Optimize XP - A Windows XP Optimization Guide

[GeneralAres]

Definitions from credible sources is a FACT! Opinions are Opinions.

 

[Mattnum25]

Originally posted by: GeneralAres
Who is the authority on the definition of Virtual Memory? You and everyone here, I hardly think so and if for a second you think I do not understand how the Virtual Memory Manager or Virtual Memory Addressing works, think again. I'm not disbuting how they work only on the common definition of a commonly used word. What I have proven is my position wether you want to accept it or not.

speaking of the authority on the definition of Virtual Memory, did you bother to read any one of the links anyone else provided you with? Dictionaries and Encyclopedias are, by their broad nature, ill-suited to discussion of specialized terms and ideas. Microsoft's documentation isn't even self consistent. But every decent academic source you could ever dig up will agree with every other, with precious few exceptions.

I'm sure you're trying to do good with your guide, and it does provide a lot of useful information, but I don't see why you refuse to accept the idea that you just might not be using the best references for some of your ideas. I know you're convinced nobody here knows what they're talking about on the subject of VM, but you just aren't quite right...being informed incorrectly by some microsoft publication is not entirely your fault, refusing to correct your understanding is.

I'd recommend taking a look at the links Ctho9305 offered, which have some very good lecture slides from Carnegie-Mellon on the subject...if you don't trust us, hopefully you can at least trust half a dozen professors of CS and CE at a well-regarded university who have used those slides or variations on them over the past few years (nevermind that some of the people who have attempted to correct you probably have equally impressive credentials...). If you read them and still aren't convinced, I'm sure we can provide you with any number of other institutions' slides for similar courses, as well as any number of textbook references. (I will add that slide 3 of the CS lecture Ctho provided makes no sense without the spiel that goes with it, which I don't entirely recall).

Originally posted by: CTho9305
If you're interested in Virtual Memory, I'd recommend reading the lecture slides for lectures 20, 21, and 22 here. Note that this is a computer engineering course, so it's covering mostly the hardware perspective. There's a computer science lecture here (lecture 18). The CS slides are probably easier since the CE class has that CS class as a prerequisit

Incidentally, I'd also be thrilled if you could answer this question, which is coincidentally also from ctho...

Originally posted by: CTho9305
GeneralAres - you continue to say that the SP2 connection queue limit is useless, but you have yet to provide any real information on why it is a bad thing. You first claimed it interfered with some applications, but when I asked you to name one, did not. Do you not have any examples of downsides to the limit?

 

[GeneralAres]

The Fact of the matter is I have more then one reputable source confirming the definition I choose to use for Virtual Memory as any lay person would even care about defining it. If I was interested in explaining Virtual Memory Addressing, Windows Virtual Memory Manager or was writing or discussing Page File Algorithms I would obviously elaborate more. In which respect I am not wrong in defining it as such. You may not like but it is not wrong. So long as I have reputable sources backing up the definition I choose to use it can not be said to be wrong. I mean you guys can repeat it is until your blue in the face it does not mean I do not understand what you are saying nor am I defining it wrong. Get over yourselves and stop "thinking" you know more then everyone, you don't. The definition will not be changed and I will repeat my sources as many times as necessary to make the point clear.

The sad part of this whole thread is the Guide works and no one here has proved it does not as much as you have tried. Thinking your smarter then someone and are trying to "educate" them is sad to say the least when you have no idea of the person you are trying to educates background. This is the same Elitist mentality, noticeably prevalent with the Linux posters who have replied to this thread. I can do this all day for as many YEARS as you wish.

 

[Mattnum25]

Originally posted by: GeneralAres
I can do this all day for as many YEARS as you wish.

Nah, I've had quite enough myself, I agree that you have a fine definition for the lay person of Virtual Memory, as long as you acknowledge, as you seem to be doing, that how it's defined for the layperson doesn't necessarily provide a 100% accurate description of reality. Forget that point. Could you please answer the question from CTho I put in above about a legitimate example that we can all observe of a downside to the SP2 connection queue limit?

