[Lobster]

My (very) old Dell (Windows XP Home) has been getting progressively more
slow and unwieldy, and I decided to try and wring a bit more life out of it
by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows - haven't done it
for at least 3 years and it normally helps a lot.

I upgraded the HD last time in fact, to a 250Gb one, which I partitioned
with a 20Gb drive C (which carried just the O/S) and the rest as drive D
(for data). There was a small drive E which IIRC mopped up a few spare Gb
left over. For the reformat, I decided to put the whole lot as a single
partition (especially as drive C was chock-a-block, thanks to all the MS
patches over the years).

I stuck in my Windows set up disk, deleted the existing partitions, and
formatted it (NTFCS). However, I was left with only 135 Gb (=127 Gb
formatted). ??? What's going on?

My first thought was that the HD is in a poor state, and about 50% of it has
been flagged as knackered and unformattable. Is that likely? But the
thing is, although the HD was pretty noisy, I never got data errors, and had
about 160 Gb of data on it, so that doesn't make sense ( - does it?)

How can I check what's going on?

Thanks
David

[Mathew Newton]

On Mar 26, 10:20*am, "Lobster" wrote:
My (very) old Dell (Windows XP Home) has been getting progressively more
slow and unwieldy, and I decided to try and wring a bit more life out of it
by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows - haven't done it
for at least 3 years and it normally helps a lot.

[...]

I stuck in my Windows set up disk, deleted the existing partitions, and
formatted it (NTFCS). However, I was left with only 135 Gb (=127 Gb
formatted). ??? What's going on?

Hi David,

Have you upgraded the new (re)install to at least Service Pack 1? I
seem to recall the original XP release did not support 48bit logical
block addressing hence could not address partition sizes above 137GB.

Once you upgrade you can then resize the partition with something
Easus Partition Manager (http://www.partition-tool.com/)

Mathew

[Lobster]

"Mathew Newton" wrote in message
...
On Mar 26, 10:20 am, "Lobster" wrote:
My (very) old Dell (Windows XP Home) has been getting progressively more
slow and unwieldy, and I decided to try and wring a bit more life out of
it
by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows - haven't done it
for at least 3 years and it normally helps a lot.

[...]

I stuck in my Windows set up disk, deleted the existing partitions, and
formatted it (NTFCS). However, I was left with only 135 Gb (=127 Gb
formatted). ??? What's going on?

Have you upgraded the new (re)install to at least Service Pack 1? I
seem to recall the original XP release did not support 48bit logical
block addressing hence could not address partition sizes above 137GB.

----------------

Hmm - that sounds plausible: yes I've just done the install using the OEM
disks so far, which are
just the original XP release. However, that said - I came up with the
problem using the MS-DOS format/partition utility built in to the OEM disks,
before I even started the Windows install; also, when I installed the new
HD about 3 years ago I don't remember anything like this (could be wrong
though)...

Thanks
David

[Robin]

Hmm - that sounds plausible: yes I've just done the install using the
OEM disks so far, which are
just the original XP release. However, that said - I came up with the
problem using the MS-DOS format/partition utility built in to the OEM
disks, before I even started the Windows install; also, when I
installed the new HD about 3 years ago I don't remember anything
like this (could be wrong though)...


Matthew Newton was right. Windows XP (before SP1) cannot do partitions
greater than 128GB (137GB in decimal IIRC).

You either need to install from XP with SP1 (or later) integrated; or
(IIRC) partition the disk the way you want it and then install XP
without repartitioning

--
Robin
PM may be sent to rbw0{at}hotmail{dot}com

[Tinkerer]

"Lobster" wrote in message
...

"Mathew Newton" wrote in message
...
On Mar 26, 10:20 am, "Lobster" wrote:
My (very) old Dell (Windows XP Home) has been getting progressively more
slow and unwieldy, and I decided to try and wring a bit more life out of
it
by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows - haven't done it
for at least 3 years and it normally helps a lot.

[...]

I stuck in my Windows set up disk, deleted the existing partitions, and
formatted it (NTFCS). However, I was left with only 135 Gb (=127 Gb
formatted). ??? What's going on?

Have you upgraded the new (re)install to at least Service Pack 1? I
seem to recall the original XP release did not support 48bit logical
block addressing hence could not address partition sizes above 137GB.

