I don't know a great deal about setting up and configuring my XP, but I have read quite a bit about the subject over the last few days. My first impression from all this reading is that there seem to be some unsettled issues which many people cannot as yet form a consensus on. I would be interested to get some informed feedback as regards the following (non)rules about Swap File Optimization: 1. The minimum/maximum sizes for the swap-file should both be fixed at the same amount (see #2 below). 2. The swap-file size should be 1.5 times that of physical ram size. 3. The swap-file should be located in its own dedicated partition -- ideally, on a dedicated physical disk. 4. The swap-file partition should be positioned at the outer edge of the physical disk -- that is, it should be the first partition of the disk. 5. The Swap File partition should be formatted in FAT16 for faster disk access. Regards, Hugh

So far, Windows XP seems to handle memory a lot better than Windows Me did, at least as far as I don't see the heavy hard drive activity I used to have with Win ME, so I'm inclined to let XP handle the paging file. I've got 192mb of ram and the computer is running smooth and quiet, and faster than it did with Windows Me.

Hi I have experimented with the XP swap file (pagefile.sys) and here is my answers on your questions. 1. The minimum/maximum sizes for the swap-file should both be fixed at the same amount (see #2 below). 2. The swap-file size should be 1.5 times that of physical ram size. There is some debate over fixed size for both. I have two 60 gigabyte hard drives and 512 megabytes of memory. I have both of them set to 512 - 1024 and it works the best. The 1024 gives a bit of extra room. XP depends heavily on physical memory and the more you have the better ( less paging to your drive). Try different values and check under the Performance tab in Windows Task Manager. The Commit Charge is probably the most important statistic as it shows the combined use of memory and the swap file versus the total amount of those resources availabe to XP. 3. The swap-file should be located in its own dedicated partition -- ideally, on a dedicated physical disk. There are definite advantages to having it on a separate drive as reads can be performed from more than one drive ( reading from main drive and accessing the swap file on the other drive ). 4. The swap-file partition should be positioned at the outer edge of the physical disk -- that is, it should be the first partition of the disk. Nice to have but basically impossible on your primary partition. 5. The Swap File partition should be formatted in FAT16 for faster disk access. Maybe if the drive is under 2 gigabytes ( assuming you have space to do anything on a drive that size after XP has been installed on it ). FAT16 support was only included with XP for compatibility issues. My advice is to try different settings and see how they effect overall system performance. Whatever you do....do not eliminate the swap file ! Are you dual booting on this computer ? If not, you may want to consider going with NTFS over FAT. NTFS provides better overall performance and gives you access to all the security features in XP as well as protection in most cases if your computer inadvertantly shuts down improperly. Each time before you change the size of swap files always defragment your drive(s). Good Luck Dale

Dale, your response truly helped me out alot!! Im running on a intel 1.3 gig, 40gigabyte hard drive 7200rpm, 512mb rd ram, tnt2 32mb vid card, and with windows xp pro as o/s. And yet lol for the past several weeks Ive been going completely insane in trying to boost my computers overall performance rate with the opening of high res programs and more. Ive done the tests suggested by others and added the counters and did the averaging ect.. ect.. and it didnt give me a very good or exact answer.