The current memory has basically reached an average price of 1 yuan/MB. Many friends' computers have bid farewell to the pitiful 64MB and 128MB of memory. 256MB has become the standard configuration, and 512MB or even 1GB of memory is no longer "sensational". But there is one thing that puzzled many friends: "Why is my Windows startup and software running speed still so slow with 1G memory?"
After installing large-capacity memory, the system and program operation efficiency has not been greatly improved, because the system itself operates by limiting its ability to manage and use hardware resources. So even if the hardware resources are very rich, if they are beyond the scope of Windows management, then the performance will not be significantly improved.
Memory and hard disk
Many novices often confuse physical memory and hard drives, because the capacity of both is expressed in units such as MB or GB. The best analogy for explaining the relationship between physical memory and hard drive is: a small office with a desk and a file cabinet.
File cabinets are like hard disks, programs and data can be stored there safely for a long time, and the desktop represents physical memory, allowing people working on their desks (the same as processors) to use any files (programs and data) placed on the desktop directly. In order to operate on a specific file, the file must first be removed from the file cabinet and placed on the desktop. If the desktop is large enough, you can open multiple files on the desktop at the same time. Similarly, if you have more physical memory, you can run more or larger programs and process more or larger data.
Adding hard drive space to a computer is like putting a larger file cabinet in the office, and adding more memory is like getting a larger desk that can operate more programs and data at the same time.
1. Windows uses memory like this
To know why the system speed improvement is no longer obvious, you must first understand how Windows uses memory. Here we need to involve a concept - resources.
This is not what we usually call CPU resources, memory resources or unified "system" resources. The "resource" we are going to talk about next is Windows objects that programs can manipulate. For example, each window displayed on the screen is a resource, and each image may be a resource. If an application opens a file on disk, the opened file is also a resource. And so on, if an application needs to use a resource, it will make a request to the operating system, asking for a new one or call it from memory.
1. Scenario reappearance: The dialogue between the program and the system
The program said: "Hi, Windows, I want to create a new window that is 300 pixels wide and 200 pixels high, OK?" So, Windows immediately created or called this resource into memory as required, and then fed back to the application with a code name: "Okay, I have created the window you want, and its code name is #38710." After that, when you need to use the newly created window, the application uses the code name feedback from Windows to represent the resource. "Windows, please show #38710 in the upper left corner of the display screen." "Okay!" Finally, when the application does not need to use the resource, it will ask Windows to remove this resource. "OK, please delete #38710." "OK!".
2. Pointer – Postal code in memory
So what standard is this code generated based on? In most operating systems, it is determined by something called a "pointer". You can think of the entire memory as a post office, where the postman sorts out the letters that need to be sent to various places into many different mailboxes. One mailbox after another, occupying a wall. Each careful one has some letters containing information to be sent to a specific area. Moreover, just as every region has a postal code, each piece of memory space that can store data also has an address - a pointer. A string of numbers representing this storage space. The "pointer" of a certain part of the data in memory, which is the address of the first memory space occupied by these data. So, if I am a normal operating system and an application asks me to call a window, I will call this window into memory as it tells me. If the address of the data stored in memory of this resource starts at #1234567, then I will return a message to the application: "Okay, I called this window, it is #1234567."
3. Solve the problem caused by pointers
In PC, this pointer is 4 bytes long. So if an application needs to assign a pointer to a certain data in memory, it requires 4 bytes of memory space. This way of working caused quite a lot of trouble to early Windows designers, because the production process was not yet developed at that time and the memory was very expensive. 8MB of memory on a computer was enough to make users wake up from their dreams countless times, and most computers could only configure 4MB of memory. With such tight memory, an application often needs millions of resources. To use these resources, you need to allocate a pointer for each resource. Each pointer occupies 4 bytes and millions of pointers, which will consume an objective amount of memory space. It’s like a portion of money is very small, but if you want to give one portion to each person in the country, it will be a huge sum of at least 13 million yuan.
So, Windows designers have adopted another alternative. They created resource tables. It is to register the information of all resources currently being transferred into memory into a list. In this way, when the application requires the system to call a resource, the system will no longer assign a pointer to it after the system is called, but will directly tell the application the sequence number of the resource in the resource table. "Okay, I've called the resource you need, and its sequence number in the resource table is #383." Because it is not a memory address, it can be represented by a number that only takes up 2 bytes. This is just a difference of two bytes. But when you only have a few MB of memory and the program you run calls a large amount of resources, the gap between these two bytes will bring a big advantage.
