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Because of corporate reasons we are limited to 32-bit XP machines. Ramdrive (PAE) provides a nice alternative to using a bit more memory, but the paging file set on the ramdrive is almost not used and it never grows. I've tried some of the options under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management but I have not seen any different behavior. I've set up the page file to be minimum 2GB, maximum 4GB, but it never grows.

What I would like to know is how to force Windows XP to page more and evict less. Not quite a programming question, but might concern a lot of other programmers.

brainwash
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    Question likely belongs on superuser.com or serverfault.com – selbie Jan 17 '12 at 12:10
  • What selbie said. This is also likely an anti-optimization. Paging on a ramdisk is fast, but not fast enough so you would really like to enforce it (I'm doing the same thing with SuperSpeed Ramdisk Plus). It's much, much better than solid state or even hard disk, but nevertheless when some serious paging kicks in, it's so noticeable that there is no doubt about it. Paging to/from ramdisk is not in any way remotely equivalent to RAM. Thus, paging should be last resort, not first choice. – Damon Jan 17 '12 at 15:41
  • It is last resort, I'm allowed to use only ~3GB on 32bit, but with this hack I can use the remaining 4GB as a ramdrive. That is until it is decided that we switch to Win7. – brainwash Jan 21 '12 at 12:12

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If you are looking to set the paging file to allocate a larger area to begin with I would suggest setting the Virtual Memory paging file to a minimum of 4GB so it does not need to take the additional time to allocate additional space.

user1152631
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  • It's on the RAM drive, it should take no time at all to resize it. However, it was set before to a fixed 4GB and there was no difference in performance. – brainwash Jan 18 '12 at 15:38