 

[GeneralAres]

With the speed at which computers are infected from worms, patching, updated AV and good security policies are the only real solutions. Slowing down some worm from infecting an unpatched PC from an hour to two does not patch the unprotected computer, thus it will still get infected. Saying that this in some way helps sys admins who are lazy and bad on security is BS.

 

[Mattnum25]

OK, I disagree that slowing down a worm is useless, but I do believe that point has been beaten to death...what I am interested in is what you GAIN by your tweak...that is, what properly functioning, legitimate (i.e. non-malicious) programs would the queue limit interfere with? All I want is the name of a program so that we can verify this for ourselves.

 

[GeneralAres]

GFI LANguard Network Security Scanner.

one, two, three....

 

[Mattnum25]

Thank you. And good night

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: GeneralAres
With the speed at which computers are infected from worms, patching, updated AV and good security policies are the only real solutions. Slowing down some worm from infecting an unpatched PC from an hour to two does not patch the unprotected computer, thus it will still get infected. Saying that this in some way helps sys admins who are lazy and bad on security is BS.

Did you sit down and do the math yet? Have you calculated the amount of traffic a million on throttled machines attempting to create 1000 tcp connection (10 threads, each with 100 attempts per second) will generate?

Sadly, I'm more and more convinced your just here to argue and start a fight than you are to understand the issues.

Bill

 

[GeneralAres]

Sadly, I'm more and more convinced your just here to argue and start a fight than you are to understand the issues.

Please get over yourself I never posted the guide asking to understand ANYTHING! What part of this don't you get? Where did I say hey please explain this? Nowhere. The guide is designed to help people optimize their systems, clean and remove viruses and spyware and it does. Instead all the Elitists here are hell bent on proving they understand how the Virtual Memory Manager Works to prove they "know" so much!!! Give yourself an Apple and move on, please.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: GeneralAres
The Fact of the matter is I have more then one reputable source confirming the definition I choose to use for Virtual Memory as any lay person would even care about defining it. If I was interested in explaining Virtual Memory Addressing, Windows Virtual Memory Manager or was writing or discussing Page File Algorithms I would obviously elaborate more. In which respect I am not wrong in defining it as such. You may not like but it is not wrong. So long as I have reputable sources backing up the definition I choose to use it can not be said to be wrong. I mean you guys can repeat it is until your blue in the face it does not mean I do not understand what you are saying nor am I defining it wrong. Get over yourselves and stop "thinking" you know more then everyone, you don't. The definition will not be changed and I will repeat my sources as many times as necessary to make the point clear.

The sad part of this whole thread is the Guide works and no one here has proved it does not as much as you have tried. Thinking your smarter then someone and are trying to "educate" them is sad to say the least when you have no idea of the person you are trying to educates background. This is the same Elitist mentality, noticeably prevalent with the Linux posters who have replied to this thread. I can do this all day for as many YEARS as you wish.

What about my sources? You ignored my previous post, so let me repeat it

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: GeneralAres

GeneralAres, that doesn't necessarily count. I don't have the book, nor do I care enough about enlightening someone so stubbon to spend money on a book. Why doesn't it count? I'd suspect that the quotes you pulled came from some section about configuration dialogs - so it's effectively saying, "On this dialog, we see the words 'Virtual Memory' - and what you're changing when you play with the setting is <blah>". Feel free to provide more context if it is in fact presenting that as a definition of Virtual Memory (in which case the book sucks).

Get the book and look, that is the FULL definition of Virtual Memory, pulled from the GLOSSARY. Everything is Word for Word (except for my typos). Nothing is edited left out or manipulated. ANYONE can get the book and confirm it. Please spare me the rhetoric "it doesn't count" how nieve do you think people are? Here is some more:

Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Operations Guide

Page 293:
"The file system cache, which is a subset of physical memory used for fast access to data, and the disk paging file, which supports virtual memory, influences the amount of memory used by the operating system and applications. (The disk paging file, also called a swap file, is a file on the harddisk that serves as temporary, virtual memory storage for code and data.) Virtual memory is the space on the hard disk that Windows 2000 uses memory."

