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How do I tell windows to start a page file only once the memory is completely full?

SocrPlyr

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
1,513
0
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it is not slowing you down. it isn't used unless the main memory is full. it is better to just let it be.
 

stogez

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2006
2,684
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I think windows uses the pagefile for some tasks even if there is free memory available. So there is no way to completely get rid of the pagefile no matter how much ram you have. I am almost positive about this but maybe someone can explain better.
 

vailr

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,365
54
91
If you're using 2 hard drives, you can specify that the page file is located on the 2nd HD.
Doing so should provide a small speed increase.
System Properties: Advanced: Performance/Settings: Advanced: Virtual Memory/Change
 

avi85

Senior member
Apr 24, 2006
988
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0
Originally posted by: vailr
If you're using 2 hard drives, you can specify that the page file is located on the 2nd HD.
Doing so should provide a small speed increase.
System Properties: Advanced: Performance/Settings: Advanced: Virtual Memory/Change

I already did that, there was a slight speed increase, but it still takes too long to load all the crap when it loads windows...
 

obeseotron

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
1,910
0
0
Originally posted by: avi85
Originally posted by: vailr
If you're using 2 hard drives, you can specify that the page file is located on the 2nd HD.
Doing so should provide a small speed increase.
System Properties: Advanced: Performance/Settings: Advanced: Virtual Memory/Change

I already did that, there was a slight speed increase, but it still takes too long to load all the crap when it loads windows...

The time it takes to load all the crap when windows starts is mostly it reading the programs off the hard drive and loading them into RAM. Because it is starting a large number of things at once the hard drive is constantly seeking back and forth to different physical areas, which can make things really slow. I don't think this should have much to do with how much RAM you have or your pagefile, even if you had a terabyte of RAM and no page file it would still take a little while to read things off the drive in the first place. Defragging, a faster hard drive, or going RAID0 are the only real ways I would know of to speed this process, and even so it's still gonna take a while. Vista may do a better job than XP, especially if you have a flash drive to cache things on with MemoryBoost. Flash drives have significantly lower sustained throughput than magnetic hard drives, but they can be accessed randomly without the seek times, which is really what takes so long.
 

Bozo Galora

Diamond Member
Oct 28, 1999
7,271
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you need a memory handler like memory monster to keep ram automatically free at some level
or the very basic superram
you also need to keep pagefile max and min set at same, so its not constantly resizing