Colin
06-16-04, 06:03 PM
While WindowsXP handles memory management much better than Win9x based OS's, there is always a way to improve things. If your PC has multiple HDDs, what we want to do is move the OS swap file from the main HDD to one of the secondary HDDs. It's true that the primary drive is usually the fastest for running software, but it's also the most busy. Moving the pagefile or swapfile to a drive with less activity should help speed up the PC.
To do this, right click on the "My Computer" icon and select "Properties", from there click on the "Advanced" tab then under the Performance section click on the "Settings" button. That will open up a new Window, from there select the "Advanced" tab yet again, and under Virtual memory click the "Change" button.
Under the "Drive [Volume Label]" window you should see all your HDD's - note that by default WinXP places the pagefile on the primary drive. Because we need to clean the pagefile of any anomalies and corruption first, click on the "No paging file" radio box then press the "Set" button, then click ok. Once the PC restarts go back to the same place and look under "Drive [Volume Label]", select your secondary HDD and check the "Custom Size" radio box. For initial size enter them amount of physical memory your PC has; if you have 1GB of RAM, enter 1024. In the "Maximum size" box enter double your physical memory + initial size pagefile. In our case it would be 2GB (or 2048MB). Click set, then "ok" and reboot. Once that's done, defrag the hard drive that contains the swap file and you should notice a decent performance boost within WinXP. Remember, never disable the pagefile even if you have a lot of system memory (1GB+), WinXP requires it to function.
To do this, right click on the "My Computer" icon and select "Properties", from there click on the "Advanced" tab then under the Performance section click on the "Settings" button. That will open up a new Window, from there select the "Advanced" tab yet again, and under Virtual memory click the "Change" button.
Under the "Drive [Volume Label]" window you should see all your HDD's - note that by default WinXP places the pagefile on the primary drive. Because we need to clean the pagefile of any anomalies and corruption first, click on the "No paging file" radio box then press the "Set" button, then click ok. Once the PC restarts go back to the same place and look under "Drive [Volume Label]", select your secondary HDD and check the "Custom Size" radio box. For initial size enter them amount of physical memory your PC has; if you have 1GB of RAM, enter 1024. In the "Maximum size" box enter double your physical memory + initial size pagefile. In our case it would be 2GB (or 2048MB). Click set, then "ok" and reboot. Once that's done, defrag the hard drive that contains the swap file and you should notice a decent performance boost within WinXP. Remember, never disable the pagefile even if you have a lot of system memory (1GB+), WinXP requires it to function.