How can I increase performance besides adding memory?

I have been using 128 megs of PC100 SDRAM (64M x 2) in my PC (PC manual calls for PC66 SDRAM), for about 2 years. I was told that it should work, as long as I didn't use an SDRAM rated less than PC66. My PC works fine, and BIOS shows 128M memory. Other tests (such as PC Dr.) show 128M OK as well.

I just want to verify that my assumption is correct, as I still run into minor problems (such as slowness of programs when printing) that I think are related to memory.

Thanks.

This question was answered on March 27, 2001. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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It sounds like you are doing just fine with your decisions and installations to your system Having ample memory is a good way to increase processing speed There may be other things that you can address to help in improving your system in that area.

Hard drive maintenance, such as defragmenting your disk on a regular basis can improve performance In the same line of thought, Norton Utilities offers a speed disk program that locates all the fragments of files and reorganizes them so that the hard drive doesn't have to work so hard to access related files Each file is written to the hard drive as it is added, leaving fragments of the same file or program scattered throughout Often you can actually hear a difference in the HD performance after completing the speedisk application.

Increasing the size of the page file is another way to aid the performance of a system unit, for moments when even ample memeory is insufficient to perform the processes needed Windows generally manages this process, but it can be altered by clicking start, settings, control panel, system, the advanced tab and selecting the performance option.

"When your computer is running low on RAM and more is needed immediately to complete your current task, Windows 98 uses hard drive space to simulate system RAM In Windows 98, this is known as Virtual Memory, and often called the pagefile The default size of the virtual memory pagefile (appropriately named pagefile.sys) created during installation is 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your computer.

You can optimize virtual memory use by dividing the space between multiple drives and especially by removing it from slower or heavily accessed drives To best optimize your virtual memory space, divide it across as many physical hard drives as possible Try to avoid having a pagefile on the same drive as the system files."

I hope these suggestions help and thank you for your question

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Posted by Michael of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on March 27, 2001

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