The topic that everyone often talks about recently is the big price reduction of DDR memory. DDR266 plummeted from more than 400 yuan to around 200 yuan. Many people have used 512MB or even 1GB of memory. So there is a view that has become popular among some players, saying that disabling virtual memory, prohibiting Windows page file exchange, and forcibly commanding data to be processed in memory can speed up data reading and writing efficiency. Is this really the case?
Set according to application needs
The author believes that this statement should be treated according to the situation, and it is not a good thing to just say that banning it.
First, we need to figure out what a "big memory" configuration is. When I first designed Windows to use virtual memory because physical memory is very expensive, generally not exceeding 128MB capacity, and it requires temporary buffering of hard disk space - that is, you should compare how much physical memory you need during application with the memory you actually own. If the actual memory you actually own is less than the application peak, you will encounter trouble.
Generally speaking, if you want to perform tasks with large data volumes such as large flat images and 3D animation rendering, virtual memory should not be disabled; if you often want to print documents with large numbers of pictures, banning virtual memory will also cause errors to the program. Because software like Word needs to generate buffer files before printing and then transfer them to the printer, when the image size is larger and the resolution is higher, the buffer capacity required is also very large. When I helped advertising artists produce design drawings, I encountered the situation where I printed a picture to generate nearly 300MB temporary files. Because Windows and applications themselves also require a certain amount of memory to run, if you have a 512MB configuration and disabled virtual memory, it is very likely that you will report insufficient virtual memory in the middle, and forcibly exiting will cause waste of printing paper and ink.
Therefore, you must decide whether to disable virtual memory based on your task application environment. Even if you set the virtual memory size in a fixed setting, you must be careful, otherwise the virtual memory will be insufficient when running large application software. The entire system will become very slow due to the extremely high CPU usage rate. It will not be so convenient to change it at this time.
Consider operating system factors
Under different operating systems, the settings or disabling of virtual memory are also different and cannot be generalized.
Due to architecture issues, Windows 9x/Me has a inherent shortage of memory larger than 256MB. If it exceeds 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 unstable factors will increase further. The memory capacity that Windows 2000/XP can effectively manage is about 1GB, and it will also be unstable if it exceeds this number, and it varies depending on the motherboard BIOS model and chipset performance.
In addition, Windows itself is designed to be that once a process is found to be inactive, it will map the memory space allocated to it into the swap file, and empty the physical memory as much as possible to other active threads. It does not start to use the swap file if it is used up. Because it is too late to call it until the physical memory is used up, and data transmission and processing will inevitably stagnate on machines with lower configurations. Therefore, in principle, banning virtual memory is most likely to cause Windows exceptions. Even if there is no failure to run, it will frequently prompt that the virtual memory is insufficient. Please reset it, which will make you very annoyed.
How to disable virtual memory
For friends who have a large capacity of memory, if they really want to disable virtual memory to speed up their running speed, they can actually "scam" Windows with a compromise method, which is to divide a part of the physical memory into a physical hard disk:
98
You can add a sentence to it: DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\ 23000 /E (Please set it appropriately according to the partition where your Windows is located). This sentence is to use memory to create a partition from virtual. 23000 is how much physical memory you want to use, and the unit is KB. If you have 1GB, you can set this number to about 300,000 to 500,000, that is, 300~500MB, and then set the virtual memory to the virtual partition, and the program will run completely in physical memory.
2000/XP
You must rely on third-party tool software to virtualize the physical hard disk, and then set the page file to the virtual disk to achieve the same effect; or you can add a sentence at the bottom of "[386enh]" in "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1, so that Windows will use physical memory first, and try not to forcefully disable virtual memory swap files directly.
in conclusion
The author believes that the acceleration effect achieved by disabling virtual memory is very limited, and the default settings of Windows are more appropriate in general, especially the default settings of Windows 2000/XP are very good at managing virtual memory. Try not to change them at will, otherwise it will be difficult for you to judge and analyze problems.
Some failure analysis of memory
Sometimes, Windows has some memory-related failure prompts, which are not necessarily memory-related; while some memory-related failures are really caused by memory and are very concealed.
For example: if you use tools like PQ partition master to change the size of the partition cluster. When the cluster is smaller than the default value, Windows 98 may report insufficient memory when running disk scans, but it is normal under Windows 2000 and Windows XP - that is, this has nothing to do with memory.
For example: Sometimes when you turn on and enter Windows, the system will prompt you whether to recover or not. When you choose to restore, restart again, or the same prompt, this kind of failure is mostly caused by problems in memory stick or cooling, and you need to replace the memory or fan.
