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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PMS Witch who wrote (19121)	4/27/2001 12:08:50 AM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110652

A different opinion from speedguide.net: Vcache Vcache is the Windows disk-caching virtual device driver. This is a very important part of Windows, as it provides excellent disk performance. Windows, however, limits vcache from it's total potential. The following tweak will keep Vcache from taking up all your RAM, and being resized all the time. Here's how to improve it. Type 'sysedit' in your 'start' , 'run' dialog box and navigate to "System.ini". In the ini file, look for [vcache] and add the following: MinFileCache= nnn MaxFileCache= nnn ChunkSize= nnn (nnn represents a number, multiple of 2) 'MinFileCache' and 'MaxFileCache' should be the same ( about 25% of your RAM ) to avoid resizing. 'ChunkSize' should generally be '512', but you can omit that one. You should set MinFileCache and MaxFileCache to about 25% of your total RAM for best performance, i.e 8190 for 32Mb RAM, 16384 for 64Mb, 32768 for 128Mb... These are sample settings from one of our PCs ( 256Mb RAM, Windows 98 ) [vcache] MinFileCache=65536 MaxFileCache=65536 ChunkSize=512 Notes: Generally, the more RAM you have, the bigger vcache can be. Remember that the RAM used by vcache can't be used by applications. Also, Windows 98/98SE has better memory management than 95, so you might not notice much improvement using that tweak speedguide.net

To: PMS Witch who wrote (19121)	10/21/2001 5:19:43 PM
From: Dan Duchardt	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 110652

I'm sending this as a reply to this rather older message because I have a related situation and would appreciate input from anyone who might have done what I'm trying to do. I recently bought new RAM, a LOT of it, and installed 768M on an ABIT BH6 with a PII 350Mhz running Windows 98. No surprise to any of you who have kept up with this thread, but it blew Windows away. I called the memory supplier for help, and then they tell me about this Windows problem support.microsoft.com I am gradually recovering. I now have 768M installed, but with only 384M available to Windows. I added the ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 line to SYSTEM.INI, and have been monitoring for any hint of a swapfile as I opened everything I can think of. I don't expect to ever need one with 384M allocated to Windows, and I have not seen one. Without setting any limits yet on the cache, it appears to grab around 55M on startup. My memory upgrade was from 128M, so I assume the cache then was less than 32M which may be all I need for my purposes. I might play with 32M or 64M as I get deeper into this. I want to optimize my system for trading. I have a couple of different data suppliers streaming data all day long that must be processed in real time. My motivation for the RAM upgrade is that my processor usage is often getting pegged at 100%, and there are a few program functions that can cause problems if invoked when the processor is maxed out. I assume that eliminating the need for a swapfile will reduce processor load. In addition to that, some of what I run apparently uses temp files I would like to put on a ramdrive. I have downloaded, but not yet installed XMSDSK in two forms.. one is a .zip file with all the pieces. The other is an installer Ramdrive.exe I obtained from the following link that I found on another site (I cannot seem to navigate to this link form the site where it is hosted) speedcorp.net. Has anyone used this installer to set up the ramdrive configuration? Can I safely do this or should I stick with the manual process? What I have in mind is a 384MB ramdrive that is outside of the 384MB Windows memory area. I am guessing that if XMSDSK is invoked by DOS at startup before Windows comes up, this separation of memory areas will happen and Windows will only see the 384MB not used by the ramdrive. But of course I need to do the things to direct Windows to put what I want in the ramdrive.. any swapfile that might be created, temp files, browser cache, cookies, the usual suspects. Alternatively, I read that Windows actually prefers working in the "virtual world" and would rather use its own Ramdrive.sys than XMSDSK. Unfortunately there is the changing letter designator stuff and the 32MB size limitation on each ramdrive set up this way. I assume if I go this route, the drive space might have to be inside of the Windows memory area, so to use all that RAM I would need to let Windows take all of it and limit the cache size to keep it from having the problems I had at first. I have never done anything that messes with the "registry" I hear everyone talking about. I always hear you should back up the registry before you play around like this, but nobody ever seems to talk about what it is or how you change it. My research seems to indicate there are two files involved: System.dat and User.dat. Are these all I need to preserve for a safe return to my present state, or is there more to it than that. I expect much of this has been covered here before, and I have been looking back for things that might help, but I hoped pulling it together here might catch somebody's interest, and keep me out of trouble. Thanks, Dan