Re: Page Files

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Richard wrote:
Hi

I'm a little confused by different advice on different websites about
Page File sizes, and also by what i see in Task Manager.

I have a theory that my pc has been writing to Virtual Memory when it
doesn't really need to. A good example is when Windows Live Messenger
is minimized to the system tray. I have 1 gig of memory which should
be plenty for most day-to-day activities without having to resort to
Virtual Memory. But if i leave it unoccupied for a while and then
double-click the tray icon there is quite some delay before WLM is
maximized and in the mean time i here my disk going crazy - i dont
think the disk is very quick hence my theory that the WLM process has
been written away to Virtual Memory?

So, i found lots of conflicting advice about the size and locations
of page files, and i have now tried one piece of advice - that
Virtual Memory isnt necessary for most applications so cut the page
file to 50mb and be done with it! I now get the "Virtual Memory is
too low ... Windows is increasing ..." warning when i reboot but it
doesnt seem to cause any problems. The page file remains at 50mb (i
set it to 50mb to 50mb in the performance tab, even though the
'recommended' size is 1531mb). All i know is that now our example of
WLM minimized to the system tray doesnt take ages to respond any more
:-)

But when i look in Task Manager i see PF Usage values of 300, 400+
mb?? This i really dont understand!

I have XP sp2 on a Dell Optiplex 170L, single disk with two partitions
(yeah, not a top spec in the first place i know!)

I would love to here any comments on my tinkering, and an explanation
of what i'm really looking at in Task Manager?

First, go this page:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_i_delete_my_second_windows_xp_swap_file.html

Scroll down to the graphic after "Here's what you should be looking at:"
What are *your* values?

Second, WLM appears to be quite the resource hog. Although I'm not
exactly sure what is happening in your particular case, I'll bet
configuring WLM in a particular way (although I haven't used it, I
understand A-Patch is one such way) or just moving to another messaging
program like Trillian or Miranda will solve your paging problem.


.

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    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain)
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