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Thinclien pagefile

John Connor

John Connor

Lifer
Windows XP SP3.

I'm wondering if there is a system variable that I can change so that the thumb drive currently plugged into the thinclient can be the primary page file drive. I do have the page file on the tumb drive set to 1024 MB, but the system is like it's not using it. I seem to run out of virtual memory all the time. On C drive the page file is set to 110 MB as the drive only has around 129 MB left out of a gig. If I can just get the thumb drive to be the primary swap file that would be great.

Thanks!
 
So I gave it some thought and thought about this. What if I disable the C drive page file and keep the thumb drive page file on? Will that force Windows to use the thumb drive as the main page file?

Edit- I found this: http://www.ehow.com/how_6054256_use-usb-memory-ram-xp.html

So it looks like I'm right, but I think my current flash drive is set to FAT 32. Do I need to format it to NTFS? I will await an answer before I proceed.

Thanks again!
 
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Yesterday I tried using the thumb drive for the pagefile with FAT 32 and NTFS and it doesn't work. What happened was that C drive lost more space when I disabled C drive's page file and kept the thumb drive pagefile on. I don't know what to make of that. The only thing I can think of is there must be some setting in the Thinclient that I have to do in order for me to use a thumb drive as a pagefile. There is some kind of USB configuration in the control panel. I'm not sure if that has something to do with it.
 
You can do this, but I wouldn't count on the flash drive lasting very long. Depending upon the brand, it might only last for 5000 write cycles or it might last for 100,000. However, flash drives generally use an erase cycle followed by a write cycle, so it will be slow unless you use a USB3.0 drive.

Is the following the process you went through to try to assign the page file to the flash drive?

Plug in your formatted (probably best to be in the same format - FAT32 or NTFS - as the existing system drive) and ready flash drive. Once it is assigned a drive letter, right-click My Computer, select Properties, go to the Advanced tab. Under the Performance section, hit the Settings button. Under the Performance Options, hit the Advanced tab. Under the Virtual Memory section at the bottom, hit the Change button. Both your system drive and the flash drive should be shown in the drive list. With your system drive selected, choose the 'no paging file' option and click the Set button. If the system prompts you to restart, don't do it yet. Then, click on your flash drive in the available drive list. The 'no paging file' option will probably default select for this drive. Either set the page file to 'system managed' or to a custom size range of your choice - custom might be better, with 450MB min up to formatted capacity of flash drive as max. Hit the Set button. You may now restart. When you do, your page file should in theory be on your flash drive (for however long it manages to last).

The only thing I'm not sure of is if restarting the system will cause issues if XP doesn't mount the USB drive and assign the letter before it accesses the page file.
 
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I think Microsoft was a tad slow on the integrating of flash drives. I say a tad because the first commercial flash drive wasn't out in 2000, and like most technology I doubt even Microsoft knew how these things would explode.

My point: XP wasn't designed to use flash drives the way you are trying to use it. And a workaround would just slow down your boot up, shut down, and extremely limit the life of the drive.

Can you upgrade the memory and keep your page file at the lower setting?
 
Hmmm, upgrading the memory might be a possibility. I'll have to find out what kind of memory it has. Right now it runs and odd amount like 596 MB. I don't shut down and restart the thinclient. It's on 24/7.
 
John Connor said:
You can I have read on the net you can. Read the link from ehow I gave. Also Google it.
Click to expand...

There are also posts on the Internet telling us that aliens have beamed down from the planet Neebo and are walking among us. You have to consider the source material 😉

After more research, I think Larry is absolutely right. Lots of folks say they have done it, but I don't think they have done what they thought they did. More than likely, XP kept using the main system drive for their page file and just ignored the flash drive while the user was assuming it was working. XP will always recognize a USB drive as a removable drive, and thus won't move the page file to it as a function of the operating system.

The only way I know it will work for sure is with an IDE or SATA to compact flash adapter. It has to be a true adapter (like one for an industrial computer) such that the system will identify the CF drive as being non-removable. However, problem is that putting a page file on a CF card will destroy the CF card very quickly (like within days, if not hours in some cases). It is only useful for running an OS which fits completely within memory (meaning the CF card is essentially startup storage only modified with config files).

Besides the memory upgrade you mentioned, is a hard drive upgrade for the client not possible? Hard drive storage densities have increased so much over the last few years it ought to be possible to swap the smaller hard drive for a larger capacity one in the same size format. If the original hard drive is IDE, you might be able to swap it for a newer SATA drive using an IDE to SATA converter given enough room for the converter board (which isn't very big) and provided that the BIOS supports the larger drive.
 
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Thinclients use a flash drive...

Even if I could find a larger flash drive how could I clone it? What adapter would I use? This is a thinclient, not an ordinary computer.
 
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John Connor said:
Thinclients use a flash drive...

Even if I could find a larger flash drive how could I clone it? What adapter would I use? This is a thinclient, not an ordinary computer.
Click to expand...

Ok. Got you now - running XP, I didn't even think about it running on a flash drive (I was thinking maybe it had an IDE microdrive or something similar). Out of curiosity, what is the make and model number of the client?
 
Here is something you might look at doing - it describes how to modify the HP T5720 to use an IDE hard drive (the flash module apparently sits on top of a standard IDE header). Supposedly, it can also have up to 1GB of memory as well.

http://qrpbuilder.com/downloads/thin121310.pdf

If you have one of the models with 512MB of flash memory, you also get a version with 1GB of flash memory and 512MB of memory for $25 shipped on eBay so it might not be worth investing a lot of money for upgrades (you could buy the one from ebay and try to max the memory between the two machines):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Thin-Client-T5720-1GHz-1gb-Flash-512MB-Win-XP-Embedded-/181309335597
 
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Mine is pretty much the exact same in that eBay listing except it has an odd 496 MB of RAM. It has a 1 GB flash drive. Despite the fact there is like 196 MB of RAM left I run out of virtual drive space.
 
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