1.  I believe that your options are (a) manually allocate a swap file,
or (b) let Windows manage the swap file.  The downside with (a) is that
attempts to allocate memory may fail if you haven't allocated enough
space.  The downside with option (b) is that you might see some
performance impact, directly from Windows growing and shrinking the swap
file, and indirectly from fragmentation of the swap file.
  I believe the potential performance impacts of letting Windows manage
the swap file have largely been eliminated by increases in the cache
sizes on newer hard drives, and by engineering improvements within
Windows itself.
  If you still want to manually allocate a swap file, it should ideally
be contiguous.  If you don't put it on its own partition, you should
probably defragment the partition you put it on after you create or grow
it, but that's about all you save by putting it on a separate partition.
  You'll also need to decide how big to make it.  Various people have,
over the years, suggested rules of thumb based on the amount of RAM
installed, but that just assumes that the amount of RAM is optimal for
your use of the machine.
  The critical factor is the "working set" -- the amount of RAM needed
for optimal performance of your usual mix of concurrent applications. 
You may be able to determine that by monitoring the statistics shown in
Task Manager.

2.  I haven't noticed any difficulty running XP applications directly in
Windows 7, but at this point, I've used 32-bit Win 7 more than 64-bit. 
The "XP Virtual Machine" component is only included with the Pro and
Ultimate versions of Win 7, so apparently Microsoft doesn't expect most
users to need it.

3.  If 64-bit versions can't read data files from 32-bit versions,
they're NOT "backward compatible". by definition.  I haven't seen any
problem like this.

  The biggest issue I've had with 64-bit Win7 has been finding 64-bit
drivers for some legacy peripherals.  If you're running it on a new
computer, that shouldn't be an issue.

David Gillett

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [PCBUILD] New PC & Windows 7 64-bit
From: Yoke Lim Chew <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, May 03, 2014 11:45 pm
To: [log in to unmask]


Q1 for 7: Presumably 7 also needs space for the swap file. I have 8G
RAM.
Is it a good idea to use a dedicated partition for the swap file in 7?
If
so, how much space should I provide?

Q2 for 7: Is it a good idea to install the XP component? If installed,
can
7 64-bit run XP 32-bit programs?

Q3 for 7: Can 7 64-bit programs still read files created on XP 32-bit
programs - assuming 7 programs are backward compatible?

Final general note: Any advice in general for things to consider or to
look
out for in the installation of 7 64-bit will be gratefully accepted and
deeply appreciated.

Thanks for any input.

Lym.

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