disabling paging in xp

[substance12]

what happens if I disable paging in XP with 384 mb ram? I was told this would speed up my system when gaming. Also, can anyone recommend any useful tips to better manage memory usage with xp?

 

[Nothinman]

Disabling the page file is a very bad idea, and XP won't let you anyway.

If you search for virtual memory you can read some of the other threads that covered this already.

 

[HexVector]

Actually its a sort of good, generally if you have 512MBs+ of ram (and you're sure you won't need anymore) I've done it with Windows 98 and ME
using a program called Cacheman 4/5

Although, in XP I tried all kinds of things, yet Windows won't stop relying heavily on it - I've always got 100MBs of VM used at every startup and
still 370MBs or RAM left =/ Not that I don't need paging, becuase even with 512 I can open large enough files in Photoshop and in games where it needs 400-500MBs of VM

 

[btvillarin]

If you really want to try this, just press WinKey+Break to get to Device Manager, then click the Advanced tab. Click Settings under Performance, and the Advanced tab for the next Window. Under Virtual Memory, click Change. For whatever drive has the paging file, click that drive, then select the option for no paging file, then "Set".

If you want to tweak the registry so that Windows improves the core system performance by keeping the Windows system in memory and not paged to disk, read that tweak here:
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/399/

I'd recommend keeping a set amount of 300MB for your paging file.

 

[HexVector]

I tried that before, is it just me or does setting it to use "no paging file" (which is under a panel called "Virtual memory") have absolutely no effect on whether VM is used or not?

The so called Paging file doesn't die, and other programs still report that VM is being used.

Also, -many- sites report that, Virtual Memory the swapfile and paging file are all just different names for the -same- exact thing.

Although, its there is a minor difference in which the Swap file (which is the same as the PageFile) is just the swapped data on the hard drive. While
Virtual Memory would be the total of both Physical memory and the swap file. All managed by the Virtual Memory manager.

 

[substance12]

all these sites keep saying "large amounts of ram". What is considered large? 512+? I have 384mb. where does that fall?

Thanks for the replys. Keep this thread going =P

 

[SunnyD]

I have 768meg of ram and a 960meg page file - do NOT disable it. It won't speed things up, in fact, disabling it will slow it down, marginally, even if you have inane amounts of ram (gigs).

SunnyD

 

[Nothinman]

Even if you set the pagefile to 0M XP will create a variable size one in your windows folder, so it's useless to try. If you have enough memory you won't be paging to disk often anyway so what's the big deal?

Turning off the pagefile is something people who don't understand Virtual Memory try to do to speed things up, and more often than not it's extremely detrimental to the health of their PC.

 

[HexVector]

Well, in the 9x/ME it seemed to be overly reliant on using the page file even though you had sufficient RAM still available. So turning it off would not be detrimental, but would force Windows to use all available memory first than as a last resort start creating a page file.

Right now in XP I have it set to 768-768, but it was annoying to find that XP falls on this page file more often than in 9x (where I "disabled" it) and Photoshop performace is slower =\

Virtual Memory is a crutch, useful but still if I were to buy 1.5 Gigs of RAM I damn well don't want to be using VM just for the fun of it.

Anyway, there are supposedly some ways to optimize the Swap file:

Creating the swapfile on a seperate and fastest partition/disk (not on C)
Permanent non-dynamic swapfile
Optimizing it to the edge of your disk, faster access
Making the swapfile permanent

 

[btvillarin]

<< I tried that before, is it just me or does setting it to use "no paging file" (which is under a panel called "Virtual memory") have absolutely no effect on whether VM is used or not? The so called Paging file doesn't die, and other programs still report that VM is being used. Also, -many- sites report that, Virtual Memory the swapfile and paging file are all just different names for the -same- exact thing. Although, its there is a minor difference in which the Swap file (which is the same as the PageFile) is just the swapped data on the hard drive. While Virtual Memory would be the total of both Physical memory and the swap file. All managed by the Virtual Memory manager. >>



Dude, that's exactly what I was thinking! I "disabled" it, and checked Task Manager, and the PF usage was like 80MB. I mean, what's this!?!