Do you know?
Don't play with Microsoft's 64-bit operating system without 1GB of memory
In 32-bit Windows 2000/XP, it supports up to 4GB of memory, and each application can only use up to 2GB of memory, because the other half of the memory is also left to the system for use. In 64-bit Windows XP, this limit is gone. Each program can fully use 4GB of memory. In addition to Windows, Microsoft is also developing the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003. However, to run these applications, your computer must have at least 1GB of memory.
4. Times change, and tricks become flaws
But this method also has its drawbacks - the different numbers that two bytes can represent are very limited
We can do an experiment: please write different numbers. If you are only allowed to write a single digit, you can only write ten different digits. If you limit writing double digits, although you can write more, the total number is still limited. And so on, the more digits you allow, the more different numbers you can write. But as long as the number of digits is limited, the total number of different numbers written is always limited. Similarly, if the system is allowed to use a 4-byte sequence number, then under this "digit limit", there can be billions of different sequence numbers available. However, if the system only uses 2-byte serial numbers, the number that can be used will be reduced to 65,536. Therefore, the resource table we mentioned earlier cannot be infinitely lengthened. There are only 65536 serial numbers at most
So the question arose. After calling 65536 resources, I want to call more resources. Even though there is still 1GB of memory space, which is enough to store tens of billions of resources, the resource table with only 2 bytes cannot generate more sequence numbers! Without a serial number, it means that the resources cannot be distinguished, and the application will naturally not be able to use these resources without a "household account"! In fact, because no serial number is available, the system cannot call more than 65,536 resources at the same time.
But in an era when 10MB of memory is a luxury, it is simply "nonsense" to call hundreds of thousands of resources at the same time. Therefore, the Windows designers at that time did not take this problem seriously, and decisively selected the resource table and the 2-byte serial number.
Today, the operating system has received retribution. Memory is cheaper, and resource tables and 2-byte sequence numbers still save us memory space, but the disadvantages it brings far outweigh the benefits it brings. We have enough memory space to call millions of resources, but there are only 65536 sequence numbers in the resource table! So at the same time, there can only be 65,536 resources in the memory! Is there 1GB of memory available? Wait!
5. Who is the one who really "expends resources"?
Once you understand the above truth, it is not difficult to distinguish which programs are actually consuming system resources besides large files and large programs:
★ Call a large number of small resources to decorate the desktop with fancy software
★ Various multimedia playback software
★ Monitoring system tools and software
★ Applications that can preview fonts in the font menu (such as MS Office)
In addition, when running a 16-bit program (such as a DOS program) in Windows 9x n/Me, Windows will demarcate a piece of memory for all such programs to use. Unless all 16-bit programs have been closed, this memory will not be released.
6. What are the advantages of large memory?
Does large memory have no effect? Memory manufacturers are cheating on money? Of course not. When an application is started, some components of Windows are also started, which is very common. When the application is closed, Windows will keep those components not closed, because it may be used soon. Similarly, a few resources that are tuned into memory when the program starts will not exit memory as the program closes.
At this time, the large memory can sometimes be reflected. On the one hand, large memory can accommodate a large amount of data at one time, reducing the chance of using hard disks that are far inferior to memory as virtual memory, and improving the speed of data calling. On the other hand, after closing the program, more commonly used data will have sufficient space to remain in memory and not be cleared. Once you restart the program, you will find that it is significantly faster than when using small memory!
2. Highlights of large memory usage
1. Turn memory into your hard drive
If your memory is really rich, you can use RAMDISK designed by Microsoft specifically for Windows 2000. It can virtualize part of the memory into a hard disk and virtualize the data originally stored on the hard disk into memory. For example, place temporary Windows files and temporary Internet files on this virtual disk. As we all know, the memory speed is much faster than the hard disk speed, which can greatly improve the data reading speed and make Windows run more efficiently. At the same time, since the data is actually stored in memory, the data in it will disappear after shutdown, which can enhance system security to a certain extent.
Step 1: Download RAMDISK from /download/win2000ddk/sample01/1/nt5/EN-US/. And decompress it into a temporary folder, such as C:\RAMDISK
Step 2: Click "Start Setup Control Panel", double-click to open "Add/Remove Hardware", then select "Add/Troubleshooting Device" and click "Next Button"; in the "Select a Hardware Device" window that appears, select "Add New Device" item, and then click "Next" button; in the next window, select "No, I want to select hardware" from the list and click "Next" button; then select "Other devices" in the "Hardware Type" list and click "Next"; in the window that appears, click "Installation from Disk" button, set "Manufacturer File Copy Source" to "c:\RAMDISK" in the pop-up "" "Installation from Disk" window, and after confirmation, the selection window appears, select "Ramdisk in the "Model" list Driver item and click the "Next" button. During Windows, the "Digital Signature Not Found" dialog box will appear. Click the "Yes" button to install.