----------------

Hmm - that sounds plausible: yes I've just done the install using the OEM
disks so far, which are
just the original XP release. However, that said - I came up with the
problem using the MS-DOS format/partition utility built in to the OEM
disks, before I even started the Windows install; also, when I installed
the new HD about 3 years ago I don't remember anything like this (could be
wrong though)...


Last time you would have created the 20GB partition as the primary. The
remaining chunk was probably ans extended partition which, I seem to
remember, was not subject to the same limitations.
--
Tinkerer

[Lobster]

"Tinkerer" wrote in message
...

"Lobster" wrote in message
...

"Mathew Newton" wrote in message
...
On Mar 26, 10:20 am, "Lobster" wrote:
My (very) old Dell (Windows XP Home) has been getting progressively more
slow and unwieldy, and I decided to try and wring a bit more life out of
it
by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows - haven't done
it
for at least 3 years and it normally helps a lot.

[...]

I stuck in my Windows set up disk, deleted the existing partitions, and
formatted it (NTFCS). However, I was left with only 135 Gb (=127 Gb
formatted). ??? What's going on?

Have you upgraded the new (re)install to at least Service Pack 1? I
seem to recall the original XP release did not support 48bit logical
block addressing hence could not address partition sizes above 137GB.

----------------

Hmm - that sounds plausible: yes I've just done the install using the OEM
disks so far, which are
just the original XP release. However, that said - I came up with the
problem using the MS-DOS format/partition utility built in to the OEM
disks, before I even started the Windows install; also, when I installed
the new HD about 3 years ago I don't remember anything like this (could
be wrong though)...


Last time you would have created the 20GB partition as the primary. The
remaining chunk was probably ans extended partition which, I seem to
remember, was not subject to the same limitations.

Brilliant thanks - I now know that (a) that's the problem and (b) I'm not
going nuts...

Before I go on to sort this out (will have a look at John's
slipstreaming!) - do people actually reckon it's worthwhile installing the
OS on a separate partition as I did last time (I'd make it 30 Gb, rather
than 20 Gb this time!) or is it a waste of time and effort?

Thanks
David

[Tabby]

On Mar 26, 2:43*pm, "Lobster" wrote:
"Tinkerer" wrote in message

...





"Lobster" wrote in message
...

"Mathew Newton" wrote in message
....
On Mar 26, 10:20 am, "Lobster" wrote:
My (very) old Dell (Windows XP Home) has been getting progressively more
slow and unwieldy, and I decided to try and wring a bit more life out of
it
by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows - haven't done
it
for at least 3 years and it normally helps a lot.

[...]

I stuck in my Windows set up disk, deleted the existing partitions, and
formatted it (NTFCS). However, I was left with only 135 Gb (=127 Gb
formatted). ??? *What's going on?

Have you upgraded the new (re)install to at least Service Pack 1? I
seem to recall the original XP release did not support 48bit logical
block addressing hence could not address partition sizes above 137GB.

----------------

Hmm - that sounds plausible: yes I've just done the install using the OEM
disks so far, which are
just the original XP release. *However, that said - I came up with the
problem using the MS-DOS format/partition utility built in to the OEM
disks, before I even started the Windows install; also, when I installed
the new HD about 3 years ago I don't remember anything like this (could
be wrong though)...

Last time you would have created the 20GB partition as the primary. * The
remaining chunk was probably ans extended partition which, I seem to
remember, was not subject to the same limitations.

Brilliant thanks - I now know that (a) that's the problem and (b) I'm not
going nuts...

Before I go on to sort this out (will have a look at John's
slipstreaming!) - do people actually reckon it's worthwhile installing the
OS on a separate partition as I did last time (I'd make it 30 Gb, rather
than 20 Gb this time!) or is it a waste of time and effort?

Thanks
David

Use an old 30G HDD as C:, and put your 250G hdd on the secondary IDE
cable. Now the PC can access both discs at full speed at the same
time, result better performance.

And do yourself a favour and stick a Mint 7 CD in there, win just
isn't a good choice any more. Only 7, not a later version.


