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Thread: Answer me this....

  1. #1
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    Answer me this....

    Would adding another HD to my system and placing the swap file on it actually improve system performance? (in other words, use the slave drive for the swap/pagefile)

    Also, I'm having problems with SP1 update. After installation on one of my machines (the others are operating fine), IE6 is crawling!!! I mean CRAWLING!!!! Yet, when I install all the critical updates prior to SP1 fix, the machine runs fine. Someone, in their infinite wisdom, said this is associated with an illegal serial number. Is there any validity to that statement? Otherwise, i'm going to uninstall (using GOBACK) and continue as before. I'm using a router as well as firewall in the form of software, so what, if any, risk would I be taking by not installing SP1?

    Any help would be appreciated.

    Thanks,

    FBM
    "If you want SQUARE work, you DON'T CUT CORNERS!!!!"

  2. #2
    Friendly Neighborhood Super Moderator phishhead's Avatar
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    you are correct about sp1 the corp(devilsown ) key has been black listed and will not work. as far as the swap drive what are the specs of the drive and your sys specs.



  3. #3
    Precision Processor Super Moderator egghead's Avatar
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    You should get the same performance from xp regardless of what serial numbers you are using.you seem to be having a conflict with one of your newer drivers. check for spyware before updating and after updateing and you should also restore explorer to defaults.

    hope these suggestions help

    egghead
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  4. #4
    Friendly Neighborhood Super Moderator phishhead's Avatar
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    let me get this straight can you update to sp1...if not then its an illegal key. if you can then its something different.



  5. #5
    Super Moderator Super Moderator Big Booger's Avatar
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    About the swap file. What you suggested seems reasonable. But if you have a large HDD now, you can partition it, and put the swap file on the NON-OS partition. In my case I have a 60GB HDD partitioned into 2 parts, one 24 and one 36. The swap file is on the 36Gb partition.

    Hope that helps.
    BB

  6. #6
    all bets are off... TZ Veteran SupaStar's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Big Booger
    About the swap file. What you suggested seems reasonable. But if you have a large HDD now, you can partition it, and put the swap file on the NON-OS partition. In my case I have a 60GB HDD partitioned into 2 parts, one 24 and one 36. The swap file is on the 36Gb partition.

    Hope that helps.
    BB
    However you should see (marginally) better performance using a separate drive as it has it's own set of read/write heads taking the load off your main drive.

    I might give this a go since I have a spare drive lying around.

  7. #7
    Precision Processor Super Moderator egghead's Avatar
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    so if i stick a 2 gig hd in my computer it is going to fly like in the microsoft commercials?
    ------------------------------------------------------------



  8. #8
    Super Moderator Super Moderator Big Booger's Avatar
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    Supastar is totally spot on. You will see slightly better performance with a separate drive. I wonder if anyone has benchmarked this and actually proven the performance gain of setting your PF on a separate drive as opposed to on a separate partition of the same HDD.

    Would be interesting.
    BB

  9. #9
    Succeded in braking Windo TZ Veteran Dehcbad25's Avatar
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    What about this question, Is it better to distribute the PF over diferent drives??
    I have 5 drives, and 3 have PF (all are different devices) that makes it slower than if I had all the PF in one drive?

  10. #10
    all bets are off... TZ Veteran SupaStar's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Dehcbad25
    What about this question, Is it better to distribute the PF over diferent drives??
    I have 5 drives, and 3 have PF (all are different devices) that makes it slower than if I had all the PF in one drive?
    I guess it would, but then I don't think the difference would be all that great. To my knowledge, more RAM (where possible) would be a better option.


    Originally posted by Big Booger
    I wonder if anyone has benchmarked this and actually proven the performance gain of setting your PF on a separate drive as opposed to on a separate partition of the same HDD.
    If you can recommend a benchmark utility, I can test it out.
    Last edited by SupaStar; February 27th, 2003 at 02:28 AM.

  11. #11
    all bets are off... TZ Veteran SupaStar's Avatar
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    Confirming my earlier allegations...

    From Elder Geek on Windows XP

    Since the paging file and operating system files are by default located on the same drive, concurrent access to both locations is impossible. One or the other has to wait, slowing down overall system performance. What can you do to minimize the delay? If your system only has one hard drive the best option is to pack the motherboard with as much RAM as possible to minimize paging file accesses.

    If the operating system has more than one hard drive, place the paging file on a drive which does not contain the operating system files. A step up from placing the paging file on a separate drive is to place it on a dedicated drive. Even if you don't have a drive to dedicate solely to the paging file, placing it on a different drive that contains files which are not accessed frequently will help the performance issue.

    If more than two hard drives are available, the paging file can be split among different drives. The more drives that are available to split the paging file across, the better the performance increase. Even though it's outside the scope of this article, paging files should not be placed on fault-tolerant drives because of the way data is written to them. It looks like 'the more paging files the better' corollary is applicable, and to a point that is true, with one major exception. Do not place more than one paging file on multiple partitions on a single physical hard disk. Performance will decrease because the drive heads perform sequential accesses to different locations on the drive rather than pulling the information from one contiguous location.

    Finally, the temptation is always great when you have a RAM packed machine to totally eliminate the page file. Don't do it. By design, some components in Windows XP require the presence of a page file, even if they never use it for its intended purpose. You'll likely receive out of memory type errors if you eliminate all page files. Feel free to set the page file to the required minimum (2MB) if you have sufficient RAM, secure in the knowledge that XP won't access the page file unless it's absolutely needed, but again - don't eliminate it totally.

  12. #12
    Super Moderator Super Moderator Big Booger's Avatar
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    http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd.html

    The benchmark for the page file would be cool. Thanks for the info. I learned something new today.
    BB

  13. #13
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    Lightbulb About the Paging file again

    About the paging size... I did notice a considerable difference in access speed when I added another 5 GB hdd to my system running Win XP with SP1.. ( the HDD was almost free as I took it as a charge for installng Windows on a client's machine
    I transferred the entire PF from my primary HDD to secondary HDD and.. KABOOM!!!! my XP was flying ( using a slower flight engine than of MS commercials.. ) but nevertheless much faster...
    Well.. if it ain't Microsoft !!!

  14. #14
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    Originally posted by phishhead
    let me get this straight can you update to sp1...if not then its an illegal key. if you can then its something different.
    I've no problem updating to SP1 ... issue is ... IE6 IS SLOW AS ALL HELL!!!! (having this problem with 1 out of the 5 machines I own)
    Last edited by FBM357; February 27th, 2003 at 17:38 PM.
    "If you want SQUARE work, you DON'T CUT CORNERS!!!!"

  15. #15
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    Great! Now I have something to do with the spare drives I've laying around
    "If you want SQUARE work, you DON'T CUT CORNERS!!!!"

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