Step 3: Open "Notepad", enter the text, and save it as
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurentControlSet\Servioes\Ramdisk\Parameters]
"BreakOnEntry"=dword:00000000
"DebugLevel"=dword:00000000
"DebugComp"=dword:ffffffff
"DiskSize"=dword:01f00000
"DriveLetter"="R:"
"RootDirEntries"=dword:00000200
"SectorsPerCluster"=dowrd:00000002
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment]
"TEMP"="R:\\"
"TMP"="R:\\"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment]
"TEMP"=R:\\"
"TMP"="R:\\"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders]
"Cache"="R:\\"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders]
"Cache"="R:\\"
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Environment]
"TEMP"=R:\\"
"TMP"="R:\\"
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders]
"Cache"="R:\\"
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders]
"Cache"="R:\\"
When finished, double-click to import it into the registry. The above registry data can be downloaded.
Tips
The meaning of the key in the file is:
Parameters: Set the drive letter of Ramkisk to R and the size is 30.9MB
Session Manager\Environment: Set the system's TEMP and TMP environment variables to the virtual drive R.
HEKY_CURRENT_USER\Environmnet: Set the TEMP and TMP environment variables of the current user to the virtual drive R
Both HKCU Shell Folders: Set the current user's Internet temporary files to the virtual drive R.
HKY\.DEFAULT keys: Set the default user's TEMP, TMP and Internet temporary files to the virtual drive R
Step 4: Shut down and then restart Windows 2000.
Tips
Of course, the RAMDISK function provided by Microsoft is relatively simple. Currently, there are some more powerful memory virtual software on the Internet, such as RamDisk.
2. Modify the registry to give full play to the advantages of large memory
Now please open the registry editor, find [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\ControlSession Manager\MomoryManagement], and modify the key value in the right pane (it should be noted that the prerequisite for setting the memory is that the memory should be more than 512MB and is limited to Windows 2000/XP only).
(1) "LargeSystemCache" (start large system cache): open a large memory space in memory for pre-read operations of disk file system. When the data requested by the program increases continuously, Windows automatically pre-reads through the system cache, allowing the program to obtain the required data at the fastest speed. Since enabling this system buffering will consume more physical memory, the available physical memory that can be utilized by the program is reduced. Set its value to 1. In this way, the system cache is increased from 4MB to 8MB.
(2) "SecondLevelDataCache" (improving CPU performance): The CPU's processing speed is much greater than the memory access speed, and the memory is much faster than the hard disk. In this way, a bottleneck effect affecting performance is formed between the CPU and memory and between the memory and disk. The previous "LargeSystemCache" was designed to alleviate the bottleneck of memory and disk. In order to quickly obtain processing data from memory, the CPU also sets up a buffering mechanism L2 Cache (level 2 cache). Adjusting this key value can enable Windows to better cooperate with the CPU to use this cache mechanism to obtain higher data pre-read hit rate. It is recommended to set it to 512
(3) DisablePagingExecutive: Change its value to 1 (hexadecimal), which will force all programs and data to run in physical memory instead of using virtual memory. It is obvious that when there is enough physical memory to complete the required tasks, doing so will result in a huge improvement in system performance. For users with only 64MB of memory, it may be a disaster - the system makes frequent errors until it crashes.
(4) "IOPageLockLimit" (customized input/output buffer size): The input and output system is the channel for data transmission between the device and the microprocessor. When its buffer size is expanded, data transmission will be smoother. Similarly, the specific size of the setting depends on the size of the physical memory and the number of running tasks. Generally speaking, if the memory has 64MB, the hexadecimal value of the double-byte key can be set to 400 (1MB), 800 (2MB), or 1000 (4MB) and 128MB of memory can be set to 1000 (4MB), 2000 (8MB) or 4000 (16MB); 256MB of memory can be 4000 (16MB) or 8000 (32MB). Of course, if there is more memory, you can set it to 10000 (64MB) or even more. When set to 0, Windows will automatically configure it.
Tips
It is said that this setting can also effectively solve the problem of BT downloads damaging the disk.
