Disabling Paging

[Guest]

I have Win2K Pro on my laptop, which has a *very* slow hard drive (as do most laptops). My laptop has 256 MB of RAM.

I did a test recently where I ran two copies of every application I ever use, all at the same time, and opened files, performed filters, did searches, opened complex documents and web pages, and so on. Task Manager reported the maximum memory used (Peak Commit Charge) at any one time as just over 400 MB.

I am shortly upgrading my laptop to 512 MB RAM (it's dirt cheap now, why not?) and my question is this: can I turn off paging completely?

I will never need more than that 400-odd MB of memory, and 512 MB gives me a bit of extra leeway. I've had a fixed-size paging file of 256 MB for months, and never exceeded that. Trouble is, Windows insists on swapping stuff out even when over 100 MB of actual RAM is still free! I've tried setting the paging file size to zero, but Windows insists on creating a 20 MB file when it reboots. This is better than a normal-sized one, but I would like to take it all the way if possible.

In Win9x, you could turn 'ConservativeSwapfileUse' or whatever on, so it would only use swap when RAM is full - I need an equivalent of that for W2K. I've already changed the registry entry to stop it swapping out the kernel-related stuff, but that hasn't helped it much at all.

I've scoured Technet and many web sites and search engines, but it seems to not be mentioned anywhere. Any ideas?

 

[jc14all]

I am running Win2k with 512 MB DDR SDR and even though Windows has a fixed page file, it never uses it. whenever I defrag my system completely with Diskkeeper 6.0 there are never any page files to defrag. So it seems that you can allow Win2k to create the defualt 20 MB file, because it will use your DRAM first anyway.

JC-------<*){{{>{~~~~~
Fisher of men

 

[ejsmith2]

"I need an equivalent of that for W2K"

There's a single reg entry that disables the paging of the kernal.

Other than that, win2k just uses the pfile if it's bored and has nothing else better to do, or the the program specifically requests the page file. With 512meg memory, you can shut it off, but 2k will still create a 2~20meg file (temp) for those nifty programs that have to have one (read:every-friggin-adobe-program-in-existance).

 

[Guest]

Thanks guys, I'll buy the RAM, turn it all off, and let it create a teeny paging file.

Someone at work suggested a RAM disk, and put a swap file there - nice idea, but the RAM disk driver would have to run before the paging driver.... 🙂

 

[lhgpoobaa]

beware though... there are some apps that DO require a certain swap file size, even if you have Gigabytes of ram.

i know Unreal Tournament does.

I'll respect your comments & opinions, even if i disagree with them, Provided you display maturity.

 

[Snorklis]

Yes, they do! And why the h*ll are they claiming swapfilespace when their is enough of ram anyway? Bad programming or what?

 

[ejsmith2]

"Bad programming or what?"

OS.

<font color=red>Phear my l<font color=blue>33</font color=blue>t skillz, biznatch!</font color=red>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

*shrug*]
not everyone has oodles of free ram.
i assume the min swap file needed is to protect itself from abnormal termination if your using a pc with less than ideal memory quantities.
why bother changing it for systems more? thats just more programming.

also, some apps i think need the swapfile there as a critical part of how it works. kinda like in the old days of dos... it didnt matter how much ram u had above 1mb, what you had below 640k always seemed to be most important.


I'll respect your comments & opinions, even if i disagree with them, Provided you display maturity.

 

[ejsmith2]

"in the old days of dos"

That's what I'm saying. Ms-Dos=Winme/98/95/3.1

Wooooooo-Hooooooo!!!!!!

<font color=red>Phear my l<font color=blue>33</font color=blue>t skillz, biznatch!</font color=red>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

yep.

im always amased that microSHAFT has got the nerve to produce yet another revision of windows95 still using legacy 16bit code at its heart.

i had the pleasure of briefly using a friends duron 800 for a few minutes.
in that time it
a. froze solid for no reason, finally multiple ctrl+alt+deletes worked, and iexplore just wouldnt work any more.
b. blue screen of death with lack of VdX space or something upon bootup
c. general very sluggish behavior.
disgraceful.


I'll respect your comments & opinions, even if i disagree with them, Provided you display maturity.

