windowsxp swap file or page file question.

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iamdenteddisk
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windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by iamdenteddisk »

hi all, I have been trying to boost an older computer for a "guest machine", for the living room. I recently cloned it's teeny old drive 20G, to a larger 60g for the C: plus a 20g for f: I had in the closet already formatted .

well I still have that original small 20G drive and it is a fast audio capable drive. so my questions follow.

1)with this machine only having 1G of ram, could I use this old drive for a swap?

2)if so do i partition it in NTFS as it is xp?

3)how big of a partition do I need to make?

4)can I make the whole 20Gs available or will that make it hideously slow?

5)should it be slaved on the primary channel or slaved on the secondary channel?
trying to squeeze as much capability and speed as possible here. so far on the free as I have had this all in a closet for a few years.

I have been trying to research this topic a bit, seems it is a "rule of thumb"(common thought), to make the page file 1and1/2 times larger than the amount of ram installed.

does anyone know for sure with some technical experience on the matter?

I would love to have it run some games, maybe even 3d.. would love for it not to cramp up on face book games and the such.. "for visitors and when the kids come over" (so they wont mess my computers up).

I know I am asking a lot here and in one single post but it is the same topic.
So, give us a rant on it. let me hear any ideas you might offer..
iamdenteddisk
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by iamdenteddisk »

well fellas, I finished my research and got it working to most satisfaction. to windows users i say AMEOI free software pkages of their backupper and their partition assistant made it not only possible but easy. just click the desired task and hit apply.
Happier i did it to.

1) added larger new hdd cloned from old drive.
2) added old main drive back as a slave drive on the same ide channel.
3) added new dedicated virtual memory drive to the secondary IDE channel as master.
4) added 1 extra gig of memory.

p.s. setting the virtual ram on a dedicated drive makes things run like silk. no hurky jerky or long wait. being dedicated there is no over write worry like having it on the main drive plus a speed improvement by having it on secondary channel with no worry of it being corrupted by cd rom because the drive is made master over the channel.

I only have 4G allocated virtual memory plus 2G actual Ram. best xp experience i have had.

best part I now finally have a reason to like that old slow i486.I hated the money wasted,time wasted trying to use it,having to store it any longer. I had tossed in in the closet years back, as soon as I got the x86. well I cannibalized the i486 for parts. he he he..

hardest part was jumper settings on the hdd's.
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burger2227
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by burger2227 »

Could you tell me how you managed to use the hard drive as RAM?

Where are those settings?
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iamdenteddisk
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by iamdenteddisk »

normally, a virtual ram setup is very slow, un trust worthy. because it is usually only activated on the main C drive. because when every step has to do read/write on the same channel at the same time.

I fixed this by dedicating the secondary channel to it. so virtual memory is used unless I put a cd rom in the drive. (which means close processes till you get software installed and back into VMem)

what I done was install the drive i wanted a 10G high speed 7200rpm to the secondary ide channel. (on the end of the lace cable) as secondary channel master.

then the rest is easy, goto start/control panel/system.

now click advanced tab, there in the performance section click settings.

again click the advanced tab.

now at the bottom of that dialog box you should see a virtual memory section.

click (change) that will give a new dialog box.

select the target drive you just installed click custom size set both minimum and maximum to the windows maximum 4096 this is in megs so you just allocated 4Gigs of memory to your computer.

the hard part is getting your drives to recognize in bios. a master drive is "usually" set to cable select and any cd rom drives still on that channel will be set to slave..

this reduces the risk of data corruption by preventing anything taking priority over the "Virtual memory drive".

so far it has been smooth as silk since i posted the upgrade no errors or gliches.. I cant say this is 100% proven or well field tested yet but so far so good..

now for extra security, don't label the drive, windows will assign it a drive letter. this is so "it can't", show up in the my network places as a shared asset..
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by iamdenteddisk »

I used a freshly wiped and formated HDD for the upgrade the software i used to do the cloning i also used for the wipe. i fought with windows a bit because it kept trying to put the same 4gig page file on my C drive automatically if it does this to you, just click the Cdrive and set both values to 0 then click set then check the little button that says no page file. that will remove the C page file.

now make sure to click back on the F or what ever it recognized as and that all settings are correct. this eliminates the chances of the auto BS..
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burger2227
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by burger2227 »

I cloned a 250 G hard drive for my older XP desktop. The old drive was saying it was going bad so I installed a second one and used software from WD to clone it. Seems the new drive inherited the same things wrong as it began acting up too! That told me that XP Pro was probably causing the problems.

Oddly the old drive later checked out as OK once I had installed the new one. Same company made cloner and drive checker. Fraud maybe?

I later decided just to use that XP when I needed DOS to run Qbasic. I just updated it and had problems then too with just the old drive. Since everything is SATA nowadays I can use the 250 G drive with a USB case on anything. May use it as a backup drive. It has ATA or SATA hookups in a nice silver case.

Cloning took a couple of hours as I recall. A hard drive for $13 makes me just add new ones instead...