Here's a resource for ya.

virtual memory
n. Memory that appears to an application to be larger and more uniform than it is. Virtual memory may be partially simulated by secondary storage such as a hard disk. Applications access memory through virtual addresses, which are translated (mapped) by special hardware and software onto physical addresses. Also called disk memory. See also paging, segmentation. Acronym: VM.

In other words, what we've been saying all along. The amount of memory that appears to an application is virtual memory. This includes physical RAM and hard drive space. The hard drive space is sometimes (misleadingly) referred to as virtual memory, but that is an incomplete definition.

EDIT: Here's another Microsoft site

virtual memory
A view of memory that does not necessarily correspond to the underlying physical memory structure. For example, a given range of virtual addresses might be mapped to and backed by some number of discontiguous physical pages, even though the corresponding virtual pages can be accessed as a single, contiguous range.

If Microsoft isn't an acceptable source for the definition of virtual memory, I don't know what you want.

 

[GeneralAres]

Alright lets all spam the same posts over and over!

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: GeneralAres
Alright lets all spam the same posts over and over!

You claim that no one else can produce a viable definition of virtual memory from a reliable source, and I posted two definitions. Even the definitions on Microsoft's own website vary slightly.

My point is that even though your source is reliable, do not mistake these sources as infallible.

 

[stash]

Folks, if there is one thing to be learned from this thread, it is don't feed the troll

Move along, there's nothing to see here...

 

[GeneralAres]

You claim that no one else can produce a viable definition of virtual memory from a reliable source, and I posted two definitions.
My point is that even though your source is reliable, do not mistake these sources as infallible.

I posted six reliable sources, it more then proves my point that the definition I used it correct. I have sufficiently defended the use of my definition of "Virtual Memory', I'm not changing it and am not interested in discussing other aspects of the Virtual Memory Manager or Virtual Memory Addressing nor are people who use the guide. They just don't care. They use it to improve Windows XP performance and it does that.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: Mattnum25
(I will add that slide 3 of the CS lecture Ctho provided makes no sense without the spiel that goes with it, which I don't entirely recall).

The spiel is along the lines of "if you used main memory exactly like a cache of the hard drive, you'd do a lot of things suboptimally". You actually do a lot of things that are not like a regular cache. At the time, I thought it was a stupid slide (and I still do), because it's deceptive. Of course, it probably confuses the slackers who skipped lecture, thus improving my relative grades....

The TCP/IP Problem happens frequently using P2P programs when you attempt search queries as an example.

GeneralAres - you continue to say that the SP2 connection queue limit is useless, but you have yet to provide any real information on why it is a bad thing. You first claimed it interfered with some applications, but when I asked you to name one, did not. Do you not have any examples of downsides to the limit?

GFI LANguard Network Security Scanner.

So what you're saying is... you lied about P2P? Or maybe you don't know of any P2P apps that have problems, but want to believe Microsoft is stupid? You read on some "reliable source" that P2P apps are affected, but didn't bother to actually confirm this? I think someone already pointed out on an earlier page that network scanning tools are affected, but the point is, MOST users don't have any need for them.

 

[GeneralAres]

Having Fun yet?

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: GeneralAres
Having Fun yet?

Feel like answering any questions rather than sidestepping the issue yet?

Originally posted by: CTho9305
So what you're saying is... you lied about P2P? Or maybe you don't know of any P2P apps that have problems, but want to believe Microsoft is stupid? You read on some "reliable source" that P2P apps are affected, but didn't bother to actually confirm this? I think someone already pointed out on an earlier page that network scanning tools are affected, but the point is, MOST users don't have any need for them.

I can confirm based on seeing legitimately used p2p applications before and after the installation of SP2, that there was no noticeable effect on the speed or quality of the search results, downloading, or uploading. Have you even tried it yourself, or are you going on something someone said on a forum or blog somewhere (which is exactly where I read about the SP2 and p2p "issue" - and believed it for a while until I tried for myself and found it was BS!).

 

[GeneralAres]

Alright we are off the definition debate! I am not about to answer questions when people use implied responses to generate a response.