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| Next: Confessions Of An Honest {game} Cracker |
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FormalDaHyde
Joined: Jan 02, 2005
Posts: 1511
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 Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 8:50 pm Post subject: |
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Memory Performance Tweak
These Settings will fine tune your systems memory management -at least 256MB of ram recommended, 512 preferred for first tweak.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \
Session Manager \ Memory Management
1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive.
2.LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory improves system performance a lot. This tweak can actually slow down a system with less than 256 megs of ram.
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I am not quite sure if this tricks is really applicable more to non-WinXP systems (Win98/WinME) ===> :hmm:
I am not even quite sure if such programs like FreshUI allow this tweak for WinXP as they do for Win98/WinME ===> :hmm: |
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jereece
Joined: Dec 06, 2002
Posts: 567
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| Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 12:16 am Post subject: |
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*********************************************
Memory Performance Tweak
These Settings will fine tune your systems memory management -at least 256MB of ram recommended, 512 preferred for first tweak.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \
Session Manager \ Memory Management
1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive.
2.LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory improves system performance a lot. This tweak can actually slow down a system with less than 256 megs of ram.
***************************************************************
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I have been checking out your performance tweaks and the others listed on your web site. So far, every one is already set to your recommendations. I have only checked about 8 so far, but I thought it odd that my default settings were your recommended settings. I have never tweaked these before. I am running Win XP Pro SP2.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Jim
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usasma
Joined: May 06, 2003
Posts: 5007
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| Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 9:02 am Post subject: |
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The biggest problem that I've seen (in my travels about the web) isn't the need for more memory - but it's the disregard of equipment manufacturer's for the user's system.
I recently have been helping a nice, christian lady who only uses her HP with 256 mB of RAM to get email and surf the web. Her computer has turned slow as molasses. In particular, the software for Kodak and HP has turned her computer into a mass of sludge!
The Kodak and HP software have installed so much non-essential software that her brother enabled the Guest Account so that he could surf using her system.
This lady was just following the directions when she installed this software - and it took over her machine! All "legitimate" applications, yet they hog so much memory that she's frustrated. So, now I've gotta "tweak" her system just to get it running acceptably. More RAM, while a solution, isn't an option. She isn't tech enough to do it herself, and can't afford the cost of having it done by a pro. |
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DavisMcCarn
Joined: Jul 20, 2004
Posts: 486
Location: Charlotte, NC
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| Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 9:37 am Post subject: |
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Or, as another great example, I'm sure everyone with a Lexmark really wanted to hear "Printing has Started" each time they print followed by a picture of the paper moving through the printer!
USASMA, I have found that I can walk people through this one over the phone and they don't need any of the Kodak or HP crud unless they have to use the buttons on the all-in-one rather than clicking on the icon: http://www.computer-help.net/CH-Pages/Windows-Startup.html |
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Gary66
Joined: Sep 01, 2005
Posts: 8353
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| Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 9:47 am Post subject: |
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| I would say as much as you can afford. |
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usasma
Joined: May 06, 2003
Posts: 5007
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| Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 9:41 am Post subject: |
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Thanks Davis McCarn! We're working with StartupCPL right now - but she's having difficulty getting the program extracted and running. I've been working with her for 6 months now (other problems also), and am having good results - but it's a very, very slow process.
It's folks like this, who know nothing at all about computers, that are frustrated by this "over-application" of "user-friendly" software. When they buy a new piece of hardware - they just stick the disk in and let it run.
They've got no idea of the difference between RAM and hard drive space - much less the rest of their computer's specifications! They just want the darned thing to run - they don't even care if the printer tells them that it's printing (since they can hear the printer and see the sheet of paper moving!). But some "dweeb" decided that they needed this drain on their resources - so they suffer with it until someone tells 'em how to fix it.
My sister called last night - and I found that her kids are having the same sort of problems while away at college. Told her to give 'em my email address and we'd work through the fixes on each one.
Arrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
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"Making the world a better place to live in - one screwed up computer at a time!"
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Morbius
Joined: Sep 05, 2005
Posts: 1712
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| Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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In defense....I now use a script to apply all my registry (performance) tweaks.
When I was still doing it by hand, it took several minutes to navigate to all the keys and make the changes.
In all the time that I was doing it thusly, I never found one single PC that already had all the tweaks applied.
The tweaks are for XP and NOT 98 or ME.
There may be some more optimizing software out there that would apply similar tweaks to improve performance. They have all been well documented on various internet sites. I didn't invent them,,,,I found them at different sites and put them together into one neat little package.
