Windows-Tweaks Special Partners:
 Windows XP Expert Zone

Microsoft-Watch.com

Windows XP is the successor of NT, the first true 32-Bit operating system. It is capable of managing the 32-Bit processor power and large amounts of RAM. However, it does not fully use its memory management capabilities...

Windows XP runs out of memory and cache pretty fast and needs to make heavy use of the slow page file. We show you 2 ways to improve your Windows XP performance by maximizing the memory management system:

Prevent Windows from paging parts of the kernel to the hard disk
The Windows kernel is the heart of all input and output operations - the kernel is directly affected by the Paging Executive who pages parts of the kernel (e.g. internal system driver) to the slower hard disk to free up more memory. This relative good intention leads to a loss of performance since todays computers (with more than 256 MB of RAM) start paging out the kernel way too early. For instance, if you have 512 MB of RAM, the Paging Executive might starts paging out when the free RAM falls below 128 MB. The read and write cycles while paging out and retrieving kernel data from the hard disk is so slow that if affects all your system operation. We recommend optimizing your system performance by disabling the Paging Executive (only if you have more than 256 MB RAM):

1. Open up the registry editor by clicking Start/Run... and enter regedit. Hit OK to start it.

2. Expand the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management tree and double-click the DisablePagingExecutive value. Enter 1 and press the OK button.

Note: If you have less than 256 (or 512 MB but use more than 400 of them all the time) we recommend not to disable the Paging Executive. Since it prevents the Computer from running out of memory its deactivation might affect the overall performance more.

Increase Windows performance and access speed of often used data by scaling up the hard disk cache
Your operations system remembers the last files you use and stores them up in memory. When they are loaded again Windows accesses the much faster RAM to retrieve the data. Try it again for yourself: Load up Windows Media Player. You will see that the hard disk is working and the program needs a few seconds to load up (depending on the system configuration). Close it and reopen it. You will notice that your hard disk doesnt do anything at all and WMP loads up faster: This is when the Windows Media Player files are accessed from memory.
However, this system cache is considerably small which is why we recommend increasing it:

1. Open up Registry Editor and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Control\Session Manager\Memory Management again.

2. Double-click on the DWORD-value LargeSystemCache this time and enter a 1. This leads to an increase of the system cache: Windows is now capable of using all of your memory for the system cache (minus 4 MB). For instance, if you have 1024 MB of RAM, Windows can use 1020 for the file cache. This should speed up file and program operations. However, this leads to an intense use of your memory so we recommend this setting for highend systems and server only who need access to the same programs and files repeatingly. Standard office use do not need this setting but you might check it out of several days and test your system performance. Especially when working with several huge applications the large system cache might come handy.

Note: Some of our readers experienced login problems with these settings, especially in combination with (very) old ATI Catalyst driver. We recommend upgrading to the latest ATI driver to prevent this problem.