 

[Triple_A]

Experiment...experiment... then let us know what happened! hehe...

<b> <font color=blue> Next time that card won't fit , use Tom's hammer! </font color=blue> </b>

 

[NickM]

NT kernel is equipped with native services, such as a disk-caching system that performs disk-caching automatically. Besides the page files that are associated with executing processes, the Win32 maintains a page file of its own, the system page file. Win32 virtual-memory management system is designed to work quickly and transparently, it does not allocate physical memory when it is required, but only when it’s accessed, it <b>always</b> appears that at least <b>4GB</b> (much more, don’t remember, for Advanced Server) of memory is available, regardless of how much physical memory is actually in RAM and on HDD. To make the system transpired to executing processes, the Win32 allocates, frees, and swap memory as needed, therefore anybody rarely have to concern themselves directly with virtual memory management.
Despite there are 6 functions in Win32 SDK (Software Development Kit) for managing virtual memory, programmers may never have much need to interfere with virtual memory system, along with 18 heep-management functions and memory mapping, that operate transparently, working quietly in the background.

 

[NickM]

BTW, the starting point is a "*very* slow harddrive" here in the thread, and it would be the right thing to tell something about the hardware, what is your laptop from the Win2000 compatability point of view?

For me it looks like you're having some kind of hardware problem, and untill you fix your hardware, the Win2000 tweaking won't help, probably.

Sure, laptops' harddrives are slower, but there're many laptops that come with Win2000 preinstalled these days. And we know that they are laptops, and we are ready to face some lag in performance from them.

 

[Guest]

NickM, the hard drive is fine, and the laptop (IBM T20) is fine with W2K. All laptop hard drives are slow.

The rotation speed is low (4200rpm I think in my case) and because they are 2.5" drives, the surface moves under the head slower than a 3.5" drive would allow.

Even the fastest, most expensive drives are 5400 rpm - and on my desktop machine with its 7200rpm 3.5" drive, the drive is still *way* slower than RAM.

I will do as I said before. I will turn off the paging, and allow Windows to create a small emergency one. Should sort the problem out. I'll let you know.

Thanks for the sane replies! And please go away the people who turned a simple, civil, technical query into a 'MS is [-peep-]' waste of time.

 

[NickM]

It would be interesting to know how you’ll implement that.
As you know, every program you start in Win2K runs a process, that loads code, along with variables, and a process can own resources such as files, dynamic memory allocations, multiple threads, and when a Win32 process is created , the system automatically creates one thread for the process, the main or primary thread, and the primary thread can create additional threads, and each additional thread has the power to create more threads.
I see the problem here that a process initiates, code is loaded from an executable file.

Sure, you can reprogram the Win2000’s Virtual Memory Manager using the Win32 SDK, or VC98.
But as I mentioned, the programmers while developing programs usually do not bother much themselves with interfering with native Win32 services such as VMM. And as you’ve known, the native NT VMM controls memory mapping to ensure that individual processes don’t corrupt each other or overwrite the OS.
And it might happen (and it often happens), a process from a program with its thread will require, call for paging service, virtual memory that you’re going to disable. You have to reprogram an application, not the Win2000 in order to eliminate the error. Again, you are able to reprogram the Win2000 with no problem, but how you will do reprogramming an application? An executable file? A *.dll that puts itself on paging?
Typical error messages in this case might be similar to an old known one:

OFF97: Office Programs Require Virtual Memory
And a possible solution is (Funny, eh?):<font color=green><i>

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q156/4/52.asp" target="_new"> Microsoft Windows 2000 :</A>
1. Right-click the My Computer icon on the Desktop. Click Properties on the shortcut menu that appears.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Click Performance Options.
4. Click Applications, and then click Change.
5. In the Virtual Memory dialog box, you can change the parameters for your paging file (initial size, maximum size, and so on). After you change the settings, click Set, and then click OK.
6. Click OK.
7. When you are prompted to restart the computer, click Yes.</font color=green></i>

Probably you don't have programs that will cause such a problem on your notebook.
Anyway, interesting to know how you are getting on with it,
keep in touch, good luck.