Western Digital made me prove I had a WD drive before it would let me download the cloning software. May still be on one of those drives? Maybe I'll try to save it for another day.
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iamdenteddisk
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by iamdenteddisk »

so far sounds good, let me ask to, is windows search still available to you?
i see mine in the start menu but when i click it it never pops up..

on a second note, you know of any light weight search apps that work in xp to replace it?


congratz on getting a working clone to..

the drive reporting bad and it doing it on the second disk probably signal of a virus or malware marking good clusters bad, i had that once on mine I used multiple AV's scanning at once to track it down.

it resided in an outside partition is why my Av's couldn't isolate it. once I knew that I just removed/replaced the partition and re formated it, while scanning then scanned again.

folks don't know this but, IBM standard drives can't read all the bytes in a program, there are some bytes "ignored by the drive". to my knowledge "only the ti994a can separate out these bytes, seeing all"because you can adjust the byte chunk size. when you load and run a program they are ignored but present, this is how they made the koobface virus. on my isolated programming machine i use a ti994a as sever to pass all data with a software filter to block these bytes. i just don't know any other way to filter it out.. I just mark what is invisible to IBM drives and overwrite it.. every software made in the last 3 decades has these bad bytes and enough of them are a virus that marks the clusters bad so your computer security will ignore them "till its executable". in the 80's we called them doors, a handle to a function that let us hack away.. it is designed into the machine as a control by (big brother).. it's the same tricks used by MS to compile/run bat files in notepad which has all the functionality of the console only hidden.. basically the address handle is a memory address that resides before commands in a program every function returns something, if only a flag of output of a function. well that flag is moved into stack then the next function is counted for required cycles, that function is expected to interact with the last functions returned data, that is on stack. so the stack is pushed x number of times, so the data return and the new function synchronize. when this is happening in the foreground the bad bytes are being pushed together, defraged if you will, to memory in the background. this is off topic and getting deep and harder to explain any way, but this is the content of my argument over "built in library's", with galleone, over his decided direction with qb64.. only someone willing to hand decompile/translate machine code will even see this stuff. its hidden. what it boils down to is there is one person in control of all data and it isn't us..you might make you own machine secure from it but all hardware and software is vulnerable to it. which means you got to hand decompile translate filter,re translate, re assemble then install <"software security".. (to make it secure). hardware, you either make your own or emulate it, with microcontrollers. only then is any real control or security possible.
Last edited by iamdenteddisk on Fri Jul 17, 2015 8:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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burger2227
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by burger2227 »

Normally when I Search I use the button at the top of a Explorer window. Does that work?

Also in Tools - Folder options in the Explorer window you can add the Tasks side panel.

I haven't used Search much lately as I usually know where my stuff is at. I don't go deep often.
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iamdenteddisk
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by iamdenteddisk »

nope, that search method don't work either. I removed IE.. I am guessing "search" was a part of, if not a function of IE is why it isn't working and IDK how to fix this other than re installing IE except maybe a third party search or or re install something full of vulnerability's..

I will try to add the side panel: didn't work either..

guess i will just have to do without it till- linus..
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burger2227
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by burger2227 »

Oh I think you need IE to use Windows Explorer. That's what that battle with the Fed was about.

M$ said Internet Explorer was part of the OS too! So they HAD t keep it that way.

With the new Edge browser in 10, they won't need to. I'm sticking with Chrome!

Wish my Windows Phone could get Chrome. All my passwords are on it! Maybe after Windows 10 upgrade with Android App...

Why go to Linus when Windows 10 can only cost $50 for Windows 7. My XP computer got a LOT FASTER!
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by iamdenteddisk »

ah, i see..circumvented big brother huh.

it works just fine without it and hasn't had virus or hack attack since.

that being the main reason I'm going to linus, (they don't want to do you in). they give away the OS as well as software Apps for it.

the thing i like about windows x86 that isn't present in linus is DOS shell commands basic and batch.

I would be really happy if I just had a computer that ran basic at the bare metal. i would be willing to make my own software for it and it isn't for hacking or mal intent. but just knowledge, knowing everything about it, noting hidden, no extortion.

really if i could find an old commodore128 peripherals a super snapshot cartridge for it and a stack of disk id be fine with that. I don't care about high end graphics or games but I do care about memory, Hdd space and computation speed. I only use a computer for 2 things, programming in basic and communication

my only interest are AI and physics. aside from that i don't really like computers.

what other use are they, games or watching Pornography?

but I said this all out loud, about my intention to build my own using z80.. someone bought the zilog company out just to prevent that. then the fallout at qb64 so now i still have qb45 but other than that or emulators on pc all luxury of it is gone it makes a really bright and expensive night light though i give them that..
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burger2227
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by burger2227 »

Did I mention that Windows 7 32 bit runs QB just like XP does? My monitor is not the correct size to fit QB graphic programs on the screen perfectly.

I also lost the sound after the first runs when I started getting feedback noise. I ran BEEP and haven't had one sound since.

I've transferred all of my old QB programs over. My QB64 ones too.

Got any ideas how to get the sound back? BEEP just makes a dink sound from the OS. Nothing else seems to work.
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iamdenteddisk
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Re: windowsxp swap file or page file question.

Post by iamdenteddisk »

my guess there is that you where using a soundcard that used a dos driver. if you know the sound is on the motherboard and not a sound card, you might have an option to find chipset drivers for the machine that will enable sound.

if its a card and your sure that it is compatible with 7 seek the drivers for it. maybe dell.com or microsoft.com might have a plugn play driver which means you will need to goto "device manager" click remove on the sound driver for the sound card and reinstall letting windows automatically find a driver which will do the download for you.

that's my best advice there, i'm no authority on win7.. yet now knowing basic works with it, i may try to find a 7disk to keep going with windows..
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