It has to be Win95, 98, or ME, since NT and it's descendents don't have this
control.  Manually tweaking DOS Based Windows VM swap file sizes and disk
cache sizes can double your overall system performance in some situations.
The original code that MS created for VM sizing just doesn't do a very good
job of optimizing performance.  It tended to allocate too much memory to the
disk cache and not enough to applications, thus causing excessive numbers of
disk swaps.

This code was originally written for NT 3.5 and was moved into WfW 3.11
where it propagated up through Windows ME.  In the NT line, it was used in
NT 3.5, 3.51, and 4.0.  Windows 2000 replaced it with a dynamic cache and
swapfile sizing allocation scheme, which allowed the OS to approach hand
tuned VMs in performance.

I discovered this while testing WfW 3.11 for fielding - I could double the
performance of a PC simply by changing the vcache parameters.  WfW 3.11's VM
subsystem was ported from the then, beta, Windows NT 3.5 disk subsystem with
the security modules stubbed out to always return "access allowed".  Windows
95 kept this code because it worked, and worked well.

Mike Ober.

"ytrewq" <ytrewq@poiu.com> wrote in message
news:kR8Xa.9514$gi.4711178@news2.news.adelphia.net...

What OS? - W95/8/2k/XP?
What SETI software? Screensavewr or CLI?
===========
"Chuck in Minot" <no0z@earthmail.com> wrote in message
news:viip7nlqorho5f@corp.supernews.com...

I went and set my vitural mem from letting Windows manage it, to "Let me
specify my own" and set it 10 times my 128megs of ram as I read on the
Setispy site, and now on a 400Mhz Celeron WUs that were taking right

around

20hrs to process now take around 14-15...I also since I don't use my

CR-ROM,

went and reduced its cache to save some more resources.

Well now I have been getting a 4-5 hr gain of speed, which is quite
impressive.  My machine also boots up a whole lot faster.

Just passing this on if others would like to see if they can gain a

little

time.


KeEp CrUnChiNG!!
==========================