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The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: whabang on July 17, 2004, 01:59:24 PM

Title: Windows without a swapfile
Post by: whabang on July 17, 2004, 01:59:24 PM

I've been runningn Windows without swapfile for the last week. The performance jump is actually noticable; and my harddrives probably feel a lot better. So far, no applications have complained about the lack of memory, and I generally have around 400 megs of free RAM.
I doubt it would work good on low-memory systems, though.

Has anyone experienced any major difference between 768 and 1024 megs of RAM?.

Title: Re: Windows without a swapfile
Post by: Turambar on July 17, 2004, 03:09:06 PM

Interesting. What version of windows are you using? I have 1024mb ram so if you're using XP i'll give it a go too.

Title: Re: Windows without a swapfile
Post by: bloodline on July 17, 2004, 03:11:49 PM

I run WindowsXP on 512Meg with no swapfile. I am even using massive files as that machine is my Music machine.

Title: Re: Windows without a swapfile
Post by: whabang on July 17, 2004, 04:38:27 PM

XP Home.
It handles it much better than Windows 2000 ever did.

Title: Re: Windows without a swapfile
Post by: KennyR on July 17, 2004, 04:46:02 PM

It's not something I'd recommend for 24/7 use. AFAIK Windows sometimes uses swap to defrag physical memory. Not too sure about that though.

Title: Re: Windows without a swapfile
Post by: seer on July 17, 2004, 04:54:12 PM

AFAIK, XP will still use a pagefile. Look in the taskmanager. You may need to add a few columns.

Also, check the registry, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive. Page file on or of, it's 0.

I may be wrong, but having used XP with 1Gb ram and no pagefile set, yes the systems seems more responsive. Haven't looked to deep into this tho.

If you want/need a page file, setup windows like it's a linux system. Put it on a different drive then where windows lives..

Title: Re: Windows without a swapfile
Post by: blobrana on July 17, 2004, 05:33:39 PM

Yea,
plus you could have a look at these `simple tips` (http://mysite.freeserve.com/blobrana/xp/main2.htm) .... (+ 2 red herrings) ;)


[disclaimer : You have to know what your doing]

Title: Re: Windows without a swapfile
Post by: whabang on July 17, 2004, 06:57:58 PM

Quote

KennyR wrote:
It's not something I'd recommend for 24/7 use. AFAIK Windows sometimes uses swap to defrag physical memory. Not too sure about that though.

Well,
you don't truly disable the page-file; you simply make it so small (max 0 mb) that it uses usual RAM instead. It is true that Windows' RAM-handling gets less efficient this way (swapped things get swapped to another place in RAM), but RAM is so much faster than a HD, that you'll think things go faster.

There are ways to disable the swap-file, but this includes serious registry hacking, and will probably {bleep} up your system good.