NT

[John Williamson]

Lobster wrote:

Before I go on to sort this out (will have a look at John's
slipstreaming!) - do people actually reckon it's worthwhile installing the
OS on a separate partition as I did last time (I'd make it 30 Gb, rather
than 20 Gb this time!) or is it a waste of time and effort?

Yes, and while you're at it, arrange for your Documents folder to be on
the data drive, not where XP puts it by default, which is in a
sub-sub-sub-folder of your Windows directory. I'd also make the C: drive
about 40Gig on a 250Ggig drive, to leave room for all the cr@p and a
decent size swap file. Then again, I've got a couple of programs that
have gigabytes of data files they need to have in their home directory.

"My Documents" is off the root of D: on this machine, and when I have to
re-install Windows, all my data is sitting there untouched.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[PeterC]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2011 13:13:45 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

On 26/03/2011 10:20, Lobster wrote:

How can I check what's going on?

Make yourself a slipstreamed[1] SP3 disk to do the install from.

You will need the network managers version of the SP3 path (i.e. the
full thing in one exe rather than the installer than downloads the bits
needed as it runs), a win2k/xp boot sector, and some CD writing software
(and obviously a working PC to run it on!)

There is a how to he

http://www.howtohaven.com/system/sli...e-pack-3.shtml

or a more picturesque one he

http://www.technipages.com/slipstrea...ws-xp3-cd.html

[1] MS Jargon for patching an install image with a service pack so that
it automatically installs the SP version rather than the original

My XP Pro is slipstreamed, using nLite, with SP3 and I seem to have got it
to the point where it doesn't need a key any more. nLite has, IIRC (it was a
couple of yeras ago) a step where the key can be entered, so that might be
the reason. Also got rid of WMP and OE during the process.

Also used nLite to do the same but got rid of IE; it's installed on a
computer but I need the tuit to see what doesn't work when IE is taken out.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

[brass monkey]

"Lobster" wrote in message
...
My (very) old Dell (Windows XP Home) has been getting progressively more
slow and unwieldy, and I decided to try and wring a bit more life out of
it by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows - haven't done
it for at least 3 years and it normally helps a lot.

I upgraded the HD last time in fact, to a 250Gb one, which I partitioned
with a 20Gb drive C (which carried just the O/S) and the rest as drive D
(for data). There was a small drive E which IIRC mopped up a few spare Gb
left over. For the reformat, I decided to put the whole lot as a single
partition (especially as drive C was chock-a-block, thanks to all the MS
patches over the years).

I stuck in my Windows set up disk, deleted the existing partitions, and
formatted it (NTFCS). However, I was left with only 135 Gb (=127 Gb
formatted). ??? What's going on?

My first thought was that the HD is in a poor state, and about 50% of it
has been flagged as knackered and unformattable. Is that likely? But
the thing is, although the HD was pretty noisy, I never got data errors,
and had about 160 Gb of data on it, so that doesn't make sense ( - does
it?)

How can I check what's going on?

As an aside, I visited some !"£$%£" torrent site which totally screwed my
machine. Wouldn't boot, only got as far as 'no bootable cd' (or whatever it
said). Had to delete the C partition, re-create it, format it (super fdisk),
and ghost an image back to it. 15 mins of sheer annoyance, *******s.

[Tinkerer]

"John Williamson" wrote in message
...
Lobster wrote:

Before I go on to sort this out (will have a look at John's
slipstreaming!) - do people actually reckon it's worthwhile installing
the OS on a separate partition as I did last time (I'd make it 30 Gb,
rather than 20 Gb this time!) or is it a waste of time and effort?

Yes, and while you're at it, arrange for your Documents folder to be on
the data drive, not where XP puts it by default, which is in a
sub-sub-sub-folder of your Windows directory. I'd also make the C: drive
about 40Gig on a 250Ggig drive, to leave room for all the cr@p and a
decent size swap file. Then again, I've got a couple of programs that have
gigabytes of data files they need to have in their home directory.

"My Documents" is off the root of D: on this machine, and when I have to
re-install Windows, all my data is sitting there untouched.


And, if you use an email client rather than web mail, arrange for the mail
files (inbox etc.) to be stored in a folder within My Documents. Otherwise
they get squirrelled away in all sorts of odd places, usually buried
somewhere on C: drive. You can usually relocate them from within the email
client - Outlook Express for example you can change via
Tools/Options/Maintenance/Store Folder. makes for easier backing up as
well.
--
Tinkerer

[Tinkerer]

"PeterC" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 26 Mar 2011 13:13:45 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

On 26/03/2011 10:20, Lobster wrote:

How can I check what's going on?