3. Can Windows 98/Me use 1GB of memory?
Windows 98/Me does not support more than 1GB of memory. At the same time, after the memory exceeds 128MB, special adjustments are required to enable the system to better manage and use memory and avoid system failures caused by large memory. All key settings revolve around Vcache (virtual high-speed memory).
Do you know?
What is Vcache?
It is a physical memory allocated by Windows to the hard disk and is used as a cache, which can greatly improve the read and write speed of the hard disk, similar to the purpose of Smartdrv under DOS. Simply put, Vcache is a piece of space automatically allocated in physical memory by Windows to save code and data that has been used and that Windows believes will be used again. In this way, when new programs require this to be used, they do not have to read from the hard disk, but directly read from the memory. This will result in much faster speed, greatly improving system performance.
(1)128MB~512MB
According to experts, if the memory is 128MB~512MB, it is best to use "Notepad" to open the [Vcache] section, find the line starting with "MaxFilecache=", and set its value to 70% of the physical memory (because the value used here is in KB, you need to use the formula of MB*1024 or Bytes/1024 to convert the data). For example: your memory is 128MB, then it should be 128*0.7*1024=91750.4 (about 91750KB), and the statement should be written as "MaxFileCache=91750"
(2) More than 512MB of memory
Some friends will find that when the memory is increased to more than 512MB, when starting Windows 98/Me or opening a DOS window, the system will prompt "out of memory".
This is mainly because Windows 98/Me has defects when processing memory greater than 512MB, so it is best to set the MaxFileCache value of Vcache to 512MB (524,288KB), which is "MaxFileCache=524288".
(3) 1GB memory
If the memory reaches 1GB or higher, Windows 98/Me will experience continuous restarts, crashes, or continuous restarts during use of Windows Update.
To solve this problem, also open the file, add "MaxPhysPage=40000" in the [386Ehh] field. In this way, the memory read by Windows can be limited to less than 1GB.
If you cannot enter Windows, you can press the Ctrl key during restart until the startup menu appears, then select the "Command Prompt Only" item, enter "edit" and press Enter after the command prompt appears, and then add "MaxPhysPage=40000" in the [386Ehh] field.
4. Turn off sleep
Many users like the hibernation function, which can achieve the fast boot function. However, for computers with large memory, it is best to turn off the hard disk sleep function when they do not read or write hard disk frequently, because sometimes it will cause no reason to crash.
5. If you have large memory, you can do without virtual memory?
I often see many articles introducing that after having large memory, virtual memory can be disabled. Actually, it is not the case! For example: Windows 98/Me has a inherent shortage of memory greater than 512MB. If Windows 98 is larger than this amount of memory, Windows 98 will be unstable and the startup speed will become slower. If large memory is used and virtual memory is disabled, the instability factor will be further increased.
In addition, Windows itself is designed to map the memory space allocated to it into the swap file once it is found that once it is found that a process is transferred to the inactive state, it will map the memory space allocated to the swap file, and empty the physical memory as much as possible to other active processes. It does not start to use the swap file if it is used up. Because it will be too late to call it until the physical memory is used up. On computers with lower configuration, data transmission and processing will inevitably stagnate. Therefore, in principle, banning virtual memory is most likely to cause Windows exceptions, and there will be no failures that cannot be run in time. It will frequently prompt that virtual memory is insufficient. Please reset it.
Do you know？
According to Asus experts, when using the motherboard of the INTEL 850/850E chipset, if it is paired with 2GB of RAMBUS memory, the computer will be unstable. This is due to the limitations of Intel850/850E chipsets. Intel's recommendation is: the number of memory cells * the number of wafers on each memory ≤ 24. Currently, the number of chips sold in RAMBUS 256 memory in China is 8, and the number of chips with Rambus 512MB memory is 16, so when users use too large memory, they may experience unstable phenomena.
6. Let large memory help hard drives
If you have more than 512MB of memory and have a Maxtor or Quantum hard drive, then Maxtor's MaxBoost is worth a try. It is said that it can greatly improve hard drive performance, up to about 60% of hard drive performance. This software is actually a disk driver, which replaces the disk driver of Windows 2000/XP. It can automatically set a cache suitable for the system memory for different application software, and plays a pre-read and buffer role before reading and writing data. It uses disk reading and writing data to use a "advanced algorithm" that refuses to publish technical details, thereby effectively improving the reading and writing speed of hard disks and achieving the purpose of improving application and system speed. According to some experts, although the software is not as magical as the official claims, it does show its skills in operation such as file copying. Of course, since MaxBoost is still in the beta stage, there are still some problems, so it is recommended that ordinary players use the software after it is officially launched.
