Windows XP Hacks

Getting the Most Out of Your RAM

The best way to improve system performance is to make better use of your RAM. Here are several hacks to show you how to try this before you buy more.

No matter how much memory you have, you could always use more. Installing more RAM is generally the quickest way to better XP performance.

But you can also speed up XP by making better use of the RAM you already have. In this hack, we’ll look at how you can speed up your system performance by using your RAM more effectively.

Make Better Use of Your Memory with the Task Manager

If your system doesn’t have enough RAM, or if it uses what it has improperly, your system slows down. That’s because in those circumstances it moves data and programs to a paging file on your hard disk, and your hard disk is slower than RAM. A certain amount of this is normal, but if you use a paging file too much, or if even your paging file can’t handle the memory load, you’ll run into system slowdowns and problems.

The Task Manager’s Performance tab, shown in Figure 11-2, provides the best way to monitor memory use. To run the Task Manager, press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, then click on the Performance tab. With it, you can interpret the information and make better use of your memory.

Figure 11-2. The Task Manager’s Performance tab

The most important parts the screen shown in Figure 11-2 are the charts that report on paging file use and ...