Colin's Weekly Tip: Better Memory Usage in Win9x

[Colin]

For Win98/ME users, there are a quick way to boost overall system performance with just a few clicks of the mouse and taps of the keyboard! <BR>First click the Start menu then select the “Run” option. Inside the box type “sysedit” and press enter. Press enter and you will see quite a few windows open in the System Configuration Editor. <BR><BR>Select the “SYSTEM.INI” window and from there scroll down to the [386enh] section and add this line under that header; “ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1”. Save the changes and then reboot the computer. <BR><BR>What this little tweak does is force Windows 98/ME to use up all the physical RAM first before accessing the swapfile on the hard drive. With this small tweak done you should notice that all your programs have a little more zip in them! =) <BR><BR>

[Alien]

It's too less for me <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">

[asphix20]

This brings me to a quick question about memory usage and what not. I recently upgraded my computer and got a 1 gig of ddr333 ram (2x512mb). The weird thing is in Windows when I ctrl+alt+del and click on "task manager" then go to the "performance" tab.. i remember it used to tell me how much of my ram the system was using. Now it tells me my "Page File Usage History"... I'm running on Windows XP professional. I'm not sure if its an OS change or just a setting thats different. Does it even matter? What does this mean?

[Boaz]

I find it sloooooooooooooooows down my machine and any machine I've tryed it on, either that or no change.

[RAAF453Shep]

ok colin , I already run a fixed swap file,( 1024 ) and previously added the lines for faster access in W98 , <BR> in the same section.... the max page buffers= ....and noticed a small improvement will this make my measly 512 mb's DDR work better ?<BR> I have noticed that at times this rig seems sluggish .<BR><BR> W98se on a FIC AN17 w/ AMD 1700+<BR> 512 pc 2700 DDR<BR> WD 30g 7200 rpm ATA100<BR> Abit G4 Ti4200 64m<BR> creative 5.1<BR> sony DVD lite