Optimizing pagefile howto get optimal performance in windows xp

Question/Problem:

how do i optimize the pagefile on my desktop? Sometimes windows says it's requesting more space, which makes my computer slow down terribly, and i would like to have the correct settings to fix this.

The answer/solution:

How do I get optimal performance for my pagefile in windows xp?

First, setting the correct size
Simple, a general rule of thumb for normal desktop computers is 1.5x memory size for the pagefile. This means if you memory is 1024MB, set your pagefile to 1.5x1024 = 1536MB!

How do i do this?
Right click on "My Computer" and click properties, go to the 'advanced tab'

Click the top button with 'settings' on it, then click the advanced tab again and click the 'change' button.

Pick only one drive letter that has enough space and is not used much, and set the values to 1.5x your ram (both should be the same value).

Additional tweaks

-You will get better performance when the pagefile is alone on it's partition
-You can find out how much RAM your pc has by right clicking on my computer, you will see a number followed by "GB" or "MB", which is the amount of RAM you have. 1GB = 1024MB

added by Jos on: 25-04-2007

keywords: pagefile, optimizing, ram, performance, windows xp ,