Make yourself a slipstreamed[1] SP3 disk to do the install from.

You will need the network managers version of the SP3 path (i.e. the
full thing in one exe rather than the installer than downloads the bits
needed as it runs), a win2k/xp boot sector, and some CD writing software
(and obviously a working PC to run it on!)

There is a how to he

http://www.howtohaven.com/system/sli...e-pack-3.shtml

or a more picturesque one he

http://www.technipages.com/slipstrea...ws-xp3-cd.html

[1] MS Jargon for patching an install image with a service pack so that
it automatically installs the SP version rather than the original

My XP Pro is slipstreamed, using nLite, with SP3 and I seem to have got it
to the point where it doesn't need a key any more. nLite has, IIRC (it was
a
couple of yeras ago) a step where the key can be entered, so that might be
the reason. Also got rid of WMP and OE during the process.

Also used nLite to do the same but got rid of IE; it's installed on a
computer but I need the tuit to see what doesn't work when IE is taken
out.

Mine is also streamlined with nLite but I would avoid including IE in the
slipstreaming, it caused problems and had to be physically removed and
installed from a new download. Investigating on the net indicated that it
is a common problem with IE and slipstreamed discs.
--
Tinkerer

[Lobster]

"John Rumm" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 26/03/2011 14:43, Lobster wrote:

Brilliant thanks - I now know that (a) that's the problem and (b) I'm not
going nuts...

Before I go on to sort this out (will have a look at John's
slipstreaming!) - do people actually reckon it's worthwhile installing
the
OS on a separate partition as I did last time (I'd make it 30 Gb, rather
than 20 Gb this time!) or is it a waste of time and effort?

Personally I stick the OS on a separate partition, and the virtual memory
page files on another, then have various other partitions for data and
specific purposes. Move My Docs onto the data disk as well.

Makes your backup strategy simpler as well.

For the best performance you really want the OS, Data, and swap files on
physically separate drives.

Well it's a been a fun day - spent virtually the whole day on this and am
still going... Took me several hours to work out why, having installed two
'new' empty HDDs why I couldn't get the PC to boot off the CD drive to
install windows - continuous boot errors, with dismantling and reassembling
everything - before I finally realised that I had the wrong OEM Dell CD in
the drive (ie the one with drivers and apps, rather than the bootable
installation one)... duh.

So, as advised here I've now fitted a spare 60Gb HDD and installed Windows
on that; and the 250Gb drive is also installed, and courtesy of EASEUS (nice
bit of software!) now up and running. I set it up with an 8Gb partition
first, for the Windows swapfile and temporary files, with the rest as
another partition for My Documents and all other data. All now looking
good!

What about the swap file location though - have I done right? I note John's
suggestion above to have it on a physically separate drive... now, I do have
an old 8Gb HDD I could use for that. Currently I have two HDDs running on
one IDE channel, and two DVD drives on the other - only really need one, so
is it appropriate/beneficial to replace one with an HDD - if so, which? I
thought mix'n match on one cable wasn't a good idea?

If not, was I right in putting the dedicated swapfile partition drive at the
front of the data HDD, or would it be better on the C: drive?

Finally - swapfile size etc: I've read so many opinions on this online today
my head is spinning. My PC RAM is now max'ed out at 1Gb, so the smart money
seems to reckon that 1.5Gb is about optimum size? And there seem to be
equal opinions on whether the min and max swapfile size should be set as the
same, to prevent fragmentation, or not?

Thanks
David

[Andy Burns[_7_]]

Lobster wrote:

What about the swap file location though - have I done right? I note John's
suggestion above to have it on a physically separate drive... now, I do have
an old 8Gb HDD I could use for that.

A drive that small is likely to be old, and therefore slower, and
potentially waiting to die soon (not that losing a swap file would
matter much).

Currently I have two HDDs running on
one IDE channel, and two DVD drives on the other - only really need one, so
is it appropriate/beneficial to replace one with an HDD - if so, which? I
thought mix'n match on one cable wasn't a good idea?

have the hard drive you expect to access most on a channel by itself,
and the other hard drive sharing with the optical drive, That's one of
the beauties of using SATA instead of IDE ... no shared controllers.

