A Question Of Swap Files

Hello everyone


I was asked to install Windows XP on a pentium III 500MHZ with 64mb RAM. I said to them that 64mb isn't enough to satisfy performance issues and it would run 'less than desirable'. They asked me to install it anyways....

Now, after installing (clean install) it takes a long time to startup as the disk and ram information is busily swapped.

My question is if I make a new partition of several hundered megabytes and tell the OS to use this as the swap file can I increase performance of the system? Or isn't this recommended?

Thanks in advance.

 

Yeah, I figured there wasn't really any way I could optimize it without more ram. These are a couple of elderly people who believe spending $2000 four years ago on a computer means it should be capable of running everything fast forever.

Oh well, wait until they see how **** it does run

 

As Arie said, you really, really, really need more memory.

But if you can't get any, putting the swap file on a partition other than C: (or where ever you run the OS from) will give some improvement. Not a huge amount by any means but some is better than none and you have to have a swap file no matter what so why not move it.

Do leave at least 2Mb running on the system partition though.

 

HUH?? How do you leave 2 megs on the system partition and move paging file to another drive.

 

You can put any amount of the page file you want (2Mb+) on a partition and can split it among as many partitions as you have.

If the amount of swap file on the systemroot is too small, you won't get those lovely dumps when the system crashes. But I think there are only maybe 4 people at Microsoft and no others anywhere who can make sense of them so I never worry about it.

 

Thanks for the tip. I've evidently been doing it wrong in my ignorant bliss.

I have two HDD one is the C: and the other is partitioned E:, F:, and G:. I have always kept the paging file on the G: partition and made it 400 megs. I like it there so when I burn an image of the C: drive I don't have to worry about copying a needless paging file. I got tired of resetting it to "None" and deleting it before burning and often forgot to do that and ended up wasting a few cd's and time.

I'll put a small 2 meg one on the C: as you advise and see what it does for me. Everything seemed to be working well as it was however so I may not know what to look for.

 

I just went and bought another 128mb for the system, now up to 192mb, it performs much better now.

I'll just send them a bill


thanks for the replys guys