When setting the paging should the initial size always be equal to the size of the ram and the max size equal to how much vm you want allocated? (ie 256mb ram, initial 268/max 512)

Your paging file should be the max of RAM + 12. So if it's 256 RAM it should be a MAX of 268. Put the MAX and MIN the same. it won't hurt anything

The answer above is MS-wise correct, out of the book so to speak. However paging is based on the amount of ram you're going to put to use, so if your average RAM-usage is say 80mb, you'd be pretty save with a 128mb paging file, if you run rendering software or mathematical calc. OR want a dump file of your ram in case of a stop error (aka blue screen) you could set the file to 256 or 512mb. Anyway I'd put the min and the max on the same amount, as the ither guy told you it won't hurt and I think NT will probably have more problems with resizing the paging file than with dealing with a constant one. (This is however only a guess) Note that some software creates their own paging space, like photoshop does.

The reason to put the paging file min/max size is to help keep it from fragmenting quite so bad.... I will say this regarding memory/virtual memory..... No matter what you set your virtual memory to, if you are consistently using more total memory than you have physical memory you will lose performance and should invest in more RAM. By having more RAM, your disk will not be forced to be used as virtual RAM quite as bad, hence boosting performance.