Finally - swapfile size etc: I've read so many opinions on this online today
my head is spinning. My PC RAM is now max'ed out at 1Gb, so the smart money
seems to reckon that 1.5Gb is about optimum size? And there seem to be
equal opinions on whether the min and max swapfile size should be set as the
same, to prevent fragmentation, or not?

With only 1GB, I'd say another 1GB or 1.5GB of swap is probably enough,
if you regularly use much of the swapfile you ought to be upgrading to a
machine that can handle more physical memory ...

I'd definitely fix the swap size so that it doesn't cause fragmentation.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Lobster davidlobster
writes

do people actually reckon it's worthwhile installing the
OS on a separate partition as I did last time (I'd make it 30 Gb, rather
than 20 Gb this time!) or is it a waste of time and effort?

I think it's worth doing. It means that if things go mammaries
uppermost you can blow Windoze away and reinstall without affecting your
data on another drive/partition. Of course, anything stored on the OS
partition that you would want to keep can be copied to the other first.

I installed an SSD for my OS drive and a spinning disk for data.
Windows and apps load in the blink of an eye (slight exaggeration -
booting from cold went from ~40s on disk to ~10s on SSD)

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Lobster davidlobster
writes

Finally - swapfile size etc: I've read so many opinions on this online today
my head is spinning. My PC RAM is now max'ed out at 1Gb, so the smart money
seems to reckon that 1.5Gb is about optimum size? And there seem to be
equal opinions on whether the min and max swapfile size should be set as the
same, to prevent fragmentation, or not?

Ignore all that. Just tick the box 'System managed size' to let Windows
manage it for you. It's quite competent.

I wouldn't recommend installing an 8Gb HD just for the pagefile - at
that capacity it'll be a ****e old and slow drive. Run the HDTune
benchmark on your two drives (think you said you have 30Gb for OS and
250Gb for data) and put the pagefile on the faster drive.

www.hdtune.com

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

[Man at B&Q]

On Mar 26, 5:11*pm, John Williamson
wrote:
Lobster wrote:

Before I go on to sort this out (will have a look at John's
slipstreaming!) - do people actually reckon it's worthwhile installing the
OS on a separate partition as I did last time (I'd make it 30 Gb, rather
than 20 Gb this time!) or is it a waste of time and effort?

Yes, and while you're at it, arrange for your Documents folder to be on
the data drive, not where XP puts it by default, which is in a
sub-sub-sub-folder of your Windows directory.

Default is C:\Documents and Settings not a sub dir of the windows
directory.

MBQ

[Tinkerer]

"Mike Tomlinson" wrote in message
...
In article , Lobster davidlobster
writes

Finally - swapfile size etc: I've read so many opinions on this online
today
my head is spinning. My PC RAM is now max'ed out at 1Gb, so the smart
money
seems to reckon that 1.5Gb is about optimum size? And there seem to be
equal opinions on whether the min and max swapfile size should be set as
the
same, to prevent fragmentation, or not?

Ignore all that. Just tick the box 'System managed size' to let Windows
manage it for you. It's quite competent.


Its not that clever actually. Messages about shortage of virtual memory
are quite common and are normally cured by removing that tick and setting
the virtual memory size to at least 50% above actual memory size.
--
Tinkerer

[tony sayer]

In article , Mike Tomlinson
scribeth thus
In article , Lobster davidlobster
writes

do people actually reckon it's worthwhile installing the
OS on a separate partition as I did last time (I'd make it 30 Gb, rather
than 20 Gb this time!) or is it a waste of time and effort?

I think it's worth doing. It means that if things go mammaries
uppermost you can blow Windoze away and reinstall without affecting your
data on another drive/partition. Of course, anything stored on the OS
partition that you would want to keep can be copied to the other first.



I installed an SSD for my OS drive and a spinning disk for data.
Windows and apps load in the blink of an eye (slight exaggeration -
booting from cold went from ~40s on disk to ~10s on SSD)


Are these more reliable now or was it a problem with the number of read
write cycles they had a problem with?..
--
Tony Sayer

[PeterC]

On Sun, 27 Mar 2011 16:45:08 +0100, Tinkerer wrote:

Also used nLite to do the same but got rid of IE; it's installed on a
computer but I need the tuit to see what doesn't work when IE is taken
out.

