swap file

Hi

I am no PC whizz, so perhaps somebody could please give me a simple
explaination to this:-

Current PC (briefly)

2100 CPU
512Mb Ram
Win 98S/e and swap file on drive c
have games on drive d
Have two monitors one on an agp and one on a pci card

Idea is that hard drive head travel is reduced because drive c has the swap
file and drive d runs the games. I have a fixed swap file of 300 min/max and
have de-fraged after.

When I run a particular game that is quite intensive my norton performance
display shows 98% of swap file used.

Question- does that mean all 512Mb of Ram is used and almost all of the
300Mb of swap - just seems a lot to me ??

Many thanks in advance for any info

Cheers

Steve

"Steve James" wrote in message
...
Hi

I am no PC whizz, so perhaps somebody could please give me a simple
explaination to this:-

Current PC (briefly)

2100 CPU
512Mb Ram
Win 98S/e and swap file on drive c
have games on drive d
Have two monitors one on an agp and one on a pci card

Idea is that hard drive head travel is reduced because drive c has the
swap
file and drive d runs the games. I have a fixed swap file of 300 min/max
and
have de-fraged after.

When I run a particular game that is quite intensive my norton performance
display shows 98% of swap file used.

Question- does that mean all 512Mb of Ram is used and almost all of the
300Mb of swap - just seems a lot to me ??

Many thanks in advance for any info

Cheers

Steve



firstly does 98 recognise all that RAM? - I would be amazed if the whole RAM
is being used... Win 98 does not have a good reputation for memory
management and ME is even worse. Try putting the swapfile on the D drive and
see if that helps any. You could also try turning the swapfile off - then
delete the win386.swp file and do a defrag, after which turn the swapfile
back on.

James

Put on the RAM meter in Norton as well and it seems all the RAM is not being
used, so it is going to the swap file before using all the 'actual' RAM.
From what you are saying that is a Win 98 issue...??, does XP manage this
better ?

Cheers
Steve

"James" wrote in message
...

"Steve James" wrote in message
...
Hi

I am no PC whizz, so perhaps somebody could please give me a simple
explaination to this:-

Current PC (briefly)

2100 CPU
512Mb Ram
Win 98S/e and swap file on drive c
have games on drive d
Have two monitors one on an agp and one on a pci card

Idea is that hard drive head travel is reduced because drive c has the
swap
file and drive d runs the games. I have a fixed swap file of 300 min/max
and
have de-fraged after.

When I run a particular game that is quite intensive my norton
performance
display shows 98% of swap file used.

Question- does that mean all 512Mb of Ram is used and almost all of the
300Mb of swap - just seems a lot to me ??

Many thanks in advance for any info

Cheers

Steve



firstly does 98 recognise all that RAM? - I would be amazed if the whole
RAM
is being used... Win 98 does not have a good reputation for memory
management and ME is even worse. Try putting the swapfile on the D drive
and
see if that helps any. You could also try turning the swapfile off - then
delete the win386.swp file and do a defrag, after which turn the swapfile
back on.

"Steve James" wrote in message
...
James

Put on the RAM meter in Norton as well and it seems all the RAM is not
being
used, so it is going to the swap file before using all the 'actual' RAM.
From what you are saying that is a Win 98 issue...??, does XP manage this
better ?

Cheers
Steve

"James" wrote in message
...

"Steve James" wrote in message
...
Hi

I am no PC whizz, so perhaps somebody could please give me a simple
explaination to this:-

Current PC (briefly)

2100 CPU
512Mb Ram
Win 98S/e and swap file on drive c
have games on drive d
Have two monitors one on an agp and one on a pci card

Idea is that hard drive head travel is reduced because drive c has the
swap
file and drive d runs the games. I have a fixed swap file of 300
min/max
and
have de-fraged after.

When I run a particular game that is quite intensive my norton
performance
display shows 98% of swap file used.

Question- does that mean all 512Mb of Ram is used and almost all of
the
300Mb of swap - just seems a lot to me ??

Many thanks in advance for any info

Cheers

Steve



firstly does 98 recognise all that RAM? - I would be amazed if the whole
RAM
is being used... Win 98 does not have a good reputation for memory
management and ME is even worse. Try putting the swapfile on the D drive
and
see if that helps any. You could also try turning the swapfile off -
then
delete the win386.swp file and do a defrag, after which turn the
swapfile
back on.






yes XP does work with memory much better - Win 9x had some problems... If
you have XP - go for it, you'll never look back....

James

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 13:45:23 -0000, "Steve James"
wrote:

James

Put on the RAM meter in Norton as well and it seems all the RAM is not being
used, so it is going to the swap file before using all the 'actual' RAM.
From what you are saying that is a Win 98 issue...??, does XP manage this
better ?

Cheers
Steve


James is pretty much "full of it".

Win98 manages memory well enough, the minor difference is not at issue
here.

The allocated virtual memory isn't necessarily USED, all programs
allocate more than they use. If your swap file were that extensively
used you'd have HUGE periods of sluggishness while you had to wait and
watch the HDD light flicker away for several seconds (not to be
confused with the time it takes to load a game or new level).

There are 4 things you should do:

1) Uninstall Norton Utilities, or at the very least don't have them
running in the background.... the only really useful part of Norton's
utilities are the Scandisk and Defrag programs, and the defrag
wouldn't be all that useful except that Win98 has a bug in their
defrag that wasn't fixed until WinME so it's MUCH slower than it
should be, while Norton's is correct.

