OK, here's my take:
- Personally, I would not recommend shutting it off. As I remember also NT (which 2k and XP are based off the code base for) also used the page file in a manner where if the copy of a given something in physical RAM gets corrupted, rather then a program error, it would read the copy back in from the page file and over-write the copy in physical memory. If the copy in the page file was not corrupted, it would "self correct" without having to notify the user of an error here.
Course there would be a slight delay (to load the memory space back from disk) but against the backdrop of re-loading the entire program following a program crash...
- Meh, I've never done 2x physical RAM. Course memory useage requirements on the system (aka there was no way to get NT 4 to even try to use 192 MB RAM, at least with the programs I was useing without some very heavy registry editing and other memory management tweaks). Anyhow, I've always set it to about 1.5 times, and that's with 512 MB now. I don't have any probs...
- If you have 2 hard drives, it is possible to
split the page file over 2 hard drives. Depending on your setup, this might or might not help.
* If you have SCSI drives as I do, it will help, regardless if they're on the same controller. This is due to SCSI disconnection. Basically, in the case of a SCSI drive, if it isn't actively sending data over the bus, it disconnects from it (while it's doing it's thing internally but has nothing to send) so as to allow another device to send. It'll connect when it has something to do...
This is distinctly different from IDE drives... In the case of SCSI drives, splitting your swapfile over multiple drives will improve performance. My newer x10 Cheetah drive has a sustained transfer rate about 2x faster then my older one. Given the relative performance (that I benched in SCSI bench 32 a long time back), I put 2/3 the swapfile on the new drive, and 1/3 on the old...
* If it's an IDE drive and they're on the same controller, forget it. It's been recommended, and I'd agree with the recommendation here, leave it on one hard drive.
* If the drives are on 2 seperate controllers, even though they're IDE, splitting should be fine. They're not useing the same controller anyhow, so won't be competing for the bus...
- Be
extremely cafeful. Various memory management settings can be found here...
H_Key_Local_Machine\ System\CurrentControlSet\Session Manager\ Memory Management
You get here through regedt32... But a few warnings:
- If you don't know what something does
do not change it. Not everything in the registry is in plain text, human readable format. With some understanding of the registry structure, and how it's organized, one can figure some of it out. Other things, one can look up and get some documentation on. The rest, best if left alone.
- Take care of what values you're entering. For instance if some value is a 0x something or other,
the value is in hex or base 16. Do not, for instance with the manual setting of the L2 cache size on the CPU (SecondLevelDataCache under the above mentioned key), give the number of KB in decimal (or base 10 math, that we normally use). You'd have to convert the value to base 16 first. Easiest way would be to use the calculator in Windows, enter the number in base 10 (with it set to dec mode), and then click on the Hex radio button. It'll convert it for you.
0x512
!= 512 KB (in the above example), but rather 1,298 KB (or over 1.5 MB L2)...
- I found a little info here, but only used it to search for the key again
http://windows.about.com/od/customizingwindows/l/aa001008c.htm
There are a lot of other values in there. If you aren't certain about something, search on Microsoft's support site (I know the resource kits have a registry entry help file) or ask...
About the only thing I can think of that might help, is a large cache size (for your file cache) though this doesn't effect paging directly, or the DisablePagineExecutive (to decrease paging), but this won't effect programs, just the system kernel...