Accelerating the system by moving the page file in Windows XP

Windows continues to get on your nerves because of its snail’s pace. You suspect the paging file to be the culprit here. As you have several hard disks on your computer, you want to know the best way to configure the paging file for quicker access.

The page file is supposed to be on the disk that has the highest transfer rate in the PC. For example, if Windows has to move larger graphics and an older disk transfers data at only 10 MB per second, the computer comes de facto to a standstill. Determining Transfer Rates: To start with, download and install a free tool named HD Tune from ‘http://www.hdtune.com/’. Select the desired hard disk in the upper part of the window and activate the ‘Benchmark’ tab in it. Click ‘Start’ and wait for the analysis to complete without using the computer during this period. Now note down the ‘Average’ values in the ‘Transfer Rate’ and ‘Access Time’ areas. Repeat this procedure for other internal drives. Moving the page file: For the page file, select the disk with the highest transfer rate and defragment it. After you have finished defragmenting the selected drive right click on ‘My Computer’ and click on properties. Click ‘Settings’ under ‘Performance’ in the ‘Advanced’ tab. Switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab here and click ‘Change’ under ‘Virtual Memory’. Select the drive you just determined to be the fastest and enable the ‘Custom Size’ option. Enter the same value in the ‘Initial Size’ and ‘Maximum Size’ fields in MB and click on 'Set'. Note: The page file should be double the size of the installed RAM, and if you have space to spare, keep a fixed size for the page file. Now select the slower drive on which the paging file is currently saved. Select the ‘No Paging File’ option and click on ‘Set’. Finally, confirm all the open dialogs with ‘OK’ and restart the computer for the changes to take effect.