Page File Settings/Virtual Memory

In XP 1.5GB of system memory should be plenty enough to not necessitate even needing a page file.  Try disabling the paging file all together and use your computer as such.  If you ever get an error message that you do not have enough virtual memory to complete an operation, then you know that you do indeed need a page file and can turn the page file back on at that point.

 

Having no page file has advantages:

decreased hard drive fragmentation

increased memory and total system performance

 

If you do use a page file, by all means select the option that you would like to control the size of the paging file.  Select the page file's minimum and maximum size to the SAME size to reduce page file resizing and hard drive fragmentation.

Hmm with no page file atleast I would be able to defrag where the page file was to create a new unfragmented page file after the defrag. I may do that now, though I'm thinking that turning off the page file could cause error though I dout much would happen. I did once get a low page file warning when I used to have 512MB RAM but that was during a game. I think I will need a page file as some of my games may need it and it would hurt. I may lower it back to 3072MB as that is a better number.

Sure you can try smaller and smaller page file numbers if you wish.  Really, you won't achieve any performance increase with a smaller page file (as long as you use a fixed size vs floating size) -- only a less amount of hard drive space will be used.  To increase memory performance you have to disable the paging file all together.

 

The only way to find out if you can disable the paging file is to try it out.  I guess if you feel hesitant about doing it so be it.  But there is nothing to worry about.  If you run out of memory, the application will fail to work and will give you an error message.  At the most, you may need to CTRL+ALT+DEL to force quit that program.

 

I highly recommend disabling your page file as a trial.  I personally have 2GB of memory installed in my XP machine with no paging file and have operated as such many many months; if not more than a year.  I have never run out of virtual memory no matter what I was doing.  Be it editing large WAV files, editing and burning DVDs, playing Crysis or COD4, photo editing....

In my experience, while you do not have to have a pagefile, the reasons for keeping it far outweigh any benefit disabling it might give you.

 

I believe MS recommends a pagefile that is 1.5 times the size of physical RAM.  My personal opinion is twice physical RAM, but I tend to run memory intensive programs.  I also prefer a fixed pagefile size because the pagefile only becomes fragmented due to resizing during use (when Windows manages the size).  Having a fragmented pagefile is going to slow things down.