I recently upgraded my computer from 512mb of ram to 1024. I have used various programs like TweakXP and even Windows itself to try and force everything to load to system ram rather than the pagefile. I have two sata drives stripped in a raid 0. That is still just not fast enough. I will open up my task manager at any given time and my pagefile has got 400mb in use, while my system ram will have 600mb available. What is the deal, can anyone help me? I am running Windows XP Pro sp. 2 on a Pentium 4 2.8c @ 3.4 with a 971 Mhz FSB and 2 WD SATA 80gb with 8mb cache in a stripped raid array with a maxtor 300gb ata 133 with 16mb cache for storage. Xp is installed on the raid array.

IF IT's XP
You should dissable paging executive:
regedit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMControlSet001ControlSession ManagerMemory ManagementDisablePagingExecutive
Change DWord 0 to 1
Reboot

Leave your min/max pagefile set to 300mb

That's great stuff Tuna!!! That's what I love about these forums; there's always something to learn from someone who knows more than you. I've been around awhile, and never picked up that piece.

I think my "blue collar" reply would have worked as well; but there's nothing like a solid Registry fix.

By the way Pimp, you should consider upgrading your RAM to two gig. Go to Kingston or Crucial and MAKE SURE it's designed for your mobo. It's cheap these days, and you could sell the existing. Then you'll never worry about needing that slow pagefile.

I don't need to ditch my old ram, I have another pair of slots. My virtual memory is being used by frequently used programs, not rarely used ones that I could care a less about. I am not seeing a performance loss per say, I am just not seeing what I know to be possible. When I go into my start menu and scroll over to my programs, I have a folder with 64 gamehouse games. My harddrive is accessed and it takes 3-5 seconds for anything to appear. Once I do that once, If I don't do anything else memory intensive, even for days, the programs appear instantly. Also, when I am uncompressing files in the forground, high priority, my page file is in use while there is available system ram. I just want my 1 gb of ram to actually be used, until it is I see no real need for 2gb.

Also Tuna, I went and checked my registery, that value you mentioned was already set to 1, because I had already set it up in the Windows Virtual Memory Advanced area of the control panel. My pagefile is not set at 300mb though, it is set at non-existant. I will try to change it to 300, and I will get back to you.

Thank you all for you imput. I really like talking about this kind of stuff, and I just bore everyone I know to tears when I do. I think I will grow to really enjoy this fourm.

I am uploading a picture to my webserver of my sysem with a @mb swapfile, and 350 mb being used. I'll have it for you in a minute

ok problem is that after restart, Windows keeps setting my pagefile to 1535mb even though I have custom checked and set at 2mb

I scurried around a bit and tapped M$ MVP (and author) Alex Nichol's article on Virtual Memory for some help. The whole document can be found at aumha.org.

He intimates that XP "may" ignore ANY settings you may make, and set a 1535mb or so pagefile anyway.

He also suggests it may be impossible to force XP to live without one. There are "moments" when a cpu needs to address 4gig of memory which almost no one has in RAM.

He also suggests that you can try a low sized pagefile, but that you won't get away with 2mb - 2mb. Set the min @ 2mb and the max @ 50.

The text is barely readable when I expand. I do see the 376 pf.

No matter. You may not get around this. But try the 50 max on the pf setting to see if that helps.

MS Explorer is probably auto-shrinking it. Save it to desktop. I can read it fine w/res at 1280x1024.

really want to speed page loads, check this out
http://www.eboostr.com/download/

max ram is always good but cant do this much for speed in windows xp!
luck