Anyone who doesn't want to use them.....FINE. Don't!
And, do have a great New Year,
Morbius  |
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tony7914
Joined: Dec 24, 2004
Posts: 4965
Location: Peru Indiana
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| Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 2:29 pm Post subject: |
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Some is good, but more is better! 
Me, I want more power!
I'm going to 2 gB in the next couple of days (already ordered and paid for - just waiting on the shipper) - I'll let you know how it works out for me!
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I gotta agree!!
Thinking of upgrading to an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ and 2 gigs DDR. I'm also debating on another Raptor to replace my IDE backup HD. |
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usasma
Joined: May 06, 2003
Posts: 5007
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| Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 9:03 pm Post subject: |
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Just to add another bit to this discussion. I was able to run Windows XP with 1 gB of RAM without a pagefile for about 3 months before I ran into a problem (it was a game that needed it).
I then moved my pagefile to another drive and it's worked well there for the longest time.
I'll eventually go back to no pagefile - but, the performance difference wasn't noticeable to me. |
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FormalDaHyde
Joined: Jan 02, 2005
Posts: 1511
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2005 12:00 am Post subject: |
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I then moved my pagefile to another drive and it's worked well there for the longest time.
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You may wish to leave a token amount (~50MB) of the pagefile in the same HDD as the operating system, when splitting virtual memory between drives! Please! This is recommended in the extreme case that your second HDD (that which contains pagefile.sys for an OS in another HDD) has gone to the netherlands... no matter how temporary of a hiatus that it may end up being. :hmm: |
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usasma
Joined: May 06, 2003
Posts: 5007
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2005 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Thanks FDH! I'd give it a try! |
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adkmom
Joined: Jun 18, 2003
Posts: 469
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| Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2005 8:27 pm Post subject: |
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Next PC will be 3GB CPU & 2GB RAM.
I routinely run P2P, Skype, Corel Painter, Photoshop, Foldershare, IM, email- & I like them to run 24/7 while I'm online. Occasionally, I run my TV tuner w/news in the backbround image or desktop.
With mega-ram (1GB right now), I have a smooth & beautiful time. No issues, whatsoever...
Tracy
PS- Happy New Year to all!!!! |
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jereece
Joined: Dec 06, 2002
Posts: 567
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| Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2005 12:50 am Post subject: |
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I have 512 meg of RAM. With just the basic antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall, etc. running, I am down to 261 meg free. Once I open a few files, I am usually just under 200. On a few occassions, I have gotten down below 50. So I believe adding an other 512 meg will help my performance.
Jim |
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Mr. Joe Handyman
Joined: Jan 09, 2006
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 9:59 am Post subject: |
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Hmmmmmm, sounds like that guy is in the RAM selling business.
Or maybe he's a politition and believed in just Throwing Money at a problem to make it go away. :thumbdown:
256 is the level that can be iffy. (especially on a laptop) If it's a little ol' blue haired lady just emailing her kids and grandkids and some solitaire, it will run just fine. A Power Gamer may find it lacking. :hmm:
But, I tune up those PC's all the time and they run dang'd good when properly tuned. Disabling all unneeded Services and programs goes a long way in this effort. And for God's sake, keep the hard drive clean and Defragged. I give all my customers, even the little ol' ladies, a weekly Maintenance Routine, complete with instruction booklet.
At the 512 meg level, almost any computer in the world should be able to just hummmmm right along.
I'm not a gamer or graphics editor but I do consider myself a Power User and my system always ran just fine on 512 megs of DDR 400 ram. (for over a year)
I recently added another 512 megs of DDR 400 just for grins and giggles. And, so I'll have a stick of 512, well tested and certified if one of my customers needs it.
I see no speed or performance advantage in having the second 512 installed. I keep my whole system clean and defragmented (even the Registry) and could probably get by in a pinch on just 256 (or even less).
In fact, I put in a 256 meg stick of ram (by itself) one day to test it with Memtest. My system ran just fine in all my normal windows functions.
So my answer would have to be, that if you run your computer "Dirty" with all the default Services running and a few ram-hogs like Norton, by all means put in all the ram you can afford. But, add ram till you can't add any more and if you don't clean out the CRAP, your system will still run like CRAP, because you only have ONE cpu chip that has to run all those programs in "time slice" mode. Reducing the load on your CPU can do more for system performance than just adding ram.
And, XP will still use the pagefile on your hard drive (unless you've shut it off) no matter how much ram you install. So keeping your hard drive clean and defragged is a big factor in system performance.
