This is a Question and answer for anybody who is interested in getting more performance from their systems. Please feed back on any issues you have with it.
Physical Ram is a relatively limited resource and when it’s running low Windows uses the slower hard disk as a virtual memory area called the swapfile. It’s set to change size dynamically, which can lead to fragmentation and slowdown. In addition, it normally resides on the system drive, leading to competition for access between the swapfile and system files. To optimize virtual memory in XP, right click on ?My computer > Properties.? Click on the Advanced tab, then the Settings button in the Performance frame. Once the Performance Options window opens, click the Advanced tab and then the Change button under the Virtual Memory area. If you are not moving the swapfile to a new disk, just click on the entry for your system disk, check the Custom size radio button and enter the same number in both the ?Initial Size? and ?Maximum Size? fields. The general rule of thumb is to make the swapfile 1.5 times your physical memory size. You get better performance by moving the whole swapfile to a different physical disk: set the ?C? drive to No Paging File, hit the Set button, click on the drive letter you want to move the file to and follow the same steps. The process is much the same for Vista.
