WinXP and 2Gb ram w/1.5 gb free

[dan]

Hi,
I have a desktop pc with windows xp and 2Gb of ram, with about 1.5 Gb free when not running any applications. Vista makes use of the memory by caching core OS components into ram for better performance, as the HD is slow.

Is there a way to do this with XP, somehow adust registry or settings to load more of XP core components into ram? About 1 Gb gets used when I surf the web.

I tried googling fr the answer first, and all I got is "adjust background services" from workstation to server, and change paging file

thanks.

[bonestonne]

well, not really. there are ways you can have the OS (XP in this matter) use all available physical RAM before going into the paging file. at the same time, you could just simply disable the pagefile (as it runs off the hard drive).

i can't get the webpage to load at the moment, but i'll drop a link or paste the content here when it does.

i have 3gb of RAM, and look at task manager (i have 3 apps running, two tabs in FF) it says i'm using about 519MB of the RAM.

i'd say try disabling the Page File (you can turn it back on if you need to) first so that you can see if that's what's slowing you down (i'd say it probably is).

[quote]A great new feature in Microsoft Windows XP is the ability to do a boot defragment. This places all boot files next to each other on the disk to allow for faster booting. By default this option in enables but on some builds it is not so below is how to turn it on.

1. Go to Start Menu and Click Run
2. Type in “Regeditâ€

[Redzo]

Hi,
I have a desktop pc with windows xp and 2Gb of ram, with about 1.5 Gb free when not running any applications. Vista makes use of the memory by caching core OS components into ram for better performance, as the HD is slow.

Is there a way to do this with XP, somehow adust registry or settings to load more of XP core components into ram? About 1 Gb gets used when I surf the web.

I tried googling fr the answer first, and all I got is "adjust background services" from workstation to server, and change paging file

thanks.

To make a long story short answer to your question is No.

[dan]

Hi,
I have a desktop pc with windows xp and 2Gb of ram, with about 1.5 Gb free when not running any applications. Vista makes use of the memory by caching core OS components into ram for better performance, as the HD is slow.

Is there a way to do this with XP, somehow adust registry or settings to load more of XP core components into ram? About 1 Gb gets used when I surf the web.

I tried googling fr the answer first, and all I got is "adjust background services" from workstation to server, and change paging file

thanks.

To make a long story short answer to your question is No.

oh okay. What's the long story?

What do you think of "bonestonne" tip #7 about disabling paging file?
thanks,
regards

[Vicotnik]

Disabling the paging file is imho a very good idea, since I don't like the way Windows handles the memory. But then again I *hate* the way Vista precaches stuff too so..

I'm more into the Linux way where swap is a last resort. Windows tends to swap out important stuff for no apparent reason. The way to get around that is to disable the paging file altogether.

The free memory is used as disk cache and other stuff, so your free 1.5GB doesn't just sit there really. I see no reason to precache stuff from the disk all the time since that just creates a lot of disk activity for no good reason. I simply do not trust MS to guess what I'm going to do next. But this is just my opinion, I'm sure there are good things about that feature too.

Sorry about the ranting, I'm a bit intoxicated at the moment. :P

[sjoukew]

oh okay. What's the long story?

One part of the long story:
Vista monitors which system and program files are used the most. If there is free ram, vista loads those files in the "free ram". This ram is then displayed as "free", but in reality it isn't.
As soon as the computer is "idle" and there is real free ram, vista starts loading system and program files into the free ram. Therefore the programs you use the most are pre-loaded.
So if your computer sits idle, it will need some time to fill lets say 3,5 gb of ram with system files, it will create quite some disk activity for a while. This also happens just after quitting a very memory intensive application. People who are annoyed with disk activity on an 'idle' windows will hate this feature.
Also microsoft added an priority setting for IO (disk activity) IO can now be scheduled as normal or background, where normal IO has an advantage over background IO. The pre-fetching is something done in background IO, so If you ask something from windows it will always give your command advantage over the prefetching. Windows XP threats every IO action as "equally important" and therefore cannot do disk IO in the background.

In order to make use of this you need a good prefetcher, and the ability to use the "free ram" as cache and prioritized IO. Windows XP doesn't have these capabilities. If you add these to xp, you almost do have vista anyway .
The only things you are missing are aero (3d gui, which can be disabled) , UAC (which can be disabled) , a complete reworked audio interface (which is quite a lot better than the xp audio part, which is almost straight from win3.11), DirectX10 and DRM
Maybe I forgot a part, but I thought these where the most important changes.

Some programs like microsoft office do have a microsoft office quickstart. This little program loads dll's into the system ram, but this memory is then permanently used. But if you start another office application the dll's are already loaded. This is something which can be done in win-xp, but in my opinion it is a horrible way of "prefetching".

[dan]

oh okay. What's the long story?

One part of the long story:
Vista monitors which system and program files are used the most. If there is free ram, vista loads those files in the "free ram". This ram is then displayed as "free", but in reality it isn't.
As soon as the computer is "idle" and there is real free ram, vista starts loading system and program files into the free ram. Therefore the programs you use the most are pre-loaded.
So if your computer sits idle, it will need some time to fill lets say 3,5 gb of ram with system files, it will create quite some disk activity for a while. This also happens just after quitting a very memory intensive application. People who are annoyed with disk activity on an 'idle' windows will hate this feature.
Also microsoft added an priority setting for IO (disk activity) IO can now be scheduled as normal or background, where normal IO has an advantage over background IO. The pre-fetching is something done in background IO, so If you ask something from windows it will always give your command advantage over the prefetching. Windows XP threats every IO action as "equally important" and therefore cannot do disk IO in the background.

In order to make use of this you need a good prefetcher, and the ability to use the "free ram" as cache and prioritized IO. Windows XP doesn't have these capabilities. If you add these to xp, you almost do have vista anyway .
The only things you are missing are aero (3d gui, which can be disabled) , UAC (which can be disabled) , a complete reworked audio interface (which is quite a lot better than the xp audio part, which is almost straight from win3.11), DirectX10 and DRM
Maybe I forgot a part, but I thought these where the most important changes.

Some programs like microsoft office do have a microsoft office quickstart. This little program loads dll's into the system ram, but this memory is then permanently used. But if you start another office application the dll's are already loaded. This is something which can be done in win-xp, but in my opinion it is a horrible way of "prefetching".

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I use gigabyte iram 4gb card, and vista will not install on 4gb so I'm stuck with xp for now. I suppose firefox preloader works the same way?

How do I get microsoft office quick start to preload 2003 dll?
thanks

[bonestonne]

well, iRAM is way different from normal RAM.

if you're using iRAM, its way faster than any hard drive you could be using, so having stuff load into the RAM wont make any difference unless you're using DDR in the iRAM and SD-RAM on the motherboard.

now knowing that you're using iRAM, you should definitely stop the paging file and system restore, as they'll constantly be writing to the RAM, and it will cause your "disk" space to disappear.

[dan]

well, iRAM is way different from normal RAM.

if you're using iRAM, its way faster than any hard drive you could be using, so having stuff load into the RAM wont make any difference unless you're using DDR in the iRAM and SD-RAM on the motherboard.

now knowing that you're using iRAM, you should definitely stop the paging file and system restore, as they'll constantly be writing to the RAM, and it will cause your "disk" space to disappear.

Oh I got of the system restore awhile ago
As fast as IRAM is, system memory is even faster, and I would like to force windows xp to load core OS components and applications as system cache onto system memory, as Vista does