Performing the registry tweak to get the Kernal up off the HD and loaded into RAM will give a huge performance boost! See Registry Tweaks On This Webpage
Many folks have the mistaken idea that just doing nothing to their PC but adding more ram, will result in a huge performance boost. NOT SO! They need to look at the whole package. That's what I do in my own Computer Tune-Up procedure. I usually don't have the pleasure of adding ram to a customer's PC, but I still get 100%+ improvement in performance by just cleaning it up and retuning it.
I regularly get comments from my customers like: "WOW, it never ran like that before....what did you do?"
Like Hannibal Hayse used to say, "God I love it when a plan comes together".
To RAM or RUN, that is the question!
Good Luck and Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night,
Morbius :thumbup:
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First, I apologise for quoting this huge post. And that it was one of the first ones, I work on systems as well, have a job doing it. My own business in fact. But to say that you aren't having any issues with 256mg ram with XP SP2 installed is just a bit silly.
I recently rebuilt my daughters computer because that old Slot A athlon 750mhz wouldn't cut it anymore. I built her system with an AthlonXP 2200+ Processor, Abit NF7-S v.2 motherboard. (Because it has Dual DDR the memory is a lot faster.) and started her off with 2 128mg DDR 400 chips. CLEAN Windows install. Then I optimized the system. (soo I will be able to share what I do with everyone, I'm making a CD to sell) It was crap. If all I did was basic stuff like browsing the internet it was okay. With cheap games it was okay. As soon as I loaded Hot Wheels World Racer it started to drag. And I don't mean just a little bit, it was bad. So I started paying attention to how much of the physical ram was actually free. It never got more than 40mg free with nothing running. That's a clean install, no extra processes, and trimmed down for optimization. I started thinking, and noticed that some of my clients computers were having the same issue. Even Pentium 4 systems were lagging because of this lack of free memory. Upgraded to 512 and that helped lot. Now I was able to run normal things faster, and the games were better, but still not great. Took it to 1 Gig, and now the system humms along. Typically there's 5-600mg of memory available to the system, and If I run something like Outlook, (which we all know eats memory,) I still have about 300mg left avilable. 2Gig would be ideal to play a few of her games on. Some of mine as well, but that will have to wait until I can afford some 1Gig chips. (Dual DDR only works if I use 2 chips, even though the board has three slots, if I use three it disables the Dual DDR.)
All of this leads me to agree with that first post, and by experience, totally disagree with yours. With 64bit processors, all this may change. But since I can't afford that yet, and have not had the experience of working on one yet, I am unable to share my opinion about those systems. I do however, know from experience, that after cleaning and optimizing a system, if it is still lagging on 256, and I upgrade it to 512, it stops lagging. 256 is just the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM that you can run an XP system at. Just like 128 was the minimum for Win98. WinME dosen't have a minimum, it just won't run.
again, sorry for the huge post, but I feel it was justified. :thumbup: |
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Morbius
Joined: Sep 05, 2005
Posts: 1712
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| Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 10:39 am Post subject: |
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| 256 is just the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM that you can run an XP system at. Just like 128 was the minimum for Win98. WinME dosen't have a minimum, it just won't run. |
You get no argument out of me.
Surprised?
Several well known PC makers have put out PC's with only 128 megs of RAM on systems running Windows XP.
Personally, I think that's "Criminal".
When I run accross those systems, I try to get my customers to upgrade their ram memory. Adding a new 256 stick is a good upgrade for them, without breaking the bank.
In any case, whether they can afford new ram or not, I tweak and tune their system for max. performance.
On the extreme left, I found a little HP Pavillion in a junk pile recently. It had a blown HD and only 64 megs of ram on-board. I stuck in a spare HD that I had laying around and installed Windows XP Pro.
Would ya believe, it actually runs! I'm sure it will do eMail and solitair with NO problems. :laugh: :thumbup:
I'll give it away to someone who needs a starter system. I'll bump up the ram to 256 first though.
:cheers:
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adkmom
Joined: Jun 18, 2003
Posts: 469
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| Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 12:34 pm Post subject: |
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I also have no issues running XP on 256mb of RAM (bench rig). But, then, I'm not trying to play the newest & greatest games at the highest detail/framerate possible, either...
Naturally, there are different useages for PC's? I'll just say that of all of the people who've called me for PC lessons/repairs- about 90% are emailing, surfing, & a little bit of digital photo/music work. 256mb of RAM is fine for all of this.
Now, if you use Photoshop w/multiple windows open simultaneously with other open & resource intensive apps- yeah, you obviously would want some "breathing room" on the RAM.
