> It's got 64 mb ram > Paging file useage 95.5 mbyte The good thing about virtual memory is that not all of a process (program + data) needs to be in physical RAM at the same time. Studies have found that most programs can run almost as fast if a "working set" of data and currently active routines are in physical RAM, with the rest reloaded from disk as needed. The overall system performance will be fine as long as the sum of the current load's working sets will all fit into RAM at once. The paging file is used to save parts of the process (almost always data) that may change during the life of the process. Code rarely needs to be saved there -- it doesn't change, so it can be reloaded from the .exe or .dll file as needed. So it's possible that the sum of the working sets for the processes in your current application mix is exceeding your available physical RAM. So your programs are spending a whole bunch of extra time playing a sort of "musical shairs", each one trying to get enough of itself into RAM to do anything before it gets paged out to serve some other process. Another possibility is that you may be running with a dynamic, fragmented paging file. If you are letting Windows manage the swap file, it will grow the file each time a program starts (and sometimes while it's running), and shrink it again when the program ends. And if the drive has much fragmentation, this will aggravate it.... For best performance, you want a static, contiguous (unfragmented) paging file -- if possible, on a different controller/drive from your program files and data. At minimum, putting it on a separate partition may help you create it without fragments. Defragmenting your data files might be useful, too. Fragmentation causes additional disk activity which affects performance more and more as months go by. If the problem really is that your working sets have gotten too large, the only thing that will really fix it is to add more RAM -- in today's environment, 64MB is a bit on the small side. But defragmenting and changing to a statically-allocated paging file are things you can do to try and wring better performance out of your existing hardware, and they *might* be sufficient to let you put off shelling out more cash for a while longer. David Gillett On 24 Mar 2003, at 10:30, Paul Jordan wrote: > I am having real problems with my computer. It's got 64 mb ram, Cyrix P200+ > chip plus a 33.6 k modem (internal). 40 gig hdd Seagate I think. > > This beast has got slower and slower over the last few months. Most > especially noticeable on the net. The hdd keeps thrashing and while it is > doing that nothing else happens. Web pages won't load, applications won't > open, mouse basically freezes or jerks across the screen. Have tried > memcache but no appreciable difference. When first started it generally > shows 11.9 mbytes free ram, Paging file useage 95.5 mbyte. When going > through the options in memcache it shows (average) physical memory free 10/ > physical memory usage 52/ user resources free 42/ GDI resources free 64. > Have used memcache wizards to try to get a good optimum but no luck. I > really think my problems lie in the hdd thrashing so much and don't know how > to stop it. Any ideas here please? Do you want to signoff PCBUILD or just change to Digest mode - visit our web site: http://freepctech.com/pcbuild.shtml