Should I prevent Windows XP the use of a swap file?!

[Trente]

Hi,


I am running 1GB of RAM on my rig, along with Windows XP Pro SP2. I noticed that I hardly ever max out my RAM and so I feel there is no need for a swap file.

I mainly use my PC for surfing, downloading, DVDs and gaming.

Should I disable swapping on my OS?

What are the pros and cons of such an action?


Thanks guys!

 

[imported_Phil]

This has been debated many many times, with the most comprehensive information coming from Drag.

Leave it be.

 

[montag451]

yeah, leave it be, some proggies deliberately use swap file for temp storage rather than RAM

 

[montag451]

BUT you could reduce it - see when your system starts slowing up, then increase it again.

Make sure the pagefile is one size [min and max the same amount] and defragged

 

[Navid]

The only pro of removing the pagefile is that you save some disk space.
With disk space being so cheap now, that is not really a pro.

So, leave it alone (do not disable swapping).

 

[KoolDrew]

Leave it alone. Disabling the paging file doesn't disable paging. It will simply make the system page more to exe's, dll's etc. So there will be no performance benefit from disablign the pagefile.

Also some aplications insist on creating what are called "pagefile backed sections" and will therefore not work correctly without having a pagefile.

 

[Nothinman]

Make sure the pagefile is one size [min and max the same amount] and defragged

That's stupid, just leave XP manage it. Setting the sizes the same does nothing but remove any chance of recovery should you need the space. And the pagefile isn't generally accessed sequentially so making sure it's contiguous is pointless.

 

[DnetMHZ]

Just leave it alone.

 

[montag451]

hey nothinman, if you want to reduce the size of the pagefile, you just reduce the min and max figures

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: montag451
hey nothinman, if you want to reduce the size of the pagefile, you just reduce the min and max figures

It is still best to let Windows manage it. When Windows is managing it it is not big anyway. It will only increase if it needs to be increased.

Also disabling the pagefile would waste a lot of the RAM. This is because when a program asks for virtual memory space it may ask for more then it may use. If there is not a pagefile it has to be assigned to RAM. Also the NT family was designed with the assumption that there is a pagefile. So it is best that there actually is one. And as said before disabling the pagefile will give no performance benefit at all as it does not eliminate paging

Windows handles virtual memory just fine and there is no reason to alter these settings. The only time I see it to be useful is for troubleshootingor moving the pagefile to another physical drive, which would not help performance if ou have plenty of RAM as the pagefile would not be acessed often.

 

[shortylickens]

First off, yes this discussion has been up on MANY different forums and it generally pays to look around before starting a new thread.

But since you did start a new thread and asked a SERIOUS question;
I also have one Gig and have found (through trial-and-error) I seem to have better performance and less HDD thrashing if I leave my swapfile small.
256MB has done very well for me and I've had NO memory errors ever since I set it 6 months ago. Please note the only intensive stuff I do is gaming. I have been told (many times) and firmly believe that Video Editing is a different ball game and most Apps REQUIRE a huge swap file regardless of Physical RAM.
My attitude is make Windows use what I paid for.

DONT EVER DISABLE it. Most programs will check to see if you have some and many will refuse to run properly if its disabled completely.

Through personal experience I have found it helps to make it a set size so the file isnt constantly changing and thrashing your disk. It does seem to improve performance when moving lots of small files around too. Also viewing (e.g. lots of pics in ACDSee). Although a regular defrag is probably the most important thing here.
I have personally never seen any improvement with using a different physical drive or making a special partition just for the swap file. Although I have been told many flavors of Linux demand this during installation.
::: If you make it a SET size with no difference in min-max, then windows CANT resize it. :::

 

[KoolDrew]

Through personal experience I have found it helps to make it a set size so the file isnt constantly changing and thrashing your disk.

Windows will automatically expand a pagefile if it is too small to start and it may also reduce the size if it is larger then is needed. Because of this it is best to set the initial size a little larger then the actual memory being used (The PF Usage thing in the task manager is not the actual amount of the pagefile being used. This is actually the potential uses of the paging file so don;t set mininum based on this.) and have a high maximum. If you set a high enough initial size Windows will not need to resize it.

EDIT - If you actually want to see how much of your pagefile is being used, size etc. this or this shoul;d help. The first one is just a couple vb scripts while the second one is a compiled version. This can be used if you would like to know this info or IF you want to configure the pagefile, but as I said most users will be best off by leaving it alone and letting Windows manage it.