Plus, what are the other reports given in Task Manager, such as Commit Charge, Kernel Memory, etc.

Keep this thread going, because we'd like to know more about why VM is still being reported even when the Paging File is disabled.

 

[Nothinman]

Well, in the 9x/ME it seemed to be overly reliant on using the page file even though you had sufficient RAM still available

Well I don't think anyone considers Win9x to be a real OS, especially in terms of memory management.

Virtual Memory is a crutch, useful but still if I were to buy 1.5 Gigs of RAM I damn well don't want to be using VM just for the fun of it.

I can't say you're wrong because Virtual Memory doesn't need a pagefile to work properly and some OSes like Linux can be run fine without a page file or partition (hell NetWare didn't support it at all until recently) but Windows VM is reliant on it, so you might as well get used to it.

 

[SunnyD]

Okay, lets put it this way, depending on the application, virtual memory can me REQUIRED regardless. Various calls in the Win32 API can ensure this, and it all depends on the software developer's programming methodologies. Various things, being memory-mapped files, often times bitmap images, documents, audio files, anything requiring large streaming data - these all LIVE in virtual memory.

Also, virtual memory has an added benefit of when memory becomes fragmented and the memory manager needs to clean up RAM for you to open that 32nd copy of IE to view your p0rn, what is it supposed to do without VM? It will say "Sorry, you're out of memory and/or system resources". With even a modicum of VM, it pagefaults, swaps one copy out, resructures ram, and fits everything back in nice and neatly, and all of a sudden you can open 5 more IE windows for those stupid popups that come with your p0rn.

As a rule, your pagefile should be 1.5 times the size of RAM you have. Stick to it. Besides, are you really running out of disk space?

SunnyD

 

[HexVector]

As a test I set my pagefile.sys to a dedicated 900MB partition, I set it as partially dynamic 100MB minimum and 800MB maxiumum.
Now, it is a common thing to test your pagfile usage for performance reasons, (if your HD is thrasing around paging things in and out of memory) then
there's a performance hit.

In Windows XP Pro (and in 2K) they have made the Performance monitor so complex I can't even find the object timer that monitors pagefile usage.
Anyone do this? Cacheman doesn't help either, its VM "monitor" has no real relation to the pagefile it seems.

My minimum setting of 100MBs never increases size the partition despite the fact that I've open nearly all my major programs and 300MBs of VM
is currently being used....complex

 

[Mark R]

The system pagefile is not the only file that is used for virtual memory. So, even though you may have disabled the paging file, this is why you still have the memory manager showing a quantity of allocated virtual memory. (Virtual memory is a memory address that may or may not have an address in RAM, but nevertheless has a physical medium backing it e.g. HD)

For example, when you load an application, the execuatable file is not always loaded into RAM in its entirety, instead it is 'mapped' as virtual memory. In other words, a range of virtual memory addresses are allocated for the file - if a program accesses one of those addresses, then the CPU checks to see if the file is loaded into memory - if it is, then the CPU translates the vitual memory address into a physical address, if it isn't then it asks windows to load in a small chunk of the file. This is virtual memory, but it does not need a paging file, because the specific section of the .exe file can be loaded as required.

This technique is not only used for executables - it is Microsoft's recommended method for accessing large files, e.g. databases.

There are some circumstances where virtual memory REQUIRES a paging file for some applications to work correctly. This is when applications need to share access to memory. Normally, Win NT/2k/XP's security system prevents 2 programs from accessing the same block of memory, however, 2 applications can request access to the same block of virtual memory (it has to be virtual). The problem is that the virtual memory MUST be backed by a file - if this is not a mapping to an existing file, then the system pagefile must be used.

 

[HexVector]

Good explanation. Windows 2K/XP cannot live without having pagefile.sys allocated to some minimum amount anyway.

I found where you could view the VM and pagefile usage under the Task Manager>Performance tab (2K/XP) - As long as the "Total" value under Commit Charge section does not exceed the Total value under Physical Memory you're good.

The "Limit" under "Commit Charge" would then be the pagefile(minimum)+physical RAM or your total available Virtual Memory.