2) Move the swap file to the beginning of the second drive. Assign
it there then defrag with Norton's defrag to move it to the front of
the first partition.

3) Assign a vCache limit in your system.ini file, if it hasn't been
done already. The "[vcache]" entry should already exist, so find it
and add the line as shown:

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=393216

4) Set another parameter in the system.ini file for virtual memory
mode:

[386Enh]
ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1



Was there some specific problem with performance that prompted this
inquiry?

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 13:45:23 -0000 In this world we created "Steve
James" wrote :

James

Put on the RAM meter in Norton as well and it seems all the RAM is not being
used, so it is going to the swap file before using all the 'actual' RAM.

Norton's make crap software and this is just another bug in it.



From what you are saying that is a Win 98 issue...??, does XP manage this
better ?

Some think so.

Current PC (briefly)

2100 CPU
512Mb Ram
Win 98S/e and swap file on drive c
have games on drive d
Have two monitors one on an agp and one on a pci card

Idea is that hard drive head travel is reduced because drive c has the
swap
file and drive d runs the games. I have a fixed swap file of 300 min/max
and
have de-fraged after.

There is no need to set a maximum.This is a common mistake as the
swapfile re sizing will be prevented if the,"Correct" minimum is set
for,"Your usage.



When I run a particular game that is quite intensive my norton
performance
display shows 98% of swap file used.

Again.If didn't pay for Norton's then remove it as it is itself a
cause of problems.

Question- does that mean all 512Mb of Ram is used and almost all of the
300Mb of swap - just seems a lot to me ??

Swapfile usage is again,"Usage" dependant and,"System Specific".There
are no,"Rules-of-Thumb".
If you are a gamer,as I am,then you want to enable the,"Conservative
Swapfile Usage" so that windows will use as much physical RAM for the
game before swapping out.
It's also a common myth that Win9X/ME doesn't handle RAM well.There is
a small bug in the,"Dymanic Vcache" that inhibits program tracking
with systems with 512 meg of RAM.This however is easily fixed by the
same free program that will tweak your,"Conservative Swapfile usage2
e.g the free,"Cacheman".
This page explains it dead easy.
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/easy.html
Also the win386.swp is best placed on the fastest drive/partition
which is usually and or should be the system drive with enough space
for it to work.

Re-boot to safemode.Disable the,"Re-arrange Program files so Programs
may load faster" option in Defrag's settings as it's useless and then
defrag.Use the WinME defrag as it's around 8X faster,
http://www.comp-solve.com/defrag.htm
Set an arbitrary fixed minimum(see my page) swapfile.
Re-boot and monitor usage in your biggest game.
Reset to a minimum size you think it won't hit.
I have 512 meg of RAM for both win98/SE and Win XP and my win386.swp
has not been accessed since the correct minimum was set months ago
therefore no re sizing for my usage.

HTH






Many thanks in advance for any info

Cheers

Steve



firstly does 98 recognise all that RAM? - I would be amazed if the whole
RAM
is being used... Win 98 does not have a good reputation for memory
management and ME is even worse. Try putting the swapfile on the D drive
and
see if that helps any. You could also try turning the swapfile off - then
delete the win386.swp file and do a defrag, after which turn the swapfile
back on.






--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
email shepATpartyheld.de
Free songs download,
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=65536

Would be more appropriate; 1/8 of system memory.


kony wrote:

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 13:45:23 -0000, "Steve James"
wrote:

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=393216

--
Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 22:50:09 GMT, Mike Walsh
wrote:


[vcache]
MaxFileCache=65536

Would be more appropriate; 1/8 of system memory.


I"d have to disagree, there is no reason to do that, it will simply
limit the amount of code that can be ran from the vcache, requiring
rereading from the HDD more often. The cache releases memory to
applications when they need it. Having a smaller vcache is wasting
memory any time an application isn't using it.

snip

Was there some specific problem with performance that prompted this
inquiry?


Ye, flightsimulator slowed right down, but it was a corupt file in the end
so it is sorted, but never the less this info is worth having, many thanks
to all who offered help

Cheers

Steve

"Steve James" wrote in message
...
Hi

I am no PC whizz, so perhaps somebody could please give me a simple
explaination to this:-

Current PC (briefly)

2100 CPU
512Mb Ram
Win 98S/e and swap file on drive c
have games on drive d
Have two monitors one on an agp and one on a pci card

Idea is that hard drive head travel is reduced because drive c has the
swap
file and drive d runs the games. I have a fixed swap file of 300 min/max
and
have de-fraged after.

When I run a particular game that is quite intensive my norton performance
display shows 98% of swap file used.

Question- does that mean all 512Mb of Ram is used and almost all of the
300Mb of swap - just seems a lot to me ??

Many thanks in advance for any info

Cheers

Steve



the other point I should have made was - putting games on the D drive is in
effect slowing things down here, why? - because many of the games
dependencies are part of the OS (Direct X and C++ runtimes etc) - So in
effect when you play a game, both drives are being accessed to retrieve
different parts of the game. If you had games installed on the C drive and
your swap file on your D drive, you may notice an increase in performance,
because the swap file would not interfere with the access to the game files.

James (or should that be 'Full of it James')
Cheers