Memory management

You rarely think of it when your PC works well, but memory is the key to improving performance. We ramp up your RAM

Memory prices go up and down. Though putting more RAM in your PC is almost always a good investment, but you don’t have to spend any money to get the most from the memory you already have. Hard drives are getting larger (in four years we’ve gone from 4Gb to 40Gb as a ‘reasonable’ hard drive) but memory is still far more expensive than storage, so Windows needs to use free disk space as virtual memory. Tweaking the way Windows works with that virtual memory can make a big difference to the performance of your PC, and it can make sure it doesn’t crash all the time.

The more programs you run, the slower your PC goes. Not only is the virtual memory on your hard drive a hundred times slower than real memory, but shuffling one chunk of information from physical memory into the swap file that stores virtual memory on the hard drive to make room for the data another application is asking for takes time, too. Some apps request more memory than they need and hang on to it. Badly written applications can hog memory even after you close them, and shared DLL files that are loaded up by one program won’t get closed with that application in case another program is using them at the same time.

Tools of the trade

Memory optimisation tools are the best way to clean up memory. You can often double the amount of free memory without closing any documents or programs and the memory will be less fragmented, too.

If you’re defragmenting your hard drive, remember to turn off virtual memory first, as the swap file can’t be moved or defragmented because it’s always in use. In Windows 98, right-click My Computer and choose Properties, Performance, Virtual Memory, Disable virtual memory (Not recommended). If your PC runs out of RAM when you don’t have virtual memory it can crash, so don’t run other software while you’re defragmenting (which would give you other unmoveable files anyway) and turn the swap file back on when you’re done.

Windows creates a page file that’s at least as large as your real memory, plus 12Mb. You can set the maximum and minimum space to make sure you don’t run out of disk space. If you make both the same size, then Windows won’t waste time making the file larger and smaller. This also means that the swap file stays in the same place on your hard drive and so doesn’t become fragmented. 384Mb is a good size to start with.

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