MINIMIZE THE WORKLOAD

Some people make a habit of starting up all applications they might ever need during a session. Or never to shut down unused programs. All that software uses memory and processor time. Systems with little memory will make a swap file, using the harddisk as the extra (very slow!) memory needed. Every extra program may also cause memory conflicts and crash your computer. So only start up the programs you really need. Shut them off when you don't use them anymore.


There is something peculiar about windows' memory management. The more memory you install, the more windows uses. Not for speeding up your software mind you, but for caching its disk cache. More logical would be the other way. More memory means less disk caching, means less memory cache needed for the disk cache. I REALLY don't get it. Here again a simple solution. You can add the lines below to your SYSTEM.INI file (win9x only).


This will limit the memory cache size to 4 megabytes max, keeping the rest free for software. This will mean a lot less disk activity. It may be worthwile to set minimum and maximum to the same amount, thus preventing resizing of the buffer. If you are hesitant of editing system files manually, you can let Thomas Reinman's freeware CacheMan do this for you.



Related to this is forcing windows to use all of the available memory before using the swap file. Enter this line under the [386enh] section in system.ini. If you have a decent amount of memory, your swapfile size will be 0 most of the time file.