When is a pagefile not a pagefile?

[Perris Calderon]

ok...now I see why launching aol might be an indication, and help set the benchmark...I would still be very surprised if there's not a differant issue in your results.

reason being, I really don't think the pf location will prove a measureable performance dfferance at all...but ...7 secs!!!!this can't be due to pf location two z

 

[2z]

The reason AOL is such a bore
Its got 20meg of art & the EXE. file is 38.7meg
anyone using AOL & online gaming will have have seen AOL return to the screen button by button
trust me dealer I have no issues (not crashed since the day I got it *February 2002*)
;-)

 

[Perris Calderon]

twoz...7 secs due to pf location?......

 

[Perris Calderon]

well, further reading research, plus playing with friends computors, etc...

If your drive is partitioned you do not want the pagefile in a partition by itself, unless that is the only thing the drive is typically used for. You want it in the most-used partition. That's my reading, and that's where it looked like the best performance came from...yes, Itryed launching aol...mostly, as I said, the differances are hardly noticeable at all..so much so, the improvement had to be measured with a stop watch...so close, no one could could notice the differance.

I'd like you to realize, the page file is as close to a partion as you can get...once you defrag it, it will remain contigous, and all by itself, with nothing else going in...

setting up a seperate partition for this is redundant...as long as you've defragged the thing...which is neccessary

 

[Alan]

Originally posted by a1ehouse
Hide icon:
Selecting this option will hide the system tray icon. To make the icon reappear, rerun the CoolMod.exe file. CoolMod can also be started without the icon, to do this run the application with the -h parameter. You can bring the icon up by rerunning the app without -h.
(from the Coolmon help file) :



Must just be a Coolmon thang

Alehouse,

Where would I find this in the coolmon settings?, the little icon on startup really annoys me

Cheers
Alan

 

[2z]

Test results

Originally posted by dealer
yes, Itryed launching aol...mostly, as I said, the differances are hardly noticeable at all..so much so, the improvement had to be measured with a stop watch...

For a fair test you need to reboot after each test - the second time you use ClearMem the addresses have been made in RAM & data retrieval is almost instantaneous.
Following the advice of the many I put the page file closer to the outer tracks, on the Master drive.
Primary partition 8meg for system files
1st logical 1gig FAT16 32kb cluster for the pagefile
2nd logical 5gig FAT32 8kb clusters for windows
single disk test FAT32
1st test default setup pagefile fragmented into 4 parts - test time 8.1sec
2nd test 512meg fixed pagefile on the boot drive defragmented into a contiguous streak - test time 8.5sec
3rd test 512meg fixed pagefile on the 1st logical 1gig FAT16 32kb cluster - test time 6.2sec
2 disks on 1 controller
1st test 512meg fixed pagefile on the slave's last logical partition (inner tracks) test time 2.4sec
2nd test 2 x 384meg fixed pagefile 1 on each disk - test time 4.1sec
3rd test 512meg fixed pagefile on the slave's Primary partition 10gig FAT32 8kb cluster - test time 2.2sec
resized the slaves primary partition 1gig & formatted FAT16 32kb cluster for the
4th test quickest results yet @ 1.9sec ;-)
Then I did similar tests using NTFS
on the boot drive the test faired slightly better from 8sec to 6sec
on the slave drive NTFS it was roughly the same @ 2.5sec
but on the dedicated partition NTFS 32kb cluster(slave) it did slightly worse
from 1.9sec up to 3.2sec
the reason for this anomaly would be the MFT zone fragmenting the pagefile

In conclusion the most optimal place for the pagefile
is on a separate NTFS disk to windows or
if you want a dedicated partition it must be FAT

 

[Perris Calderon]

I can't argue with those results, twoz.

of course, everyone allready says the best thing for the pf is alone on a seperate disc.

he only thingI would have changed, but it wouldn't have made a differance, is I would have defragged the default......but of course, that's going to be no differance at all...also, I would have run a few comparisons without using clearmem

My testing was obviously not so inclusive...I need to use someone elses box to do it.

and to be fair...my results were so close, I'd have to call it a tie.

 

[2z]

Originally posted by dealer
I can't argue with those results, twoz.

One more test left
but for that I need some spare ££££$$$$$
3 x HDDs each on thier own controller
PCI controller card

Disk1 - windows
Disk2 1/2 pagefile
Disk3 1/2 pagefile

 

[a1ehouse]

Originally posted by Alan



Alehouse,

Where would I find this in the coolmon settings?, the little icon on startup really annoys me

Cheers
Alan

Alan - Create a short cut on your desktop, then opne the properties of the new shortcut.

Type -h in the target box - should look something like:
D:\DaisyManSoftware\CoolMon.exe -h

click apply
click OK
Double click the new shortcut

Icon - gone!

 

[delhan]

page file problem mirrored

Originally posted by a1ehouse
Thx for that dealer, however, having no pagefile is not, or was never my end goal. I was having a mess around and noticed this anomaly in that I still have a pagefile even though it's set to 0 or "No Page File". I'd be interested if someone else has had the same problem, or has come across this before.

basicaly we maybe have the same problem. Lost control over our pagefile setting. Like windows is not taking into consideration the settings input from the pagefile control panel. My problem though is that whatever setting i put (no pagefile, system managed, or many gigs) it always says pagefile size zero.

Dealer knows my probelm quite well we have been tried many things before to solve it but nothing worked . Only solution a format/clean re-install, unacceptable as an option for me currently. Quite some people are facing such problems with their page files and amazes me that still no valid workaround has been published ....

 

[Perris Calderon]

allright, delhan, this is from lockernomb...I'm sure you've by now tried a bunch of things that I don't know abiut, and maybe this is one of them, but I did run across this, so I hope it's new information that helps;

A few of you have run into problems with the swap file / virtual memory on Windows 2000 and XP. Thank goodness Lockergnomaniac Michael Goddard decided to share a solution. "Recently, I 'locked down' my machine for security purposes. This included disabling the 'Guest' account, removing the 'Everyone' account from my C drive, and disabling file and printer sharing. Once this was done, I started to have 'PAGEFILE.SYS is not found' errors. Every time I set the page file size and rebooted, the setting would not take. The Everyone account MUST be added to the "PAGEFILE.SYS drive" and it MUST have Full Control in order for you to be able to change the settings." Allow me to put on my "mother" hat and remind you (once more) not to toy with settings you don't understand. Taken at face value, turning an option on or off could seriously impact your Windows experience. Furthermore, there are a few other things to keep in mind when you're "optimizing" virtual memory in NT- based operating systems: moving the pagefile to a second (IDE) drive can help system performance, but only if the drive is on a separate channel. You should also have no more than one pagefile per physical drive. Meaning, if you've partitioned C into D, E, F, and G, don't set a separate pagefile for each drive.