Mine is also streamlined with nLite but I would avoid including IE in the
slipstreaming, it caused problems and had to be physically removed and
installed from a new download. Investigating on the net indicated that it
is a common problem with IE and slipstreamed discs.

The 'standard' nLited version runs well; the -IE version was just out of
interest but I suspect that a lot of things like context menus and so on
might not work.
I didn't mind MS including IE bit I object to it being part of the OS. Opera
is all in its own folder, FF does have the profiles (CBA to use the portable
version- and I use Pale Moon's version anyway) so IE is blocked by the
firewall from accessing the web.
I really must lash up the -IE box and see what happens.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Tinkerer invalidaddress@in
validaddress.invalid writes

Its not that clever actually. Messages about shortage of virtual memory
are quite common and are normally cured by removing that tick and setting
the virtual memory size to at least 50% above actual memory size.

If the system is hitting the pagefile to any great extent, the best
thing to do is to add more memory, not fart about with the pagefile
settings.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

[The Natural Philosopher[_2_]]

Mike Tomlinson wrote:
In article , Tinkerer invalidaddress@in
validaddress.invalid writes

Its not that clever actually. Messages about shortage of virtual memory
are quite common and are normally cured by removing that tick and setting
the virtual memory size to at least 50% above actual memory size.

If the system is hitting the pagefile to any great extent, the best
thing to do is to add more memory, not fart about with the pagefile
settings.

IIRC he said his MB was crammed to the gills anyway - 1GB.

I wouldn't run any kind of any windows on that frankly. Is dog slow with
more than a single GUI app running on even Linux.

[Andy Burns[_7_]]

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

IIRC he said his MB was crammed to the gills anyway - 1GB.
I wouldn't run any kind of any windows on that frankly. Is dog slow with
more than a single GUI app running on even Linux.

You might get away with Win2000. I'd doggedly stuck with WinXP on my
work laptop (never intended to install the Vista it was supplied with)
and didn't really expect to like Windows7, turns out that 64bit edition
flies with 8GB of ram and a sandforce SSD, OK there's one or two things
I wish it didn't do, but overall I'm impressed, only had to track down
one or two device drivers for the more obscure devices, everything else
worked out of the box.

[Andy Burns[_7_]]

tony sayer wrote:

Mike Tomlinson wrote:

I installed an SSD

Are these more reliable now or was it a problem with the number of read
write cycles they had a problem with?..

Each flash cell has a finite number of write cycles, but the firmware
has wear-levelling to spread the writes out across all cells over time,
and to detect failed writes and re-map failed "sectors" to spare ones,
also operating systems now know how to indicate to the drive which
sectors are no longer storing any data, and they know to disable
de-fragmentation on SSDs ... so overall the problem is reduced to the
level where even if you're constantly writing to the drive, you'll be
chucking it away and buying the multi-terabyte version before it wears
out anyway :-)

Certainly sparked up performance on my machine, it's now quicker to boot
windows from scratch, rather than suspend and resume it.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , tony sayer
writes

Are these more reliable now

Yes. Early ones were a bit dodgy.

or was it a problem with the number of read
write cycles they had a problem with?..

No longer an issue due to a feature called wear levelling, which
distributes data around the flash chips so no one chip gets an excessive
number of writes.

The firmware also allocates about 7% of the capacity as spare sectors
(hard drives do the same thing), so as flash cells fail they can be
replaced on-the-fly.

All this is transparent to the OS and the user.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

[Jethro[_5_]]

On Mar 28, 6:34*pm, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
In article , Tinkerer invalidaddress@in
validaddress.invalid writes

Its not that clever actually. * Messages about shortage of virtual memory
are quite common and are normally cured by removing that tick and setting
the virtual memory size to at least 50% above actual memory size.

If the system is hitting the pagefile to any great extent, the best
thing to do is to add more memory, not fart about with the pagefile
settings.

--
(\__/) *
(='.'=)
(")_(")

One thing I noticed about windows is no matter how much memory you
give it, it still uses the ****ing swap file.