Therefore, Windows prompts sometimes mislead users. If the same fault occurs repeatedly, it cannot be solved according to the prompts. You should consider the possibility of Windows false positives.
Set according to application needs
The author believes that this statement should be treated according to the situation, and it is not a good thing to just say that banning it.
First, we need to figure out what a "big memory" configuration is. When I first designed Windows to use virtual memory because physical memory is very expensive, generally not exceeding 128MB capacity, and it requires temporary buffering of hard disk space - that is, you should compare how much physical memory you need during application with the memory you actually own. If the actual memory you actually own is less than the application peak, you will encounter trouble.
Generally speaking, if you want to perform tasks with large data volumes such as large flat images and 3D animation rendering, virtual memory should not be disabled; if you often want to print documents with large numbers of pictures, banning virtual memory will also cause errors to the program. Because software like Word needs to generate buffer files before printing and then transfer them to the printer, when the image size is larger and the resolution is higher, the buffer capacity required is also very large. When I helped advertising artists produce design drawings, I encountered the situation where I printed a picture to generate nearly 300MB temporary files. Because Windows and applications themselves also require a certain amount of memory to run, if you have a 512MB configuration and disabled virtual memory, it is very likely that you will report insufficient virtual memory in the middle, and forcibly exiting will cause waste of printing paper and ink.
Therefore, you must decide whether to disable virtual memory based on your task application environment. Even if you set the virtual memory size in a fixed setting, you must be careful, otherwise the virtual memory will be insufficient when running large application software. The entire system will become very slow due to the extremely high CPU usage rate. It will not be so convenient to change it at this time.
Consider operating system factors
Under different operating systems, the settings or disabling of virtual memory are also different and cannot be generalized.
Due to architecture issues, Windows 9x/Me has a inherent shortage of memory larger than 256MB. If it exceeds 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 unstable factors will increase further. The memory capacity that Windows 2000/XP can effectively manage is about 1GB, and it will also be unstable if it exceeds this number, and it varies depending on the motherboard BIOS model and chipset performance.
In addition, Windows itself is designed to be that once a process is found to be inactive, it will map the memory space allocated to it into the swap file, and empty the physical memory as much as possible to other active threads. It does not start to use the swap file if it is used up. Because it is too late to call it until the physical memory is used up, and data transmission and processing will inevitably stagnate on machines with lower configurations. Therefore, in principle, banning virtual memory is most likely to cause Windows exceptions. Even if there is no failure to run, it will frequently prompt that the virtual memory is insufficient. Please reset it, which will make you very annoyed.
How to disable virtual memory
For friends who have a large capacity of memory, if they really want to disable virtual memory to speed up their running speed, they can actually "scam" Windows with a compromise method, which is to divide a part of the physical memory into a physical hard disk:
98
You can add a sentence to it: DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\ 23000 /E (Please set it appropriately according to the partition where your Windows is located). This sentence is to use memory to create a partition from virtual. 23000 is how much physical memory you want to use, and the unit is KB. If you have 1GB, you can set this number to about 300,000 to 500,000, that is, 300~500MB, and then set the virtual memory to the virtual partition, and the program will run completely in physical memory.
2000/XP
You must rely on third-party tool software to virtualize the physical hard disk, and then set the page file to the virtual disk to achieve the same effect; or you can add a sentence at the bottom of "[386enh]" in "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1, so that Windows will use physical memory first, and try not to forcefully disable virtual memory swap files directly.
in conclusion
The author believes that the acceleration effect achieved by disabling virtual memory is very limited, and the default settings of Windows are more appropriate in general, especially the default settings of Windows 2000/XP are very good at managing virtual memory. Try not to change them at will, otherwise it will be difficult for you to judge and analyze problems.
Some failure analysis of memory
Sometimes, Windows has some memory-related failure prompts, which are not necessarily memory-related; while some memory-related failures are really caused by memory and are very concealed.
For example: if you use tools like PQ partition master to change the size of the partition cluster. When the cluster is smaller than the default value, Windows 98 may report insufficient memory when running disk scans, but it is normal under Windows 2000 and Windows XP - that is, this has nothing to do with memory.
For example: Sometimes when you turn on and enter Windows, the system will prompt you whether to recover or not. When you choose to restore, restart again, or the same prompt, this kind of failure is mostly caused by problems in memory stick or cooling, and you need to replace the memory or fan.
Therefore, Windows prompts sometimes mislead users. If the same fault occurs repeatedly, it cannot be solved according to the prompts. You should consider the possibility of Windows false positives.