How to stop XP paging idle programs ?

[BobHood]

I have a very specific problem with the way XP manages memory that I would
like to improve. Its hard for me to explain but here goes -

I use my pc for general web surfing, games, writing cd/dvds and p2p programs
like Emule and Bittorrent. If I use my PC one night for a while it runs
smoothly. The next night after letting the p2p programs run and leaving IE6
and windows explorer minimized it does some serious disk thrashing to
restore IE6 and WE and scroll through the start menu to start another app.

After a lot of research I think XP has decided that because IE6, WE and the
start menu icons have been idle for a while it has paged them to disk.
Instead it has used the memory for file caching the p2p programs data. It
also seems to page out most of the p2p programs themselves as restoring them
from the tray takes a while too.

In my view this is futile and unhelpful. I would much rather have fast and
responsive switching between apps and scrolling through the start menu than
a tiny (negligable) gain in file caching. The reason I think the gain in
file caching is useless is because the two p2p are addressing between 10 and
50gb of data to *many* peers so the chances of a successful cache hit are
low. Also the the data transfer rate is only about 100k/s so any gain in
speed (or reduction in disk reading) would be very small. I guess about 3gb
of p2p data is transferred per day.

The only way I can think of to stop XP paging idle programs to hard disk is
to create a Ramdisk. Now I know that usually Ramdisks are a waste of time
but in this specific case I think it could help. I have 1024mb of ram and
would allocate about 150-250mb to a ramdisk pagefile and also have a hard
disk page file of about 1024mb. I guess that the ramdisk pagefile would be
used for paging the kernel/idle progs etc unitl it was filled, only then
would the hard disk page file would be used. This way the 2 or 3 idle progs
would be paged to the ramdisk and would snap back to life when I need them.
However I am not sure if the ramdisk would be filled first then the hard
disk pagefile or if XP would page the data wherever it wants. Overall I
rarely seem to run out of memory when playing a game or using an app.
Restoring apps that have been paged to disk is my only memory related
problem.

I suspect that even with 2gb ram the idle apps would be paged to disk if 3gb
or more data was transferred via p2p. Does anyone have a better suggestion
to stop the disk thrashing when I first use the PC after a nights p2p
activty ?

 

[nweaver]

linux

 

[NogginBoink]

The memory manager will trim the working set of any application whose window is minimized.

This allows more physical RAM for applications whose windows are not minimized (that is, whose windows users are able to interact with).

This is by design. While it's not what you want in your case, it's the right design for the vast majority of users.

I'm not aware of any way to override this behavior.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: nweaver
linux

That's very nice troll; however your advice really isnt helpful.

Anyway on to the topic at hand...

I dont think this is really a problem with Windows, but rather with the way your applications are grabbing memory. You want unused applcations to be paged (it's supposed to do that). The real question is can you limit your applications to not use more than a certain amount of memory so the system doesnt have to "steal" the memory from your other applications.

There's no way I could fully do it justice so I'm going to let one of the others with better memory managment experience give you more detailed information on the management itself.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: nweaver
linux

Could you please not troll like this, it's childish at best, annoying at worse.

 

[nweaver]

I have linux, and I can open FF and Evolution, walk away for 2 weeks and come back. Ram is in use, no swap file usage. Switching to Linux would fix the issue of swapping out idle programs when he has adaquate memory. Please quit trolling.

 

[bersl2]

What nweaver says isn't quite trolling, though it should be explained.

You don't have very much control over the VM system in Windows, and everyone here will usually discourage you from fooling with the defaults. If anybody wants to argue to the contrary, I'd love to hear that.

By contrast, there are many tunables for the Linux VM subsystem, and while the defaults are sensible, if you think you can get better performance by changing them, go ahead; the defaults can always be restored.

 

[firewall]

In the system properties, go to the Advanced tab and click on settings under the performance label. Select the Advanced tab in the new window that opens up. Select processor scheduling and memory options to give preference to background programs and services.

See if that helps.