How do I make xp minimize swap file usage?

[Zarick]

I just put in some ram so now I have 768. How do I make xp use the physical before it goes to the page file? Or does xp already do that?

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

It should manage it reasonably well itself.

 

[johnlog]

Zarik,

You can manually set Windows swap file size and also tell it which partition to be on.

Open System Properties menu. Pressing the Windows key and then the pause/break keys at the same time should bring up the menu.

In the system properties menu click on the ADVANCED tab. Then check the Performance section. Click on its Settings button. In the Settings menu in the Avanced tab you can set the size for your swap file / virtual memory. Also in that menu you can select to put it in any parttion on your hard drive.

Look near the bottom of the Advanced menu and see where Virtual memory is. Then click on the CHANGE button. There is where you can make the changes for the swap file (virtual memory) as you wish to. Just do not make it to small as even though you have a lot of memory installed the swap is still accessed once in a while. Clicking on the Custom Size item will allow you to manually set the swap file size.

I have my swap file set at 384 megs maximum and minimum. Setting both to the samae size helps to eliminate excess fragmentation.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Zarick
I just put in some ram so now I have 768. How do I make xp use the physical before it goes to the page file? Or does xp already do that?

XP will do this automatically, with that much memory your likely to not be paging much, just let the OS manage it.
Bill

 

[DonaldC]

Originally posted by: gunrunnerjohn
It should manage it reasonably well itself.