After installing large-capacity memory, the system and program operation efficiency has not been greatly improved, because the system itself operates by limiting its ability to manage and use hardware resources. So even if the hardware resources are very rich, if they are beyond the scope of Windows management, then the performance will not be significantly improved.
Memory and hard disk
Many novices often confuse physical memory and hard drives, because the capacity of both is expressed in units such as MB or GB. The best analogy for explaining the relationship between physical memory and hard drive is: a small office with a desk and a file cabinet.
File cabinets are like hard disks, programs and data can be stored there safely for a long time, and the desktop represents physical memory, allowing people working on their desks (the same as processors) to use any files (programs and data) placed on the desktop directly. In order to operate on a specific file, the file must first be removed from the file cabinet and placed on the desktop. If the desktop is large enough, you can open multiple files on the desktop at the same time. Similarly, if you have more physical memory, you can run more or larger programs and process more or larger data.
Adding hard drive space to a computer is like putting a larger file cabinet in the office, and adding more memory is like getting a larger desk that can operate more programs and data at the same time.
1. Windows uses memory like this
To know why the system speed improvement is no longer obvious, you must first understand how Windows uses memory. Here we need to involve a concept - resources.
This is not what we usually call CPU resources, memory resources or unified "system" resources. The "resource" we are going to talk about next is Windows objects that programs can manipulate. For example, each window displayed on the screen is a resource, and each image may be a resource. If an application opens a file on disk, the opened file is also a resource. And so on, if an application needs to use a resource, it will make a request to the operating system, asking for a new one or call it from memory.
1. Scenario reappearance: The dialogue between the program and the system
The program said: "Hi, Windows, I want to create a new window that is 300 pixels wide and 200 pixels high, OK?" So, Windows immediately created or called this resource into memory as required, and then fed back to the application with a code name: "Okay, I have created the window you want, and its code name is #38710." After that, when you need to use the newly created window, the application uses the code name feedback from Windows to represent the resource. "Windows, please show #38710 in the upper left corner of the display screen." "Okay!" Finally, when the application does not need to use the resource, it will ask Windows to remove this resource. "OK, please delete #38710." "OK!".
2. Pointer – Postal code in memory
So what standard is this code generated based on? In most operating systems, it is determined by something called a "pointer". You can think of the entire memory as a post office, where the postman sorts out the letters that need to be sent to various places into many different mailboxes. One mailbox after another, occupying a wall. Each careful one has some letters containing information to be sent to a specific area. Moreover, just as every region has a postal code, each piece of memory space that can store data also has an address - a pointer. A string of numbers representing this storage space. The "pointer" of a certain part of the data in memory, which is the address of the first memory space occupied by these data. So, if I am a normal operating system and an application asks me to call a window, I will call this window into memory as it tells me. If the address of the data stored in memory of this resource starts at #1234567, then I will return a message to the application: "Okay, I called this window, it is #1234567."
3. Solve the problem caused by pointers
In PC, this pointer is 4 bytes long. So if an application needs to assign a pointer to a certain data in memory, it requires 4 bytes of memory space. This way of working caused quite a lot of trouble to early Windows designers, because the production process was not yet developed at that time and the memory was very expensive. 8MB of memory on a computer was enough to make users wake up from their dreams countless times, and most computers could only configure 4MB of memory. With such tight memory, an application often needs millions of resources. To use these resources, you need to allocate a pointer for each resource. Each pointer occupies 4 bytes and millions of pointers, which will consume an objective amount of memory space. It’s like a portion of money is very small, but if you want to give one portion to each person in the country, it will be a huge sum of at least 13 million yuan.
So, Windows designers have adopted another alternative. They created resource tables. It is to register the information of all resources currently being transferred into memory into a list. In this way, when the application requires the system to call a resource, the system will no longer assign a pointer to it after the system is called, but will directly tell the application the sequence number of the resource in the resource table. "Okay, I've called the resource you need, and its sequence number in the resource table is #383." Because it is not a memory address, it can be represented by a number that only takes up 2 bytes. This is just a difference of two bytes. But when you only have a few MB of memory and the program you run calls a large amount of resources, the gap between these two bytes will bring a big advantage.
Do you know?
