*FIXED!* Pagefile on Ramdisk - Conflicting (?) WinXP Reports
Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2009 4:11 am
*** FIXED. THANK YOU! ***
Hi!
First off, many thanks to the Romex Team for making this very cool product available for free (to us home users).
I’m fairly noobish in computers and have never used a ramdisk. Like this tutorial says (http://www.romexsoftware.com/main/suppo ... g-ram.html) I have recently upgraded my lappy to 4Gb and can’t get used to the idea that over 500Mb of it gets wasted.
Don’t know whether I’m doing something wrong, or there’s a bug in the software, but I’ll try to describe my findings the best I can (I apologize for such a long post).
The hardware
Dell Vostro 1400 notebook (same as Inspiron 1420), Intel / Intel / nVidia8400 (with 256Mb VRAM), WinXP Home 32bit, PAE enabled and reported correctly by XP, no memory options available in BIOS.
What I did
Read the tutorials and support forum > downloaded v1.10.1711.1436 Free Edition > installed > setup ramdisks of several sizes in Invisible Memory (508Mb available), NTFS, drive letter R:\, volume RAMDISK.
What happened (100% reproducible on my system)
1) Everything went smoothly for all purposes except pagefile usage:
a. no problems at install.
b. no problems during or after reboot.
c. Invisible Memory usage is OK - system properties and task manager report exactly the same physical, cached and available memory.
d. cache on drive R:\ for Firefox and IE7 works great with noticeable speed improvement.
e. only used it 24h, but seems very stable, reads/writes very well, etc.
BUT…
2) Here’s what it does if I try to swap on ramdisk R:\:
a. initially XP accepts setting up virtual memory on drive R:\ and everything seems OK (I tried several combinations of min/max, including min=max, less than and equal to the space available) > checked pagefile.sys created on drive R:\, visible and exactly the size specified > XP Properties\Advanced\Performance reports correct total paging file size > works OK as expected
b. at reboot system shuts down quickly as usual, but boots up much slower, with notable HDD activity (much longer than usual)
c. after boot-up, XP reports the following conflicting values
- System Properties\General > 3.5Gb RAM (OK)
- SystemProperties\Advanced\Performance\Virtual memory > total paging file = 3581Mb, which is about the same as the total RAM seen by XP
- SystemProperties\Advanced\Performance\Virtual memory\Virtual memory window > Drive C:\ no paging file, drive R:\ 400Mb (or whatever value I set), “currently allocated: 3581Mb”
- exploring the hard disks, I found TWO pagefile.sys files: the one I created on ramdisk R:\ (of correct size) AND another one on drive C:\ of about 3.49Gb, probably created on boot-up and explaining the unusual HDD activity
- the system is less responsive after boot-up, swapping heavily on the HDD; like I said above, the pagefile on drive C:\ is not reported in the “Virtual memory window” and cannot be disabled from there, but it is in use at all times (cannot be deleted from C:\)
Additional notes
- all of the above happen exactly the same regardless of the size of the ramdisk, only when I put the pagefile on it and after reboot.
- “Enable Image File” and “Save at Computer Shutdown” options in ramdisk make no difference at all (tried both with and without them).
Your comments will be greatly appreciated
Hi!
First off, many thanks to the Romex Team for making this very cool product available for free (to us home users).
I’m fairly noobish in computers and have never used a ramdisk. Like this tutorial says (http://www.romexsoftware.com/main/suppo ... g-ram.html) I have recently upgraded my lappy to 4Gb and can’t get used to the idea that over 500Mb of it gets wasted.
Don’t know whether I’m doing something wrong, or there’s a bug in the software, but I’ll try to describe my findings the best I can (I apologize for such a long post).
The hardware
Dell Vostro 1400 notebook (same as Inspiron 1420), Intel / Intel / nVidia8400 (with 256Mb VRAM), WinXP Home 32bit, PAE enabled and reported correctly by XP, no memory options available in BIOS.
What I did
Read the tutorials and support forum > downloaded v1.10.1711.1436 Free Edition > installed > setup ramdisks of several sizes in Invisible Memory (508Mb available), NTFS, drive letter R:\, volume RAMDISK.
What happened (100% reproducible on my system)
1) Everything went smoothly for all purposes except pagefile usage:
a. no problems at install.
b. no problems during or after reboot.
c. Invisible Memory usage is OK - system properties and task manager report exactly the same physical, cached and available memory.
d. cache on drive R:\ for Firefox and IE7 works great with noticeable speed improvement.
e. only used it 24h, but seems very stable, reads/writes very well, etc.
BUT…
2) Here’s what it does if I try to swap on ramdisk R:\:
a. initially XP accepts setting up virtual memory on drive R:\ and everything seems OK (I tried several combinations of min/max, including min=max, less than and equal to the space available) > checked pagefile.sys created on drive R:\, visible and exactly the size specified > XP Properties\Advanced\Performance reports correct total paging file size > works OK as expected
b. at reboot system shuts down quickly as usual, but boots up much slower, with notable HDD activity (much longer than usual)
c. after boot-up, XP reports the following conflicting values
- System Properties\General > 3.5Gb RAM (OK)
- SystemProperties\Advanced\Performance\Virtual memory > total paging file = 3581Mb, which is about the same as the total RAM seen by XP
- SystemProperties\Advanced\Performance\Virtual memory\Virtual memory window > Drive C:\ no paging file, drive R:\ 400Mb (or whatever value I set), “currently allocated: 3581Mb”
- exploring the hard disks, I found TWO pagefile.sys files: the one I created on ramdisk R:\ (of correct size) AND another one on drive C:\ of about 3.49Gb, probably created on boot-up and explaining the unusual HDD activity
- the system is less responsive after boot-up, swapping heavily on the HDD; like I said above, the pagefile on drive C:\ is not reported in the “Virtual memory window” and cannot be disabled from there, but it is in use at all times (cannot be deleted from C:\)
Additional notes
- all of the above happen exactly the same regardless of the size of the ramdisk, only when I put the pagefile on it and after reboot.
- “Enable Image File” and “Save at Computer Shutdown” options in ramdisk make no difference at all (tried both with and without them).
Your comments will be greatly appreciated