[Tinkerer]

"Mike Tomlinson" wrote in message
...
In article , Tinkerer invalidaddress@in
validaddress.invalid writes

Its not that clever actually. Messages about shortage of virtual memory
are quite common and are normally cured by removing that tick and setting
the virtual memory size to at least 50% above actual memory size.

If the system is hitting the pagefile to any great extent, the best
thing to do is to add more memory, not fart about with the pagefile
settings.

Doesn't work in systems that are already at max memory. Resetting is much
cheaper than a new machine for someone whose present machine does all they
need.
--
Tinkerer

[Bob Eager]

On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 06:10:15 -0700, Jethro wrote:

On Mar 28, 6:34Â*pm, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
In article , Tinkerer
invalidaddress@in validaddress.invalid writes

Its not that clever actually. Â* Messages about shortage of virtual
memory are quite common and are normally cured by removing that tick
and setting the virtual memory size to at least 50% above actual
memory size.

If the system is hitting the pagefile to any great extent, the best
thing to do is to add more memory, not fart about with the pagefile
settings.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

One thing I noticed about windows is no matter how much memory you give
it, it still uses the ****ing swap file.

Reasonable enough. It probably preloads commonly used stuff (e.g. DLLs)
into it on startup, because it'll ultimately be quicker to load them from
there, than from the original files. Standard enough.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

[John Williamson]

Bob Eager wrote:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 06:10:15 -0700, Jethro wrote:

On Mar 28, 6:34 pm, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
In article , Tinkerer
invalidaddress@in validaddress.invalid writes

Its not that clever actually. Messages about shortage of virtual
memory are quite common and are normally cured by removing that tick
and setting the virtual memory size to at least 50% above actual
memory size.
If the system is hitting the pagefile to any great extent, the best
thing to do is to add more memory, not fart about with the pagefile
settings.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")
One thing I noticed about windows is no matter how much memory you give
it, it still uses the ****ing swap file.

Reasonable enough. It probably preloads commonly used stuff (e.g. DLLs)
into it on startup, because it'll ultimately be quicker to load them from
there, than from the original files. Standard enough.

2Gig of RAM and no swapfile on this here netbook works fine for most
things, with FF and TB open at the same time as Libre office 3.3, except
that when you shut down, it thrashes the SSD for ages. But that's
possibly the Kasperski AV program being stupid. I may fiddle about and
try using the 32Gig SD card as a boot drive sometime.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[Andy Champ[_2_]]

On 29/03/2011 16:04, Bob Eager wrote:

Reasonable enough. It probably preloads commonly used stuff (e.g. DLLs)
into it on startup, because it'll ultimately be quicker to load them from
there, than from the original files. Standard enough.


Windows maps large sections of DLLs into memory, then demand-pages them
into RAM. Unless they have fixups applied (loaded at non-default
address) or the files are compressed, when it can't.

Andy

[Lobster]

On 28/03/2011 19:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Mike Tomlinson wrote:
In article , Tinkerer invalidaddress@in
validaddress.invalid writes

Its not that clever actually. Messages about shortage of virtual
memory are quite common and are normally cured by removing that tick
and setting the virtual memory size to at least 50% above actual
memory size.

If the system is hitting the pagefile to any great extent, the best
thing to do is to add more memory, not fart about with the pagefile
settings.

IIRC he said his MB was crammed to the gills anyway - 1GB.

Indeed...

I wouldn't run any kind of any windows on that frankly. Is dog slow with
more than a single GUI app running on even Linux.

It's not that bad actually; at least for my purposes, which is mainly
web stuff and M$-Office. It's certainly improved no end for having been
reformatted (and having introduced just a new physical drive C: and a
new dedicated swapfile partition, maybe).

I know it's on borrowed time, but I reckon this will happily stave off
the purchase of a new machine for another year or so! Interestingly, as
part of the reinstall, I logged on to Dell's website to check drivers;
they have a system where you enter a service tag and it pops up with
your machine and its exact spec at the time you bought it. Turns out I
bought mine as long ago as 2002(!) which I find hard to believe, and it
had a whopping 128Mb of RAM, with which it ran Windows XP (equally hard
to believe).

Still none the wiser about optimum swapfile settings though! Seems to
be a mystery AFAICS.

David