Don't play with Microsoft's 64-bit operating system without 1GB of memory
In 32-bit Windows 2000/XP, it supports up to 4GB of memory, and each application can only use up to 2GB of memory, because the other half of the memory is also left to the system for use. In 64-bit Windows XP, this limit is gone. Each program can fully use 4GB of memory. In addition to Windows, Microsoft is also developing the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003. However, to run these applications, your computer must have at least 1GB of memory.
4. Times change, and tricks become flaws
But this method also has its drawbacks - the different numbers that two bytes can represent are very limited
We can do an experiment: please write different numbers. If you are only allowed to write a single digit, you can only write ten different digits. If you limit writing double digits, although you can write more, the total number is still limited. And so on, the more digits you allow, the more different numbers you can write. But as long as the number of digits is limited, the total number of different numbers written is always limited. Similarly, if the system is allowed to use a 4-byte sequence number, then under this "digit limit", there can be billions of different sequence numbers available. However, if the system only uses 2-byte serial numbers, the number that can be used will be reduced to 65,536. Therefore, the resource table we mentioned earlier cannot be infinitely lengthened. There are only 65536 serial numbers at most
So the question arose. After calling 65536 resources, I want to call more resources. Even though there is still 1GB of memory space, which is enough to store tens of billions of resources, the resource table with only 2 bytes cannot generate more sequence numbers! Without a serial number, it means that the resources cannot be distinguished, and the application will naturally not be able to use these resources without a "household account"! In fact, because no serial number is available, the system cannot call more than 65,536 resources at the same time.
But in an era when 10MB of memory is a luxury, it is simply "nonsense" to call hundreds of thousands of resources at the same time. Therefore, the Windows designers at that time did not take this problem seriously, and decisively selected the resource table and the 2-byte serial number.
Today, the operating system has received retribution. Memory is cheaper, and resource tables and 2-byte sequence numbers still save us memory space, but the disadvantages it brings far outweigh the benefits it brings. We have enough memory space to call millions of resources, but there are only 65536 sequence numbers in the resource table! So at the same time, there can only be 65,536 resources in the memory! Is there 1GB of memory available? Wait!
5. Who is the one who really "expends resources"?
Once you understand the above truth, it is not difficult to distinguish which programs are actually consuming system resources besides large files and large programs:
★ Call a large number of small resources to decorate the desktop with fancy software
★ Various multimedia playback software
★ Monitoring system tools and software
★ Applications that can preview fonts in the font menu (such as MS Office)
In addition, when running a 16-bit program (such as a DOS program) in Windows 9x n/Me, Windows will demarcate a piece of memory for all such programs to use. Unless all 16-bit programs have been closed, this memory will not be released.
6. What are the advantages of large memory?
Does large memory have no effect? Memory manufacturers are cheating on money? Of course not. When an application is started, some components of Windows are also started, which is very common. When the application is closed, Windows will keep those components not closed, because it may be used soon. Similarly, a few resources that are tuned into memory when the program starts will not exit memory as the program closes.
At this time, the large memory can sometimes be reflected. On the one hand, large memory can accommodate a large amount of data at one time, reducing the chance of using hard disks that are far inferior to memory as virtual memory, and improving the speed of data calling. On the other hand, after closing the program, more commonly used data will have sufficient space to remain in memory and not be cleared. Once you restart the program, you will find that it is significantly faster than when using small memory!
2. Highlights of large memory usage
1. Turn memory into your hard drive
If your memory is really rich, you can use RAMDISK designed by Microsoft specifically for Windows 2000. It can virtualize part of the memory into a hard disk and virtualize the data originally stored on the hard disk into memory. For example, place temporary Windows files and temporary Internet files on this virtual disk. As we all know, the memory speed is much faster than the hard disk speed, which can greatly improve the data reading speed and make Windows run more efficiently. At the same time, since the data is actually stored in memory, the data in it will disappear after shutdown, which can enhance system security to a certain extent.
Step 1: Download RAMDISK from /download/win2000ddk/sample01/1/nt5/EN-US/. And decompress it into a temporary folder, such as C:\RAMDISK
Step 2: Click "Start Setup Control Panel", double-click to open "Add/Remove Hardware", then select "Add/Troubleshooting Device" and click "Next Button"; in the "Select a Hardware Device" window that appears, select "Add New Device" item, and then click "Next" button; in the next window, select "No, I want to select hardware" from the list and click "Next" button; then select "Other devices" in the "Hardware Type" list and click "Next"; in the window that appears, click "Installation from Disk" button, set "Manufacturer File Copy Source" to "c:\RAMDISK" in the pop-up "" "Installation from Disk" window, and after confirmation, the selection window appears, select "Ramdisk in the "Model" list Driver item and click the "Next" button. During Windows, the "Digital Signature Not Found" dialog box will appear. Click the "Yes" button to install.
