[rkselby98]

Low resources:

You need to do a couple of things you need to remove all of the programs starting at startup from the msconfig file that aren't needed. You can find a list of these programs and what they are. Well a lot of them anyhow on my site. The only one you actually need is scan registry, Systray is user preference, and same with load power profile. There may be some others in there that you do need, this would be according to your system and the programs your running such as a antivirus program. This you would want to start at startup.

You need to clean the hard drive and also defrag the swap file. Cleaning the hard drive and defragging the swap file have nothing to do with resources, but if you want a good running machine maintaining is a great tool. Seeing as how your having problems now why not just do a good complete job now.

You can find instructions at my site:

http://rselby98.go2click.com/Windows.html

I know this is getting a little long but it is worth the reading.

This is a controversial issue. The swap file is the virtual memory. I have set up a lot of machines from new. Two things happen when setting up a new machine. There are a lot of temp files placed on the computer, thus the reason for the hard drive clean up I suggest.

Now for defragging, the swap file. If you follow the directions I posted you will have no problems. The swap file needs to be defragged. It takes the most abuse when a machine is set up. Now why would anyone when they are finished setting up a machine run scan disk and defrag the rest of the hard drive and not the swap file.

If you disable the virtual memory and reboot before you defrag, all the files in the swap file will be taken out of it and all that will be left will be the fragments. These fragments need to be removed or the virtual memory will not perform to it fullest.

Hope this helps all to understand why when someone mentions low resources I all include a hard drive cleanup and defrag the swap file.


Here is the other side of this issue. I wanted to have both sides presented here. This is by WhitPhil

I will try to explain why defraging the swapfile should have no affect, and in fact could decrease performance.

All swap I/O activity occurs in 4K increments. AND, one chunk at a time. When there is a need to swap in or out 2 or more pieces of ram/virtaul, there is no guarantee that the all these pieces are written one after another in the swapfile.

The benefit in a contiguous file, is that it allows the I/O system, when it is doing mulitple or blocked reads, to force the disk head to move once, and then do a long file I/O (read/write). In the case of the swapfile, there could be other I/O occuring between each swap.

The other thing that is happening as you defrag the swapfile, is that it is potentially moving farther and farther into the disk. That is, to the slower area. Now, the disk heads could be travelling even farther to reach the swap file than prior to the defrag. AND, as soon as you start creating files or deleting files, windows will start to use these areas for any additional swapspace that is required. And, the swapfile is once again fragmented.
The one benefit of defraggng the swapfile is that it reduces overall fragmentation on the diskdrive itself, by keeping all the file in one place.

IF you really believe a fragmented swapfile contributes to poor performance, a more effective way of accomplishing this is to manage the swapfile yourself.

Set the MIN (never the MAX) parameter large enough to handle your normal apps. This will result in a contiguous swapfile being created that never needs to be defragged.
AND, if you have Norton, use it to move the file to the start of your fastest disk.

With average RAM on PCs now 128MB and above, usage of the swapfile on a windows system will be low at the best of times. In the case of large RAM PCs,
let windows manage it, and don't worry about fragmentation.

[Edited by rkselby98 on 08-11-2001 at 01:16 PM]

[rkselby98]

That is the way I set mine but wasn't sure of the results it would have on other machine so I didn't suggest that to anyone else.

Thank for the input

[Bryan]

I've researched this issue pretty throughly in the past and have come to the conclusion that this is the best solution that will work for everyone. It accomplishes two things. The swapfile will be defragged since it's a fixed size persay and setting it this way can't hurt anyone since the High end is open ended and will grow if needed.

Set the MIN (never the MAX) parameter large enough to handle your normal apps. This will result in a contiguous swapfile being created that never needs to be defragged.

[Bryan]

I'm sorry, I deleted my post by mistake. It should be before Ricks last post. That's what he was responding to.

[Bryan]

Here's how you can check the results. Do this to check for fragmentation before a defrag and then do it after a defrag. You'll see if it was fragmented prior to a defrag, it won't be afterwards.

scandisk /f win386.swp