OS questions

Discussion in 'A+' started by mikehende, Jun 20, 2006.

  1. mikehende

    mikehende Kilobyte Poster

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    The book says that moving the Swap file from the default C drive to another bigger drive will increase performance but doesn't say what I should put for both the Initial and Maximum size values? Any ideas?
     
  2. d-Faktor
    Honorary Member

    d-Faktor R.I.P - gone but never forgotten.

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    for best performance set the initial size to 1.5 times the amount of ram, and the maximum size to 3 times the amount of ram.
    more info: http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm
     
  3. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    My personal view is to leave the sizing up to Windows for most normal installations! :biggrin

    Hrary.
     
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  4. Clyde

    Clyde Megabyte Poster

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    remember, to get the performance boost, ensure that the swapfile is on a seperate physical disk than the windows partition.
     
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  5. AJ

    AJ 01000001 01100100 01101101 01101001 01101110 Administrator

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    I did read somewhere to set the max and min size of the paging file to be the same??

    Is that right???
     
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  6. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    Not always. IMHO (still) - leave it to Windows. A lot of work has been done by M$ to tune this. Unless you are *very* expert don't second guess it! :biggrin

    Harry.
     
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  7. mikehende

    mikehende Kilobyte Poster

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    I have only 512RAM on this machine and is usually enough but I have had the virtual-low-memory prompt a few times so I have to consider either moving the swap file and increasing it's size as per d-faktor's link or purchase more memory, I have read that link a few times already and it doesn't seem to be all that difficult for me to move the swap file to my bigger drive and partition it thereby closing off a specific area for the file or what do you guys think?
     
  8. mikehende

    mikehende Kilobyte Poster

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    While we're at it, maybe you guys can also explain the relationship between hard drive space and the swap file? Meaning, I have 7 gigs free on my C drive and I never load anything new or at least any big files on there, every addition is usuall made on the added much bigger drive which has approx. 147GB's free so my question is, why would moving the swap file from a drive that has 7GB's free to a bigger drive make any difference?
     
  9. Bluerinse
    Honorary Member

    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    Because it is splitting the work (think disk read writes) between two disk controllers rather than everything being done by the same one. Clearly there will be disk activity when you are using an application, as various parts of the application are loaded from disk into memory. If this work is also combined with paging/swapping then the system will be more stressed than if the paging is being done on a different hard drive.
     
    Certifications: C&G Electronics - MCSA (W2K) MCSE (W2K)
  10. mikehende

    mikehende Kilobyte Poster

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    Appreciate the help as always Bluerinse but I don't understand this explanation, can you try another way or can some else can try explaining in another way please? Sorry guys.
     
  11. mikehende

    mikehende Kilobyte Poster

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    Think I understand this now Bluerinse but to a related issue, if I understand this correctly from reading a lot of articles on this and from getting people's opinions on the topic, simply put, moving the Swap file might not be worth the trouble?
     
  12. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    To get the low virtual memory complaint you must be doing something that takes a lot of memory. This will also cause quite a slowdown of that app.

    If you can't reduce the memory requirement of what you are doing your *best* course would be to get more real memory.

    Virtual memory is a snail compared to the real thing!

    Harry.
     
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  13. Boycie
    Honorary Member

    Boycie Senior Beer Tester

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    I read this a few days ago in the MS 70-270 self-paced training book.
     
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  14. Malnomates

    Malnomates Megabyte Poster

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    The minimum recommended swapfile size is 1.5 x the installed RAM and a maximum recomended size of 3 x installed RAM.
     
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  15. Mr_Fishbulb

    Mr_Fishbulb Nibble Poster

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    IMO the max and min sizes should be the same. That means the page file should not become fragmented.

    I've heard about the 1.5 to 3x before but I turned my virtual memory off now that I have 1.5 gigs and have no problems.
     
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  16. mikehende

    mikehende Kilobyte Poster

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    I will be moving the swap file just for the knowledge and know-how, will let you all know how it goes. Next issue, I am now up to the "Understanding Windows" section of the book and I am seeing different OS which I haven't encountered before [3x, 9x, ME, NT], should I try to get these OS and load them one at a time on an old pc just to familiarize myself with them? BTW, is 9x and windows98 the same thing?
     
  17. Malnomates

    Malnomates Megabyte Poster

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    you'll really need to get some hands on with 9x as it's very different to NTFS systems,so yes-install a 9x OS (98 or 98SE) and pull that baby to peices.. :onthePC

    EDIT-9x refers to 95,98,98SE and is usually quoted alongside ME.Me is a bit of a weird one,as you'll soon find out,built on 9x technologies yet resembles NTFS in it's GUI!
     
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  18. mikehende

    mikehende Kilobyte Poster

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    I have used 95 and 98 in the past and can't remember them being that much different from 2000 or XP in terms of the OS's layout and usage. Anyway, so that leaves 3x, ME and NT, do I need to have some experience with any of these 3?
     
  19. Mr.Cheeks

    Mr.Cheeks 1st ever Gold Member! Gold Member

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    you will need xperience in NT, ME and dont think in 3x. The earliest i think would be either 95 or 98...

    i thought NT/2k when it came out was a big :thumbleft comparing to 9x
     
  20. Baba O'Riley

    Baba O'Riley Gigabyte Poster

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    I think I read somewhere that you shouldn't turn it off no matter how much RAM you have. Some parts of Windows are written to make use of the swap file regardless of the physical memory. Plus, it will free up more RAM if you are running lots of memory intensive processes like VMs.
     
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