BARRY MARTIN wrote:
> Hi Ky!
> OK -- that gives me some very definite programmes to watch. Have an
> antique Abobe Photoshop that came with Windows XP and for some reason
> stopped updating (I eventually shut off checking for any updates as it
> would 'take forever' trying to do the update process). The BBS may or
> may not want a swap file. Also have an old X10 (home automation)
> programme. Will test and see.
Adobe anything older than Win7 hasn't updated since Win7 came out (or
was it 8, but whichever). They made a point of it, to force people to
upgrade.
> KM> But preventing it from using swap any more than absolutely
> KM> necessary will always speed things up; indeed, there used to be
> KM> (may still be) a tweak to make Windows keep all the OS stuff in
> KM> RAM all the time to avoid swap-slowdowns.
> And they always seemed to imply not having a swap file would slow thins
> down to almost a crawl.
I've found it's generally the other way around. In fact way long ago, my
RAM test system was a 486DX4-100 (because it was totally non-fussy and
would use any RAM that fit its slots). One day for whatever reason I was
testing 8mb in it (yeah, this is ancient history) and wanted a hard disk hooked
up as well. So I grabbed one off the pile, and found myself
watching Windows 2000 booting up. Whoops, wrong random HD!!
I watched in amazement as it reached the desktop (took a few minutes),
then just for S&G I fiddled with it a bit... and everything worked, and
ran well enough to not drive a person completely mad (pretty sluggish,
but not terribly laggy -- mostly it was slow at loading programs). I was
astonished. Well, now we know that even tho Win2k will not INSTALL on a
486, it will definitely RUN on a 486. (So will Office2000, if not well.
It was usable, but tiresome.)
And then it occurred to me to check -- and whatever box that Win2K had
been in (no idea, it was salvage), the swapfile had been on a different
HD. There was NONE.
So in the spirit of science I let it make one, and ... it slowed
WAAAAAAAAAAY down, to the point of being unusable. Took all day to do anything.
Killed the swapfile, and it went back to sluggish but tolerable.
On 8 MEGS of RAM. On a 486. (I vaguely recall even Microsoft said
Win2K's min sysreq is 64mb on a Pentium.) And it didn't even whine about
drivers, it just worked.
I was impressed.
I'm pretty sure I kept that motherboard and hard disk, but I don't think
I'll try that experiment again!! At least, not on purpose. :)
Yeah, sysreq is 64mb on a P133.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/304297
It's a wonder that 486 didn't catch fire!
> KM> Indeed, I've noticed that having no swap and not enough RAM, so
> KM> it has to reload from disk a lot, performs slightly better than
> KM> the same situation with a swapfile. Either way it still has to
> KM> reread from disk, but pawing through the swapfile is apparently
> KM> slower than pawing through the rest of the HD.
> I've got the 32-bit version of Windows XP,3 GB of RAM, and a 250 GB HDD.
Here's the thing: If you have a lot of memory, isn't it there to be
used? Why waste time dumping stuff to the swapfile on disk if you don't
need to? At 3GB, it's probably enough even for piggy modern browsers.
(1.8GB to do Youtube and a PDF, WTF.)
> KM> time any file is accessed. (Actually, one system I benchmarked,
> KM> an AMD64 so not too seriously antique, ran FIVE TIMES faster with
> KM> indexing disabled. Search was actually faster without it.)
> <snortle!> One would think having an "index reference file" so the
> computer knoew exactly where to look would speed things up but
> apparently not. I constantly have a variable flashing of the HDD LED
WinXP does that regardless. Every XP install I've ever seen does it.
I don't know what the hell it's doing, but -- it must be moving files
all the bloody time, because it can do nothing more strenuous than
admire its navel (seriously, even sitting there totally unused) and it
will STILL fragment the hard disk.
> which I'm guessing is due mostly to indexing; I've done multiple scans
Nope, XP does that even with indexing turned off. And with no network,
tho I suppose it could be polling for a network all the time. Tho why it
would have to read from the HD to do that escapes me. If that's what
it's doing, it's seriously bad programming zen.
> for virii, rootkits, etc., over the years and the system is usually
> clean. Occasionally something minor found, usually because I downloaded
> a file from a reputable site that begins with a "C" and ends with a
> "NET" and they tend to like installing a little bit of junk.
I don't install from CNet or Softpedia anymore because of that. You
install junk on my system, we know which list you go to the top of!!
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