Step 3: Open "Notepad", enter the text, and save it as
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurentControlSet\Servioes\Ramdisk\Parameters]
"BreakOnEntry"=dword:00000000
"DebugLevel"=dword:00000000
"DebugComp"=dword:ffffffff
"DiskSize"=dword:01f00000
"DriveLetter"="R:"
"RootDirEntries"=dword:00000200
"SectorsPerCluster"=dowrd:00000002
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment]
"TEMP"="R:\\"
"TMP"="R:\\"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment]
"TEMP"=R:\\"
"TMP"="R:\\"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders]
"Cache"="R:\\"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders]
"Cache"="R:\\"
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Environment]
"TEMP"=R:\\"
"TMP"="R:\\"
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders]
"Cache"="R:\\"
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders]
"Cache"="R:\\"
When finished, double-click to import it into the registry. The above registry data can be downloaded.
Tips
The meaning of the key in the file is:
Parameters: Set the drive letter of Ramkisk to R and the size is 30.9MB
Session Manager\Environment: Set the system's TEMP and TMP environment variables to the virtual drive R.
HEKY_CURRENT_USER\Environmnet: Set the TEMP and TMP environment variables of the current user to the virtual drive R
Both HKCU Shell Folders: Set the current user's Internet temporary files to the virtual drive R.
HKY\.DEFAULT keys: Set the default user's TEMP, TMP and Internet temporary files to the virtual drive R
Step 4: Shut down and then restart Windows 2000.
Tips
Of course, the RAMDISK function provided by Microsoft is relatively simple. Currently, there are some more powerful memory virtual software on the Internet, such as RamDisk.
2. Modify the registry to give full play to the advantages of large memory
Now please open the registry editor, find [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\ControlSession Manager\MomoryManagement], and modify the key value in the right pane (it should be noted that the prerequisite for setting the memory is that the memory should be more than 512MB and is limited to Windows 2000/XP only).
(1) "LargeSystemCache" (start large system cache): open a large memory space in memory for pre-read operations of disk file system. When the data requested by the program increases continuously, Windows automatically pre-reads through the system cache, allowing the program to obtain the required data at the fastest speed. Since enabling this system buffering will consume more physical memory, the available physical memory that can be utilized by the program is reduced. Set its value to 1. In this way, the system cache is increased from 4MB to 8MB.
(2) "SecondLevelDataCache" (improving CPU performance): The CPU's processing speed is much greater than the memory access speed, and the memory is much faster than the hard disk. In this way, a bottleneck effect affecting performance is formed between the CPU and memory and between the memory and disk. The previous "LargeSystemCache" was designed to alleviate the bottleneck of memory and disk. In order to quickly obtain processing data from memory, the CPU also sets up a buffering mechanism L2 Cache (level 2 cache). Adjusting this key value can enable Windows to better cooperate with the CPU to use this cache mechanism to obtain higher data pre-read hit rate. It is recommended to set it to 512
(3) DisablePagingExecutive: Change its value to 1 (hexadecimal), which will force all programs and data to run in physical memory instead of using virtual memory. It is obvious that when there is enough physical memory to complete the required tasks, doing so will result in a huge improvement in system performance. For users with only 64MB of memory, it may be a disaster - the system makes frequent errors until it crashes.
(4) "IOPageLockLimit" (customized input/output buffer size): The input and output system is the channel for data transmission between the device and the microprocessor. When its buffer size is expanded, data transmission will be smoother. Similarly, the specific size of the setting depends on the size of the physical memory and the number of running tasks. Generally speaking, if the memory has 64MB, the hexadecimal value of the double-byte key can be set to 400 (1MB), 800 (2MB), or 1000 (4MB) and 128MB of memory can be set to 1000 (4MB), 2000 (8MB) or 4000 (16MB); 256MB of memory can be 4000 (16MB) or 8000 (32MB). Of course, if there is more memory, you can set it to 10000 (64MB) or even more. When set to 0, Windows will automatically configure it.
Tips
It is said that this setting can also effectively solve the problem of BT downloads damaging the disk.
3. Can Windows 98/Me use 1GB of memory?
Windows 98/Me does not support more than 1GB of memory. At the same time, after the memory exceeds 128MB, special adjustments are required to enable the system to better manage and use memory and avoid system failures caused by large memory. All key settings revolve around Vcache (virtual high-speed memory).
