Making your PC use your memory

[Denaes]

This seems slightly annoying. I have 512 mb of RAM and 250mb Paging File.

 

Task manager says I'm using 170.5 mb of memory total, but 166 of it is in the paging file.

 

Why?

 

I want it to use my memory and resort to the PF only if it needs to. I can understand only wanting to use like 3/4ths of your memory (like 400mb) before going to PF so other apps don't throw think all the memory is used. But I paid for memory and I kinda want to use it, not wear out my hard drive.

[sjn78]

This is apparently what it does

 

Now heres what a page file does. Windows uses the page file to querry data from the harddrive, just as regular memory does. So whenever you click on something, run a program etc, this goes through the page file. Windows also uses the page file to write debugging information, etc. This is why having a good page file is good thing. That being said here are some general rules of thumb about page files.

 

1. A page file should be 1.5 x your system memory

2. A page file should NEVER EVER become fragmented

3. A page file should have the same initial size and max size to avoid fragmentation of both the harddrive and pagefile.... see above

4. The page file needs to be a minimum of 2 MB on your boot drive. This allows windows to write debugging information.

5. If you have 2 drives defined try to move (i.e. C: and D it might not be a bad idea to move the pagefile to the D:.

[Denaes]

This is apparently what it does

the 1.5x your memory is if you have less than 512. Currently with the OS and software memory 'costs', if you try x1 (512mb) or x1.5(718), it actually degrades performance, because that much on your hard drive just isn't needed.

 

I need to figure out how to make windows actually USE my RAM primarily instead of the Paging File. I've used apps that do just that, but there must be a setting (registry or otherwise) somewere.

 

It shouldn't be primarily using the hard drive and never touching the RAM unless I have an ungodly amount of applications open. This is me with IE, Explorer, a downloader (about 15-20mb), SQL Server, Visual Studio and a media player playing either mp3's or movies (dvd or avi/mpg). it touches like 3mb of my 512 RAM and keeps writing to the disk.

 

Thank you for your reply :)