall asleep waiting for it

 

[RayEarth]

since adding that line under the 386enh section tells windows to use all physical memory 1st before swicthing to virtual mem. would installing one of those memory managing programs like memturbo 2.0 help, since it's job is to free up memory?

 

[jushua]

<< added the line in system.ini and DISABLED virtual memory >>



Wouldn't it be useless to add the line if you also disable the virtual memory?
I mean if you disable VM why should you then tell Windows to use VM conservatively.
I've tried adding the line with VM both enabled and disabled with &quot;only&quot; 256 mb ram and it actually ran ok with VM disabled. But in the end I don't think it's wise to run without VM with only 256 mb?? I think I'll go back to the added line and VM enabled. What do you guys think?

 

[subhuman]

I always set my Swap File Min = Swap File Max. This avoids swap file resizing and hard disk thrashing. I usually use values that are twice the amount of my ram plus a tiny bit, so 600megs Min/Max swap for 256megs ram. this works really good, and has avoided glitches when recording many channels of full quality audio to my hard disk (ie: recording sessions).

 

[WoundedWallet]

jushua, leave your VM enabled. It won't hurt and can only do good.