Windows Trips and tricks:-
How to make Windows run efficiently:-
Tip 1:
Swap file:-
WHAT IS SWAP FILE:-
Well let's first understand what a swap file is.Suppose you have *many* applications ruuning.. then there may not be enough memory or RAM left to load you program or lets say you have a meagre amount of RAM and you want to load a really big application... Then what does our operating system(OS) does? crashes.. refuses to run?Well fortunately 9 out of 10 times this does not happen..you have you program loaded.Well intereting isn' it?And how does that happen? Well in such a case your operaing system(rather most of the OS'es) "swaps" or takes a protion of your hard disk space and treats it as a part of RAM. Well though this isn't actually your HIGH SPEED RAM but in this way your OS manages to give that extra memory to run that program if needed and runs it ,but at the cost of speed obviously.
Default setting: :
By default WIN 95/98/Me manages the use of swap automatically.. thus saving you from obvious hassles.But then there comes a problem with it ..every time windows creates and modifies the swap file it's size keeps changing-shrinking or expanding as per the need.This results in loss of performance..sometimes quite significant.Well the it also reduces the thrashing or load on your hard disk .So what to do.Obviulsy fixing the size if swap file should help us and to know how to do it..Read On...
THE TRICK:-
Right click on my computer icon on the desktop and click on properties.Then click the performance tab and next click virtual memory(The memory created by swap file is called virtual memory).
Click on let me specify my own settings(yes!! Disobey moicrosoft) and then form the drop down menu select the drive(if you have multi windows partiton on ur hardisk),usually selecting the last one is the best(for example if you have three hard disk partitons C,D,E it's preferable to choose E or the drive with highest speed)or whichever drive you have free space on will do. Then in the minimum and maximum column give the size as per the following:
if you have
32MB RAM- then both should be around 70MB.
64MB RAM-128 MB(both min and max)
128 MB RAM-around 135MB(i have kept it at 128 MB)
the above setting will suffice for most of the users.Cilck Ok ater you are done with this and then click yes to that annoying warning message that pops up.Next reboot your system.
NOTE: In rare cases if after rebooting you freqently get not enough memory message while running programs revert back to your old default windows settings.
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