Those into current gaming already know they need a dedicated video card & the maximum RAM they can afford.
I'm also thinking it would perhaps boost a low-ram system to turn down the amount of ram used for the onboard video- quite a few are set to 128mb now in the BIOS- when, for most apps, I'm sure 64mb would suffice.
Tracy 
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Mr. Joe Handyman
Joined: Jan 09, 2006
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 12:58 pm Post subject: |
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Update.....
Didn't even think of mentioning my system in that last one. Just thought of my daughters because she actually had 256 at one time. (2 days)
Hy specs...
AthlonXp 2800+ 2.08GHz
1Gig Ram (512X2 DDR400, running DualDDR)
XP Pro SP2
GE-Force 4 Ti4200 128mg 8xAGP
I can do most stuff okay. and my games run fine for the most part. But what really slows my system down is this CD I'm creating.
Here's what's running....
Background Processes.
McAffee Virusscan and Firewall
Spyware Doctor
Memoptimize (clears the memory occationally and tells me how much is free at any given time)
Trillian
diskkeeper scheduler
javaupdate
standard system processes
Software running
Microsoft Fromtpage
Netscape
VirtualPC
Paint
That's it.
I have right now 486mb free. If I have front page in the front it drops to about 356. My system is currently running okay. It's not great, I have to wait for things occationally, but it's not bad. If I open Outlook I'm done. Can't handle it. Remember, this is with 1Gig of ram. I put another 512mb chip in it just for kicks, and I can open Outlook without any trouble. This is a tweaked system. I have spent a lot of time playing with the settings to get the best possible results. I guess it all boils down to what you use your system for... But still, a clean install with 256mg of ram and optimized having only 40mb free is not good. I don't care if you only ever run IE and nothing else.
What it boils down to is what you can live with. No offense Morbius, but first you say 256 is iffy, then you say it's just fine. It's iffy, there's no other way to put it. do the test and see for yourself. Customers will tell you that their system runs so much better even though it still has only 256mg ram because after you clean and optimize a system you can speed it up by as much as 50% depending on what was wrong. I have done this several times myself. Then I recommended they upgrade to 512. Eventually they descide to give 512 a try, I always offer full refunds inc labor. Then they again tell me how proud they are that the system is running so much better. Face it, 256 to 512 can net a 30% increase if handled properly. (You have to make some adjustments in some of the tweaks for the change in memory. This makes a BIG defference.) 256 to 1gig will net a 40-45% increase in the productivity of a system. Assuming that you aren't just trying to run netscape, but have a good virusscanner, firewass, anti-spyware tool, and are checking your e-mail in outlook while surfing the web. That's most people right there.
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goretsky
Joined: Dec 07, 2002
Posts: 9041
Location: Southern California
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| Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 2:42 am Post subject: |
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Hello,
I am curious: Have you tried an upgrade from 256 to 384MB of memory? If so, did you notice a change in performance? That might be useful for older systems which only have three slots for memory modules and recognize a maximum of 128MB per memory module.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
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fuzzyme
Joined: Jun 27, 2005
Posts: 6
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| Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 7:18 am Post subject: |
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| But still, a clean install with 256mg of ram and optimized having only 40mb free is not good. |
That looks strange to me. I too have 256 MB of memory, but even with a few apps(firefox, Windows Explorer, ZoneAlarm, etc.) running, I still have around 100 - 110 megs free. Is it strange or do you think that too is 'too low to use'? BTW, I'm running a dual processor machine, if that matters... |
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Mr. Joe Handyman
Joined: Jan 09, 2006
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 8:30 am Post subject: |
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Hello,
I am curious: Have you tried an upgrade from 256 to 384MB of memory? If so, did you notice a change in performance? That might be useful for older systems which only have three slots for memory modules and recognize a maximum of 128MB per memory module.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
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I recently worked on an older laptop that had a max of 384. It was also running windows ME. Running being a relative term. I got her upgraded from 128mb to 384 and installed windows XP. The system had a total performance improvement of about 70%. I did try just 256mb in it, but it was not a marked improvement over the 128mb. There was noticeable improvement when upping it to 384, but not as much as I had hoped. the biggest thing that boosted her system was getting rid on a ME install that was so corrupt it was causing system devices to fail, and installing XP with a clean slate.
P.S. that was the main reason that I had upgraded my daughters system. her max was 384 and that slot-A 750 was not cutting it anymore. was great when she just had some reader rabbit and neopets. but now that she's actually starting to do things with it, she had to have more power. |
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