Hello my desktop is a little outdated. I have maxed the memory to 512 MB. I have 40 GB drive (Master) 160 GB (Slave) This system runs pretty good considering the speed and memory. My question is how do i set the virtual memory? Is it possible to use 5 or 6 GB of my 160 GB drive for virtual memory? I have a powerful laptop and can't really afford a new desktop at this time. So i figured i could get better performance by setting virtual memory.

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"i figured i could get better performance by setting virtual memory"

You apparently don't know how it works. The best advice is to just let Windows handle the VM settings. But if you insist on experimenting, read up on it 1st:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...

I agree with Jam to let Windows handle it. Don't put any restrictions on the Page File.

To help your performance, you can edit the msconfig startup tab. Disable any applications that you don't need running all the time. Start them up when needed and shut them down after they have done their job.

"You apparently don't know how it works. The best advice is to just let Windows handle the VM settings. But if you insist on experimenting, read up on it 1st:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...

Yes i do. I just don't know how to set it up and i don't know much about it. The memory in this system max is 512 MB. Its a PIII 1.0 Ghz. I got two older PIII'S 450 MHZ and 500 Mhz both Dell XPS models and there max ram is 768. Its funny those older systems can take more ram and the PIII 1.0 Ghz can. I guess thats the difference between Gateway and Dell.

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"Yes i do. I just don't know how to set it up and i don't know much about it"

If you knew, you wouldn't be asking & you just admitted you don't know much about it. The performance difference between an "optimized page file" & "Windows managed page file" is minimal. And if you set it up incorrectly, the system will run slower & possibly throw up "out of memory" error messages. Leave it be. There are other tweaks that can be done to improve performance.

http://www.netsquirrel.com/msconfig...

http://lifehacker.com/software/opti...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...

Like i said i do know about virtual memory. I just don't know much about it. Please don't tell me what i know and don't know.

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>> Like i said i do know about virtual memory. I just don't know much about it. <<

Stop contradicting yourself and do what Jam says. He does know about virtual memory and quite a lot at that.

Like Jam says, if you knew that much you wouldn't be asking the question.

Stuart

Ok im sorry maybe i didn't know. I just got it confuesd. I was told virtual memory used some of the harddrive to get more memory.

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>> I was told virtual memory used some of the hard-drive to get more memory. <<

It does, but there is a lot more to it than that. Compared to real memory a hard drive is slow, very slow. Use too much virtual memory and things will slow down. Use to little and things will slow down. Get it just right and things will speed up.

Data stored in virtual memory has to be brought into real memory before it can be used. It is not used directly from the hard disk - that would be extremely slow.

It is all this swapping in and out of memory that can slow things down if there is too much of it.

Stuart