why is my PF usage constantly high?

my pf usage is constantly at 236. and i only have 256mb of ram. and i think this is causing my computer to be slow. why would my ph usage be high when i'm not doing so much and the harddrive light is usally blinking as if the harddrive is being used. what could cause this besides spam/spy ware ect. cause i've ran spy bot, ad aware, spy blaster, to clear those things but the computer still runs slow. so can someone explain to me what might be going on? thank you

by the way the cpu usage is not that high. its like at 3%-10%

what os are u using and whats runing in the background?
256 mb isnt that much for moden os and apps and windows will swap to disk anything it can.

you could google for black vipers windows config he tells u whats safe to disable in the services.msc window .... start-->run-->"services.msc" with no quotes

disk swaping occurs when unused programs and data is writen to the page file a file on the hard disk to free ram for the aplicatiion u are using.


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I wouldn't be worried about 236mb pf usage. Thats pretty low considering you only have 256mb of ram.

If the page file size isn't changing at all, then I would not suspect that that is causing the problem. I would believe it would be something else.

If you are using windows XP with the visualy enhanced desktop then that is your problem. With the classic windows desktop you free up about 20 mb of memory. Also I have 512 mb of ram and use 344 mb pagefile so your 244 is not a big deal unless your hardrive blows.

Remember though a pagefile is not ram, its used as random access memory but its stored on the harddrive. This is to help compatibility with programs that require a large amount of ram, it throws all the info in the ram onto the hdd and then loads the new program (its not quite that simple, but just incase you didnt know).

I believe in windows xp (in my experience) that when the PF says 236, its using your ram aswell as pagefile to get that 236 number. I could be wrong, but thats what I picked up when using it. I do not use a pagefile and my usage sits around 400megs constantly. Unless I load a program or something. So in my case, ALL of that is being stored in memory

you need more ram if you are running xp

Dc5e said:

I would believe it would be something else.

Click to expand...

Yeah, like the 256 megs of ram

Yes if your following the PF Usage bar it includes ram usage. If you want to really know whats in ram and whats in the PF on your drive check out the Physical Memory and Commit Charge.

Im using 544Megs right now with 512Megs of ram. I have 73Megs free in ram, so that comes out to 105Megs on the drive (and 47Megs of that is my Kernel Memory on my drive). Guessing your on XP, and thats a memory hog. By using the guide you can cut it down to maybe 150-180Megs that the OS would use. If your running secondary apps that will chew at least 10-20Megs per app up.

I have a machine at home with 256Megs currently and it sucks. Just for general browsing/chatting/and moving files around its slow because of the swaping accuring.

Only way to speed up is cut your fancy stuff, turn off resources, minimal programs all the time. Even then you'll still go over your limit and be using the PF on your drive. If you got a Gig thatas another story (and 2Gigs well rarely anythings PF to the drive).

256ddr in my car on xp pro is fine. Just wouldnt recommend keeping it that little for games.