Microsoft Windows Vista: How much memory is enough?

[Manao]

if you have experienced any problems running without a paging file?IIRC, Photoshop is ( was? ) requiring a paging file in order to run. It might not be the only software to specifically require a paging file.

[Shinigami-Sama]

IIRC, Photoshop is ( was? ) requiring a paging file in order to run. It might not be the only software to specifically require a paging file.

gimp does as well, well a swap folder atleast

[Sharktooth]

For XP:

1- Set the swap space to custom.
2 - Ensure you have both the swap Initial size space and Maximum size space set to at least the amount of RAM you have (or multiple of it)
3 - Use MSConfig to edit system.ini
Under the 386Enh section add:
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
4 - Reboot
5 - Use PageDefrag (sysinternals) regularly

[squid_80]

That only affects 98, not XP.

[Sharktooth]

right, 3 doesnt apply to XP...
however there are some other memory management tweaks in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\

Disable Paging Executive:
XP pages data from RAM memory to the hard drive. We can stop this happening and keep more data in RAM, resulting in better performance. Users with a large amount of RAM (256MB+) should use this setting. The setting we change to disable the ’Paging Executive’, is DisablePagingExecutive. Changing the value of this key from 0 to 1 will de-activate memory paging.

System Cache Boost:
Changing the value of the key LargeSystemCache from 0 to 1 will tell XP to allocate all but 4MB of system memory to the file system cache, allowing the XP Kernel to run in memory. The 4MB of memory left is used for disk caching, if more is needed, XP allocates more. Generally, this tweak improves performance by a fair bit but can, in some intensive applications, degrade performance. As with the previous tweak, you should have at least 256MB of RAM before attempting to enable LargeSystemCache.

Input/Output Performance:
This improves performance of large file transfers. If this entry does not appear in the registry, you will have to create a REG_DWORD value called IoPageLockLimit. The data for this value is in number of bytes, and defaults to Zero which equates to 512KB on machines that have the value. Most people using this tweak have found maximum performance in the 8 to 16 megabyte range, so you will have to play around with the value to find the best performance. The value is measured in bytes, so if you want, 12MB allocated, it’s 12 * 1024 * 1024, or 12582912. As with all these memory tweaks, you should only use this if you have 256MB or more of RAM.

also Windows does not unload dll files a program has used after it has been closed, to speed up a possible restart of the program.

Use Regedit to edit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer Add the DWORD value named: AlwaysUnloadDLL and set it to 1

however here's a collection of free tweaking tools for Windows OSes: http://mztweak.bravehost.com/index.html

[JohnnyMalaria]

Disable Paging Executive:
XP pages data from RAM memory to the hard drive. We can stop this happening and keep more data in RAM, resulting in better performance. Users with a large amount of RAM (256MB+) should use this setting. The setting we change to disable the ’Paging Executive’, is DisablePagingExecutive. Changing the value of this key from 0 to 1 will de-activate memory paging.

You can do this from the desktop, too. No need to use the registry directly.

My Computer/Properties/Advanced/Performance/Advanced/Virtual Memory/Change....

[foxyshadis]

AlwaysUnloadDLL is a fake-out, it does nothing on 2000 and up. DLLs are always unloaded 10 minutes after close. (The vast majority of 'tweaks' online are taken on faith like that. Most actually do something, usually for good, but you could invent one out of whole cloth and say it's for Vista and probably get a fair number of tinkerers swearing by it by the end of the year.)

[JohnnyMalaria]

I'm going to get a giant size one of these and wrap it around my computer...

http://www.qbracelet.com/