Formula for pagefile

[Guest]

I have heard that there is a formula for setting a pagefile, does anyone know
if that is true? I have a XP macine with 512MB ram 75gb HD and it seems to
be running far too slow. Can some suggest a setting that I could use to
maybe improve performance?

thanks,
Sheila

 

[Will Denny]

Hi Sheila

Please have a look at the following article by Alex Nichol:

"Virtual Memory in Windows XP"
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

 

[Ted Zieglar]

There is no hard and fast formula. There are 'rules of thumb' that vary
based on the amount of your physical RAM. A more accurate measurement can be
had by keeping the Performance tab of Task Manager on top of all other
Windows and taking frequent notice of your pagefile usage.

The best (and easiest) way to set the page file is to use the "System
managed size".

 

[David Candy]

The formula is 1.5 times physical RAM. But it's just something picked out of a hat, nothing magical about it. If it's too small you won't be able to open anymore programs (without closing some) when it's filled up. Windows requires 1 and a bit times RAM for full functionality (but the function that needs this is turned off by default).

Don't ever get trapped by people saying disable VM - you can't to begin with and disabling the page file (which does NOT disable VM) will make windows go beserk trying to page. It can only page into font files and exe files. So it will dump your program code from memory.

 

[Guest]

Thanks everyone for your help..
considering that I have 512MB ram and 75GB HD would this setting work out ok?

minimum 100MB
Maximum 1GB? does the maximum matter?
I read that article that will suggested and from what I understood, those
settings would be ok..any suggestions?

thanks again...very much..
Sheila

 

[David Candy]

The important thing is to set a large minimun (100MB sounds fine but tailor it to yourself).

With no swap file and same memory as you I can open around 34 programs. But if you use large data sets (like video editing) 1 Gig may be too small.

The critical thing is to set the minimun to the maximun that you, personally, actually use. You don't want the swap file fragmented (each fragment chews up real memory so 2 fragments is unimportant but 1000 is really bad).

But you must make this minimum unfragmented. Set swap to nothing, defrag (you should have enough real memory to do this, if not set a small swap), then set the minimun size to what you observe the largest size it grows to in normal use (hidden file called c:\pagefile.sys).

I use a 768MB minimun so it never needs to grow at all. I never use anywhere near that. If I was you I'd set a 1 gb minimum (you seem to be able to afford it - might as well give it to the swap than having it do nothing) and no maximun for that day you need to open a large file or 300 programs at once. I personally do set a 1 gb max but that is from habit.

Setting max to 0 is a bad idea and will slow down the computer. It will force windows to page out code it's using and keep data that is not being used - the opposite of what you want.

 

[Guest]

David,

Thank you so much for your suggestions, I will give it a try and let you
know how it goes...that's if we don't get snow bound tonight..it is North
Dakota and they are forcasting snow already...can you believe that?

Sheila

 

[David Candy]

I'm in Sydney and it's been 37/38° (100°F) already, can you believe that. I've only seen snow once in my life. It's cool now but inside is still hot. I sat in the rain last night at 3am to cool down.

Sydney: Dry, mostly sunny. 23 (73.4°F) is the max today thankfully.

Conversion is from the updated calculator from http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/outreach/dnloads/downloads.mspx

While we don''t get snow (except this year it did snow, a couple of flakes, in sydney near the mountains) we do get hail
http://www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/09/06/1094322704029.html

 

[David Candy]

North Dakota used to have a socialist government (1917-1921). I'm surprised you weren't expelled from the union.

--
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.uscricket.com
I'm in Sydney and it's been 37/38° (100°F) already, can you believe that. I've only seen snow once in my life. It's cool now but inside is still hot. I sat in the rain last night at 3am to cool down.

Sydney: Dry, mostly sunny. 23 (73.4°F) is the max today thankfully.

Conversion is from the updated calculator from http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/outreach/dnloads/downloads.mspx

While we don''t get snow (except this year it did snow, a couple of flakes, in sydney near the mountains) we do get hail
http://www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/09/06/1094322704029.html

 

[Peter]

David, Firstly (re: Pagefile) is "System Managed" Ok for settings?
Secondly, get yourself an air conditioner. If I recall last summer in OZ
was extremely hot.

--
Peter.
Toronto, Canada.
Windows XP Home SP2.
P4 Dual HT @ 3.0ghz, 160gb HD, 1.0gb DDR.
I'm in Sydney and it's been 37/38° (100°F) already, can you believe that.
I've only seen snow once in my life. It's cool now but inside is still hot.
I sat in the rain last night at 3am to cool down.

Sydney: Dry, mostly sunny. 23 (73.4°F) is the
max today thankfully.

Conversion is from the updated calculator from
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/outreach/dnloads/downloads.mspx

While we don''t get snow (except this year it did snow, a couple of flakes,
in sydney near the mountains) we do get hail
http://www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/09/06/1094322704029.html

 

[David Candy]

I don't believe that system managed is the best choice due to fragmentation isssues. A good sized minimun and no max is the best but you have to defrag before setting the minimum (else the fragmentation issue isn't addressed).

Fragmentation isn't that big an issue in itself but as it's the swap file the memory used by windows to manage the swap must stay in memory and each fragment requires extra memory so windows can find it. That means less memory for your programs which will force more paging.

