Pagefile Jitterbug

I have been suffering with an intermittent 'stutter' on my PC for several weeks (I think it started after I finally upgraded Windows Media Player). It has now become really bothersome. When moving across the screen the pointer will keep pausing, only to jump in an instant to where it would have gone without the pause. This is the main annoyance, but another which seems to be getting worse (or is it that it grates more?) is with my dial-up internet connection. The connection seems less stable, and it keeps terminating of its own accord, frequently, and then when it tries to reconnect the stutter screws it up. I have to stop it and wait for the stutter to end, which can be twenty seconds or two minutes (it varies).

Using the Cacheman utility I established that it is my pagefile which is causing the problem. The diskdrive light will keep coming on at one second intervals, and Cacheman shows that the pagefile is being increased each second by between 0.3 and 0.4 megabytes. Turning off paging stops the problem, but then I haven't got enough memory, and I can't even run MemStat XP to free some up. As I can't really afford to buy extra RAM, and as I never used to have this problem, I would prefer to get this fixed if possible.

Before I'd discovered it was my pagefile causing the stutter, I had tried defragging C: and when that didn't work I tried the Optimize System option in the Boot Visible Trace utility, but no luck. I've since read that some other utilities will put the pagefile at the 'front' of a disk (to speed up access), and that the WinXP defrag is a piece of junk, so maybe I've made things worse! After reading the system helpfiles I have moved the pagefile to the second partition of my internal drive (it had always been on C: before) but that hasn't helped either.

Is there a registry tweak I can use? Can I force the system to use increments greater than a third of a meg? Can I stop Windows using the pagefile after closing a program (i.e. to make it use the pagefile only for 'live' programs)?

I cannot go back to an earlier copy of my harddrive, as I bought Norton Ghost after the problem became apparent (and I can't face using the OEM system re-installation disk, followed by days of replacing all the other software I use). I don't think XP SP1 can play a part in this, as everything was fine after that upgrade. However, I'm one of the victims of 811439, and whilst I can't be certain, I don't think my PC performed as well after I'd uninstalled that particular spanner in the works.

Suggestions, anyone?

 

One question.

Is Media Player set to go on line automaticly ?

That did cause me some problems.

I am on Cable. But on a Dial up it may be worse. It may be looking for a connection that has not been made yet.

Or. I have also had Mouse Drivers cause that problem.

Just because the HD shows activity it does not really mean it is the swap file causing it.

BillyBob

 

I've just tried Media Player whilst connected to the internet and it attempted to open a browser style screen. In the options, I have ticks in: Download codecs auto'y once a week; Start player in Media Guide; and Prompt me to back up my licences. The box for Connect to the internet is empty, though. Hmmm...



As for a set pagefile size, that's been the case since I got my scanner before Xmas (some software I was trying required a certain size). It has been set at 384Mb (I have 256Mb RAM), but I now have it set at 512 min and 1024 max.



I can tell it's the pagefile which is changing because Cacheman has a counter (hence the reason I can quote the third meg size), and will even draw a graph in realtime. This tallies with the memory value fluctuations in Task Manager too.