Best swap file setting for xp home

[Guest]

I have 512mb ram, what will the best swap file settings be, at the moment xp
manages it, I only have one hard drive, my comp is an Emachines E3021, any
advice please.

MickM

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have 512mb ram, what will the best swap file settings be, at the moment xp
manages it, I only have one hard drive, my comp is an Emachines E3021, any
advice please.

Letting Windows manage it is fine. But if you want to tweak it
yourself, read here: "Virtual Memory in Windows XP" by the late MVP,
Alex Nichol, at http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

 

[Guest]

thanks for the info, I have looked on various sites there are quiet a few
different answers.

MickM

 

[Gerry]

Mick

You really do not want to be using the swap file. You should check
whether the swap file is being used and if it is being used
significantly then add RAM memory. Take care not to confuse Allocations
of Virtual Memory reported in Task Manager for usage.

You may find it helpful to know exactly how much of your pagefile is
being used. Use page file monitor to observe what is the peak
usage.Start it to run immediately after start-up and look at the log at
the end of the session.The log is Pagefile log.txt. If you right click
on the file in Windows Explorer and select Send to, Desktop (Create
Shortcut). The same applies to XP_PageFileMon.exe. You will need to run
it at intervals as it does not log continuously once started.

A small utility to monitor pagefile usage:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

Graphics and camera related programmes demand significant amounts of
memory. Anything using an undo feature is the most demanding e.g. photo
editing.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
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