Limit Ram Usage on XP

[Guest]

I have an old Sony laptop with 128 mb of ram, and has installed XP on it.
Currently on bootup it uses ~165 mb of ram just to run XP, in other words, it
immediately uses the hard disk for virtual memory and everything runs very
slow.

Is it possible to limit the ram that is made available just to run XP (ie 64
mb) so that running other problems will not be affected so much. Obviously
you would expect a performance hit for XP itself, but at least in that case
it wouldn't be accessing the hard drive for everything it needs to do.

So far I have tried:

I have adjusted the settings under Control Panel -> System -> Advanced ->
Performance, but this does not seem to help.

I have also tried to modify the system.ini file by adding
[vcache]
MaxFileCache=32mb
MinFileCache=32mb
as suggested by some help-files for previous windows systems, but this also
does not seem to help.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

128mb RAM is not enough to run XP on.. IMHO, you require 512mb for anything
approaching decent performance, and even then it is advisable to run with XP
eye candy turned off..

 

[Bob I]

128 meg ram? If you can't install/upgrade memory to at least 256,
reinstall the previous operating system.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

You can not limit XP to use 64MB of RAM. It usually needs about 128MB to run
successfully. Since you only have 128MB, consider adding RAM or put back an
older version of Windows, if you can not add more RAM to the Sony.

I have an old Sony laptop with 128 mb of ram, and has installed XP on it.
Currently on bootup it uses ~165 mb of ram just to run XP, in other words, it
immediately uses the hard disk for virtual memory and everything runs very
slow.

Is it possible to limit the ram that is made available just to run XP (ie 64
mb) so that running other problems will not be affected so much. Obviously
you would expect a performance hit for XP itself, but at least in that case
it wouldn't be accessing the hard drive for everything it needs to do.

So far I have tried:

I have adjusted the settings under Control Panel -> System -> Advanced ->
Performance, but this does not seem to help.

I have also tried to modify the system.ini file by adding
[vcache]
MaxFileCache=32mb
MinFileCache=32mb
as suggested by some help-files for previous windows systems, but this also
does not seem to help.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I have an old Sony laptop with 128 mb of ram, and has installed XP on it.
Currently on bootup it uses ~165 mb of ram just to run XP, in other words, it
immediately uses the hard disk for virtual memory and everything runs very
slow.

Is it possible to limit the ram that is made available just to run XP (ie 64
mb) so that running other problems will not be affected so much. Obviously
you would expect a performance hit for XP itself, but at least in that case
it wouldn't be accessing the hard drive for everything it needs to do.

So far I have tried:

I have adjusted the settings under Control Panel -> System -> Advanced ->
Performance, but this does not seem to help.

I have also tried to modify the system.ini file by adding
[vcache]
MaxFileCache=32mb
MinFileCache=32mb
as suggested by some help-files for previous windows systems, but this also
does not seem to help.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Quit trying.

The virtual memory system will do a better job than you can hope to do
even if the tools existed.

 

[JohnO]

I have an old Sony laptop with 128 mb of ram,

I have one of those old Sonys too, and it runs XP well enough with 256...the
max that it can handle. It's not pretty, but it'll run an old version of
Photoshop, Firefox 1.5, Word 2k, Ppt 2k, and all the stuff my kids need to
fill their MP3 players. Ocassionally they swear about it acting locked up,
but considering what this beast cost us ($0) I tell them to be quiet and
wait.

-John O

 

[JS]

Upgrade to 256MB and then turn off any unnecessary services.
See: http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm
or http://www.beemerworld.com/tips/servicesxp.htm

JS