Colin's Weekly Tip: Load Windows Into RAM

[Colin]

While Windows2k and WInXP manage its memory much better then the Win9x based operating systems, you can make both the actual Win2k or XP OS run more efficiently by keeping all of its code in system memory (since it's the most used program) rather than in a HDD swap file.<BR><BR>Go to Start -> Run and type regedit. From there follow this path. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Session Manager -> Memory Management. Right click on the DisablePagingExecutive DWORD value, change its value to 1, save and reboot.<BR><BR>Now Win2k and WinXP will stay in your system memory instead of going into the HDD swap file. Please note, you must have at least 512MB of system memory otherwise you'll notice a slowdown in performance! <BR>

[rollingstoneguy]

i did this tweak and i expected to be paging more ram than usual but i am actually paging less. is this right?

[grafton26]

I have read your tip on how to load winxp into the memory. Can you also do it with win98se, if so how do you do it.<img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif" border="0">

[Wolfgang]

Why dont you just turn the swap file off completely if you have that much RAM? I did that.

[Kokotia]

And how does it work without swap ??? No problems ? Bigger performance ?? And what about games at least ??<BR>I have 1024 MB as well, so I'm interested in this...

[Wolfgang]

I didnt know what i was talking abouy before, okay, that works well.

[thrakath]

Just a side thought. If windows is run like this and the power goes out... Will all your changes be lost? I thought this was the whole idea behind a swap file?

[saurongt]

Just a side thought. If windows is run like this and the power goes out... Will all your changes be lost? I thought this was the whole idea behind a swap file?

swap file is about as permanent as the ram itself. It is not designed to save changes and every time you reboot, it is completely cleaned.

[LBJGH]

cool tip, seems to work well on my rig...