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slewis1972

Best Virtual Memory Paging Size ???

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HI,

 

Whats the best virtual memory paging size, as I have 128 meg Ram adn its set at 192 and this does not seem enough as get errors when I open some applications i.e Word97.

 

Scott

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most people recommend about 1 and 1/2 your total ram some recommend 2 times your total physical ram.

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After running my system for a while under normal use I load up task manager and see what my peak mem usage is. Then I subtract my physical memory size from the peak and the number I get is what I set my virtual memory paging size to. If I get an error message concerning memory I just up the size 16MB at a time.

A lot of people may say I'm wrong but this system has worked very well for me for a long time, even with NT4.

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That's the way to do it. Set your pagefile to 300/300 for starts and then constantly check your MEM usage/peak mem.

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If you have a small partition, you might want to dedicate it to that?

 

 

I have 256MB RAM, and I have a 660MB Swap partition/Swap File. It's a fixed size, and I've never had a problem with it...

 

It might be excessive, but I'm staring at 45 gigs, and using only 5..so I can spare it.

 

Make the file larger than necessary, then set it as that(say 660min 660max)

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Quote:
Pagefile Tweaking

The pagefile in Win2K isn't dynamic like the swapfile in Win9x, so it is even more important to optimize your virtual memory settings for this OS than it ever was for Win9x. With that said, there are a few guidelines you should follow when optimizing your virtual memory.

- Unlike Win9x, you can split your pagefile over several hard drives. It generally isn't recommended to split up your pagefile over separate partitions, but if you have two similar speed hard drives (you could use a 5400 and a 7200 rpm drive together, but you would want to stay away from a jump of more than about 2000 rpm), splitting your pagefile over the two drives is a great way to improve performance.

- Your pagefile should almost always be larger than your system memory. If you have less than 96 MB of ram, I recommend having at least 1.5 times your physical ram size in your pagefile, and you might even benefit from 2x. If you have between 96 and 256 MB of RAM, the Microsoft recommendation of RAM +30 MB appears to work well -- but if you are at the lower range of that spectrum and do a lot of multitasking you might benefit from a setting like 1.5x RAM. If you have 256 MB of RAM, you probably only need 256 MB of swapfile space. Unless you have your computer set to full dump in case of crash mode, any more would be a waste.

To set your pagefile, go into the advanced tab of the System applet and click on the Performance Options button. At the bottom of the dialogue box that pops up, there will be a button that says change. Click that to go into the Virtual Memory screen. From within this sub-applet you can set your virtual memory settings, and Windows even gives its own recommendation for pagefile size.

This is from the Windows 2000 Hard Drive and Memory Tweak Guide at http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/win2kmem .
I have 384MB and my pagefile is set at a fixed size of 400MB.

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I have 256megs of ram and i have my pagefile set at the windows recomended 382. Things are working on my system quite well. My friend has a computer has 768 megs of ram and windows recomends that his page file be set at like two gigs is that too much is there any problem with using a pagefile that size.

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