WinXP Virtual Memory Size

[dauss]

I don't understand this virtual memory thing that winXP uses. I think the general rule is 1.5x the amount of physical ram I have and winxp just sets it automatically for you. I just upgraded my ram so I have 768 megs, and my page file that was under the task manager is 1.8gigs. Theres no way I'm going to be using that much because I don't do any video, picture, audio editing/making.

I moved the page file onto another hard drive because I read that it'll increase system performance if its not on the same drive as windows. Mainly its just uploading/downloading files. I've also never seen my page file go over 250 megs. You think its ok for me to disable it completely or should I still leave some anyways?

[Steve R Jones]

Just leave it and forget it. MANY programs write to it reguardless of how much ram you have.


(great article)

Introduction

"This page attempts to be a stand-alone description for general users of the way Virtual Memory operates in Windows XP. Other pages on this site are written mainly for Windows 98/ME (see Windows 98 & Win ME Memory Management) and, while a lot is in common, there are significant differences in Windows XP."


http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

[RADAR1797]

Don't disable virtual memory. Windows is a bit of a memory hog and does not always release resources when they are not needed. With 768 MB of RAM, the OS ought not go to the virtual memory on the HD often.

-RADAR

[darrelld]

My .02 cents, I have 768 RAM and my pagefile is a static 500Mb on a separate drive. This has worked great for me, I do everything with my computer including gaming. At this moment, I have MP9, AIM, MSN Messenger, IEx3, teamspeak, BF1942, InCD, Pop-up killer, 20 other processes and AVG running. My pagefile usage is 215Mb. I don't know where that rule of thumb came from, but whoever made it up was high on crack.

[DoctorReno]

I agree you should keep the Paging File as there are times it is needed. Putting it on a second HD is a good idea so long as the 2nd HD is at least as fast as your primary drive. If not you might consider splitting the paging file between both drives...something XP will let you do.
Finally, I like to enable the the setting so that the Paging File is deleted every time you turn the machine off and recreated new and unfragmented every time you start the machine.

[dauss]

Originally posted by darrelld
I don't know where that rule of thumb came from, but whoever made it up was high on crack.

Uhm, why don't you go into control panel, system, advanced, performance settings, advanced tab, and click the change button. Take the recommended number that windows suggests, and divide it by the amount of actual ram you have.
Computer 1 with 512 RAM: 766/512=1.496
Computer 2 with 768 RAM: 1150/768=1.4973
Round either of those numbers and you get 1.5. Did I do the math wrong? If your computer tells you otherwise, please let me know.

[DoctorReno]

I think the rule of thumb has a legitimate background. It was from the days when 16megs of ram was a lot. In fact, back then if you had the testicles to take control of the swap file from windows it was smart to make set the max file size around 3 times your physical ram.
Now that the amount of ram is getting so large in machines the rule needs to be amended. There is no hard and fast rule for setting a max size but it is certain that the more ram you have the smaller the Paging file needs to be. Someone with 256 or even 128 megs of ram will need a larger Paging file than someone with 768 or a gig.
Unless you are hurting really bad for HD space there is nothing wrong with setting your Paging File the same size as your ram if you have 512Mb or more.
I think it's wise to stick with the 1.5x rule if you have less than 512Mb and if you are really short on ram maybe even consider 2x as a max size.

Then there is the argument if one should set a Min paging file size. IMO I would monitor your page file size for awhile and see the largest it gets. Set your min page file size to that. On the rare occasion you need a larger paging file windows can increase it.

The whole point is to minimize how much time is lost to windows resizing the page file.

Something that may be even more important is correctly setting your Virtual Cache so windows manages your memory better and minimizes accessing the swap/paging file.

[dauss]

But doesn't having a page file slow down the computer and the hard drive because the file needs to be written to and read from, especially when you are running some editing software which would use a lot of reading and writing to the hard drive?

[darrelld]

Originally posted by dauss

Uhm, why don't you go into control panel, system, advanced, performance settings, advanced tab, and click the change button. Take the recommended number that windows suggests, and divide it by the amount of actual ram you have.
Computer 1 with 512 RAM: 766/512=1.496
Computer 2 with 768 RAM: 1150/768=1.4973
Round either of those numbers and you get 1.5. Did I do the math wrong? If your computer tells you otherwise, please let me know.

So what you are saying is if MS says it's right it can't be wrong?
The reason Windows wants such a large swapfile is so it has room to right that 768Mb dump file.

Uhm, why don't you go into control panel, system, advanced, startup and recovery and change the write debugging info to none. Then why don't you go into control panel, system, advanced, performance settings, advanced tab, and click the change button, and set your pagefile to something reasonable.

[NDC]

The reason they want you to set it up at least 1.5x the physical memory is for a FULL Kernel DUMP. On windows 2000, it is set by default to do FULL DUMPS. However, under Windows XP, the default is set to MINI DUMP. FULL DUMP files created in the Documents and Settings\XXX folder can be very big at times depending on environment while the dump took place. I've seen some as HIGH as 600+MB. All you Windows 2000 users, go to this path and delete the user.dmp file if it exists. If you don't have one, you obviously haven't had a serious system crash, yet! If you don't want to hassle with it, just type drwtsn32.exe on run and make the appropriate settings.

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