The slow tabbing between programs sounds like a page file issue but first off:
How big is your drive and how much free space is left?
Not enough free space will slow a drive down. If you have less than 5-10 % it will slow you down. Also, if you are running FAT32 still (if you upgraded Win98 to XP for example) you should defrag. If you run NTFS (PC came with XP) then chances are a defrag won't significantly increase speed unless you've never defragged... ever. NTFS is very good at managing files and speed.
So on with what I think is the real problem:
Let's talk about Virtual Memory and page files for a second. Anytime a program needs to allocate more memory than is currently available Windows will take the amount of memory needed and temporarily save that data to disk. This is called paging and in Windows NT/XP the file is called pagefile.sys and by default is on your C drive (on Win9x it's called the swap file).
Virtual memory can be a real bottleneck if it's not setup correctly and normally it isn't. I highly recommend NOT using a variable sized page file. Every time you breach the limit your PC will snail along until it re-sizes the page file. This page file is heavily protected by the Windows API and is a slooow process. It is best to calculate the amount of VM you need and then allocate that full amount, and if possible mount it on a different physical drive (not partition). Windows gets a very nice speed increase when it's page file is on a different drive than Windows!
Calculating the amount you need is pretty easy. Just take the amount of RAM you have and multiply it by 2.5. If you have 512 MB (ick) it would be 1280 MB, 1 GB would be 2560 MB, etc. Remember that 1 GB is not 1000 MB but actually 1024 MB.
So here's how to find and edit your VM settings:
- Right click the "My Computer" icon and choose properties. Look for the advanced tab and then click the button in the Performance group.
- This brings up another window, click the Advanced tab and look for Virtual Memory - Click the Change button.
- If you have another physical drive with lots of GB free then use it. Click on the current page file in the list and then click the No Page File button to clear it, click the Set button. Then click the drive to use and enter the same value for Initial and Max sizes. Click set.
- If you only have one drive just change the current values to be the amount you need. Click set.
- Reboot and you're done.
Remember that if you upgrade your memory you'll need to do this again to account for the additional RAM. If you run a lot of memory intensive software (large DB servers (MS SQL, Oracle), 3D rendering, etc) you'll want to go as high as 3x or 4x on the page file size to physical RAM.
I think this will solve some of your problems. At the very least it will improve your performance.
Last edited by ReTox (2007-03-02 07:39:15)