 

[tfstone]

Would it make any sense to add a compact flash ramdisk (via pci adapter) to the system and put the pagefile and stuff on this. This could be done for USD 90 (1 GB CF) + USD 25 for the adapter. Does anyone know how fast CF is compared to a harddisk? What about a USB stick, would that make any sense?

Edit: I guess the CF would make a SSD (Solid state drive) out of this not a ramdisk. Anyway the idea stays the same...

Edit: According to this http://www.dansdata.com/cfide.htm it is not possible becaus eof limited read / write cycles of the cf card.

@ sunner; leaving things to MS is never a good idea...

 

[Sunner]

Leave it be, the programmers at MS know more about how the Windows VMM works than you do.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: tfstone


@ sunner; leaving things to MS is never a good idea...

Because it's "cool" to bash Microsoft?
Give me a break, noob. :roll:

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Dopefiend

Originally posted by: tfstone


@ sunner; leaving things to MS is never a good idea...

Because it's "cool" to bash Microsoft?
Give me a break, noob. :roll:

Didn't you know Micro$oft sucks at everything? OMFG rofl lol OMGWTFBBQ n00b!

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: Dopefiend

Originally posted by: tfstone


@ sunner; leaving things to MS is never a good idea...

Because it's "cool" to bash Microsoft?
Give me a break, noob. :roll:

Didn't you know Micro$oft sucks at everything? OMFG rofl lol OMGWTFBBQ n00b!

Silly me, how could I forget?

 

[Nothinman]

@ sunner; leaving things to MS is never a good idea...

When why are you running the OS that they wrote?

Would it make any sense to add a compact flash ramdisk (via pci adapter) to the system and put the pagefile and stuff on this. This could be done for USD 90 (1 GB CF) + USD 25 for the adapter. Does anyone know how fast CF is compared to a harddisk? What about a USB stick, would that make any sense?

No, because you're optimizing something that doesn't need optimized. If you have 1G memory you're not using the pagefile enough to notice and if you are, moving it around would be like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. What you should do is just get more memory if you need it.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Dopefiend

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: Dopefiend

Originally posted by: tfstone


@ sunner; leaving things to MS is never a good idea...

Because it's "cool" to bash Microsoft?
Give me a break, noob. :roll:

Didn't you know Micro$oft sucks at everything? OMFG rofl lol OMGWTFBBQ n00b!

Silly me, how could I forget?

I should probably have added spider, stab, and some other lameness to make my point strong enough

 

[JesseKnows]

The one improvement you could make is make the Kernel non-swappable.

There is a registry setting for that, a quick search did not find it.

 

[Nothinman]

The one improvement you could make is make the Kernel non-swappable.

Right, because that 2M of data is really killing your performance.

 

[Codewiz]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

The one improvement you could make is make the Kernel non-swappable.

Right, because that 2M of data is really killing your performance.

Nothingman, you seem to have lost it. You are seriously beating people over the head with this stuff lately

While you are speaking the truth, also understand that a lot of people don't neccesarily understand OS design. They get most of their hints from misinformed websites. Most of the stuff will not hurt them anyways.

 

[Nothinman]

It's just annoying to see people trying to tweak things they don't understand and claiming it caused a huge gain in performance.

The DisablePagingExecutive is a great example, the kernel and all loaded modules is almost certainly under 20M, size will vary depending on the drivers in use. But if the code is being used the VM won't page it out to disk anyway, so disabling the paging of the unused modules won't help anything. And even if it does get paged out to disk it won't use any pagefile space, they'll just be dropped from memory and paged back in from the executables they came from originally.

 

[Codewiz]

It's just annoying to see people trying to tweak things they don't understand and claiming it caused a huge gain in performance.

It is no different than placebos.

If they think it helps then so be it. I have a feeling you will go crazy soon enough trying to correct all these self appointed "expert" tweakers.

I realized with the thread by generalmoron I mean acres, convinceing people of the truth when they don't want to know the truth is impossible.

 

[thegorx]

these day's I pretty much just leave it be

but when I've run a home Battlefield 1942 server
I've found it's best to disable it or else the lag start building in crowded maps.
that is disable it on the windows system I'm running the server from