Colin's Weekly Tip: Custome System Memory Setting

[Colin]

Not all computers are created equal, and so Microsoft has had to try and write their OS's for the masses, meaning Windows may not be optimized very well for your PC. Luckily, Microsoft also built in a few switches that help you to fine tune your system.<BR><BR>Today we're going to optimize Windows File system Caching which should hopefully improve performance of your system a bit. First load up regedit (Start, Run then type regedit and press ok) and follow this path. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> Current ControlSet -> Control -> Session Manager -> Memory Management.<BR><BR>From here find the IoPageLockLimit and change its value according to how much system memory you have. <BR>4096 - 32MB or less of memory<BR>8192 - 32MB+<BR>16384 - 64MB+<BR>32768 - 128MB+<BR>65536 - 256MB+ <BR><BR>After that's done save and reboot. Now that Windows has been tuned for your OS you should notice a bit of a speed increase, especially when dealing with memory intensive programs. =) <BR>

[timmaynz]

does this work with Xp?<BR>theres no IoPageLockLimit value in the registry

[CompSnake]

not im mine either<BR>

[Ace]

I know I've seen that value somewhere in the reg... I can't remember where though

[Ace]

I can't find it. <BR><BR>And why can't I edit my posts in this category? Lol.

[omga14]

bump. was just going through some tweaking since i reinstalled about a month ago. can't find this in xp home. should i just add the dword in where you say it's supposed to be?

[Ginsu543]

You guys sure you're looking in the right place? I found the registry key exactly where Colin said it would be on my WinXP. My question is, how do you optimize for 1 GB of memory?

[omga14]

yup, checked fresh three times and no dice. should i just add the dword?

[Freakker]

I haven't checked, but the 256Mb settings looks like the 128Mb setting * 2, so I would guess for 1Gb you would use 256 * 4.
You create the DWORD, from what I've read.

EDIT:
Microsoft info on IoPageLockLimit (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/2000/server/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/2000/server/reskit/en-us/regentry/29932.asp),

[evilshaddow]

do you enter the value in hecadecimal or decimal?

and is 512mb of memory 131072?

[Freakker]

Decimal, because from other wesites I went to, it listed the hexadecimal value as an even numer.
Decimal 131072 = Hexadecimal 20000.

I haven't tried it on my computer with 512Mb of ram yet, but in the page I posted the link for, it says don't but that number over the amount of bytes avaiable - 64MB for 512MB and over.

And from what I can tell 1024 * 1024 * (512 - 64) = 469762048, which would be the maximum you can set, which is high above that so I assume you won't run into any problems.
Don't set it to that, I'm just pointing out the highest you can set for 512MB.
As a disclaimer, I'm not responsable if listening to me will end up with a destroyed computer.

[jerry242]

What is the Value Data number for 512M of Ram? My IoPageLockLimit is set to 174026.

[NotMyBest2Day]

For 1gb of ram, go for the hex value of F0000. The Microsoft page says for 512+ do physical memory - 64mb, so (1024 - 64) * 1024 = 983,040.

For 512mb of ram, the correct value to use is hex 7000 (458,752 decimal).