Likewise each Fat32 disk takes up enourmous amounts (20 meg for a 40 gig disk) of non pagable memory while an NTFS disk uses 200K of memory, 1/100th as much.

I don't like air conditioners. I choose where I live in Winter and was just to taken with all that sunshine flooding in. I leave the window open 24/7/365. I sleep on top of the bed and only wear a T-shirt all year round (with a light jacket if I go out at night in winter) It wasn't till after I paid the deposit that the thought occured to me that good in winter means bad in summer. 5 years ago we had a storm (which is why a minor hail storm is now big news) with baseball sized hail. I was trapped outside as I had just left the supermarket - I was 20 metres away from it - and it started. I was pressed up against a wall, with every car alarm going beserk, being hit from the ribcage down, the ice was shattering and sending ice shards flying so I had my hands over my eyes protecting them. And it took an hour or so before I would trust that it had stopped to go the rest of the way home. It took many years before Australia could make enough roof tiles to repair the damage. My window was open about an inch at home (I lived on the ground floor then so I closed my window if I wasn't home) and the ice had shattered and come in and my bed was covered with about 6 inches (150mm) of ice. The bed was very cold.

 

[Peter]

My settings were at around 1533mb for a 1.0gb DDR (around the 1.5 mark) so
you say set a minimum but no maximum? I'm off to defrag as we speak.

--
Peter.
Toronto, Canada.
Windows XP Home SP2.
P4 Dual HT @ 3.0ghz, 160gb HD, 1.0gb DDR.
I don't believe that system managed is the best choice due to fragmentation
isssues. A good sized minimun and no max is the best but you have to defrag
before setting the minimum (else the fragmentation issue isn't addressed).

Fragmentation isn't that big an issue in itself but as it's the swap file
the memory used by windows to manage the swap must stay in memory and each
fragment requires extra memory so windows can find it. That means less
memory for your programs which will force more paging.

Likewise each Fat32 disk takes up enourmous amounts (20 meg for a 40 gig
disk) of non pagable memory while an NTFS disk uses 200K of memory, 1/100th
as much.

I don't like air conditioners. I choose where I live in Winter and was just
to taken with all that sunshine flooding in. I leave the window open
24/7/365. I sleep on top of the bed and only wear a T-shirt all year round
(with a light jacket if I go out at night in winter) It wasn't till after I
paid the deposit that the thought occured to me that good in winter means
bad in summer. 5 years ago we had a storm (which is why a minor hail storm
is now big news) with baseball sized hail. I was trapped outside as I had
just left the supermarket - I was 20 metres away from it - and it started. I
was pressed up against a wall, with every car alarm going beserk, being hit
from the ribcage down, the ice was shattering and sending ice shards flying
so I had my hands over my eyes protecting them. And it took an hour or so
before I would trust that it had stopped to go the rest of the way home. It
took many years before Australia could make enough roof tiles to repair the
damage. My window was open about an inch at home (I lived on the ground
floor then so I closed my window if I wasn't home) and the ice had shattered
and come in and my bed was covered with about 6 inches (150mm) of ice. The
bed was very cold.

 

[David Candy]

I set mine to 1 gig. In 9x setting it to the free disk space was setting it to the max (windows knew). Maybe the same thing applies

 

[Peter]

It depends where you read but there are so many different opinions about
this out there. One I read (forgot where now) said set min/max the same so
the system doesn't have to keep resizing it.

--
Peter.
Toronto, Canada.
Windows XP Home SP2.
P4 Dual HT @ 3.0ghz, 160gb HD, 1.0gb DDR.
I set mine to 1 gig. In 9x setting it to the free disk space was setting it
to the max (windows knew). Maybe the same thing applies

 

[Guest]

The BEST way to set your Pagefile.sys in XP is to set the Initial or Minimum
size to 1.5 times the Maximum amount of RAM installed. Then set the Maximum
size of the Pagefile.sys to 3 times THAT amount. But also be aware XP only
lets you set the Maximimum size of the Pagefile.sys to 4096 MB. (Which I
feel is a major limitation for Windows, like if I have a Windows Server 2003
PC with 30 GB of RAM and the Pagefile.sys is on it's own 40 GB hard drive.)
So I have 1024 MB of RAM on my home PC. The Initial size of my Pagefile.sys
is 1536 and the Maximum size is 4096 MB. GO AHEAD if you have less than the
amount of RAM to make your Maximum size of your Pagefile.sys to "allow" it to
be 4096 MB to set it there anyhow. Like for instance on two PCs I maintain
(one Windows 2000 the other Windows XP) the first has only 256 MB and the
other 384 MB of RAM. I increased the performance of both by setting the
Maximum size of Pagefile.sys to 4096 MB and on the XP PC with 384 MB of RAM I
put the Pagefile.sys on drive D:\ with no operating system there. This is a
Pentium II 350 MHz PC with XP on it and it rocks!! Check out these Microsoft
articles on how change the size and move your Pagefile.sys in Windows XP/2000:

How To Move the Paging File in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307886&Product=winxp

How to set performance options in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308417&Product=winxp

How to configure paging files for optimization and recovery in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314482