Do you know?
What is Vcache?
It is a physical memory allocated by Windows to the hard disk and is used as a cache, which can greatly improve the read and write speed of the hard disk, similar to the purpose of Smartdrv under DOS. Simply put, Vcache is a piece of space automatically allocated in physical memory by Windows to save code and data that has been used and that Windows believes will be used again. In this way, when new programs require this to be used, they do not have to read from the hard disk, but directly read from the memory. This will result in much faster speed, greatly improving system performance.
(1)128MB~512MB
According to experts, if the memory is 128MB~512MB, it is best to use "Notepad" to open the [Vcache] section, find the line starting with "MaxFilecache=", and set its value to 70% of the physical memory (because the value used here is in KB, you need to use the formula of MB*1024 or Bytes/1024 to convert the data). For example: your memory is 128MB, then it should be 128*0.7*1024=91750.4 (about 91750KB), and the statement should be written as "MaxFileCache=91750"
(2) More than 512MB of memory
Some friends will find that when the memory is increased to more than 512MB, when starting Windows 98/Me or opening a DOS window, the system will prompt "out of memory".
This is mainly because Windows 98/Me has defects when processing memory greater than 512MB, so it is best to set the MaxFileCache value of Vcache to 512MB (524,288KB), which is "MaxFileCache=524288".
(3) 1GB memory
If the memory reaches 1GB or higher, Windows 98/Me will experience continuous restarts, crashes, or continuous restarts during use of Windows Update.
To solve this problem, also open the file, add "MaxPhysPage=40000" in the [386Ehh] field. In this way, the memory read by Windows can be limited to less than 1GB.
If you cannot enter Windows, you can press the Ctrl key during restart until the startup menu appears, then select the "Command Prompt Only" item, enter "edit" and press Enter after the command prompt appears, and then add "MaxPhysPage=40000" in the [386Ehh] field.
4. Turn off sleep
Many users like the hibernation function, which can achieve the fast boot function. However, for computers with large memory, it is best to turn off the hard disk sleep function when they do not read or write hard disk frequently, because sometimes it will cause no reason to crash.
5. If you have large memory, you can do without virtual memory?
I often see many articles introducing that after having large memory, virtual memory can be disabled. Actually, it is not the case! For example: Windows 98/Me has a inherent shortage of memory greater than 512MB. If Windows 98 is larger than this amount of memory, Windows 98 will be unstable and the startup speed will become slower. If large memory is used and virtual memory is disabled, the instability factor will be further increased.
In addition, Windows itself is designed to map the memory space allocated to it into the swap file once it is found that once it is found that a process is transferred to the inactive state, it will map the memory space allocated to the swap file, and empty the physical memory as much as possible to other active processes. It does not start to use the swap file if it is used up. Because it will be too late to call it until the physical memory is used up. On computers with lower configuration, data transmission and processing will inevitably stagnate. Therefore, in principle, banning virtual memory is most likely to cause Windows exceptions, and there will be no failures that cannot be run in time. It will frequently prompt that virtual memory is insufficient. Please reset it.
Do you know？
According to Asus experts, when using the motherboard of the INTEL 850/850E chipset, if it is paired with 2GB of RAMBUS memory, the computer will be unstable. This is due to the limitations of Intel850/850E chipsets. Intel's recommendation is: the number of memory cells * the number of wafers on each memory ≤ 24. Currently, the number of chips sold in RAMBUS 256 memory in China is 8, and the number of chips with Rambus 512MB memory is 16, so when users use too large memory, they may experience unstable phenomena.
6. Let large memory help hard drives
If you have more than 512MB of memory and have a Maxtor or Quantum hard drive, then Maxtor's MaxBoost is worth a try. It is said that it can greatly improve hard drive performance, up to about 60% of hard drive performance. This software is actually a disk driver, which replaces the disk driver of Windows 2000/XP. It can automatically set a cache suitable for the system memory for different application software, and plays a pre-read and buffer role before reading and writing data. It uses disk reading and writing data to use a "advanced algorithm" that refuses to publish technical details, thereby effectively improving the reading and writing speed of hard disks and achieving the purpose of improving application and system speed. According to some experts, although the software is not as magical as the official claims, it does show its skills in operation such as file copying. Of course, since MaxBoost is still in the beta stage, there are still some problems, so it is recommended that ordinary players use the software after it is officially launched.