Forcing XP to use less virtual memory?

I recently upgraded from a 2x512MB PC3200 to 2x1GB PC4000, but general windows usage seems slower. Right now I'm running two IE7 windows, Nero, Alcohol 120%, iTunes, and a few explorer windows, and theres a lag of a few seconds when I switch between them that wasn't happening before and shouldn't be happening period. CPU usage is only 20-30%, I've got >1GB of physical memory free, but there's a lot of HDD activity, which makes me think its using too much Vmem. How can I set it so that in normal usage it uses primaraly physical RAM, but so when I'm running flight simulator it can have >1GB just for FSX?

I don't think it will use virtual memory if it has available RAM. You could just try setting the page file size to be static and double your physical RAM. Other than that it is pretty much supposed to take care of itself.

Set your page file static to something like 1024min/1024max. Put it on your D Drive(2nd HD) if you have one. It is actually best if you remove all page files from D drive. Then copy everything from D drive into a temp folder on C. Format D. Then put the page file on D 1024/1024. Then go ahead and copy everything back to D.

This puts the pagefile on the outer layer of the platters, which is the fastest and keeps the pagefile from being defragmented. While most of your programs are probably on C drive and being read/wrote to, your computer is also trying to read/write to the pagefile on the same drive. Having it on seperate drives should speed things up.

With Winxp there isn't a whole lot you can do about not using the pagefile. Even if you disable it, there are some programs that refuse to work without it. Now if your programs will work without it, then go ahead and do that. The computer will still make a swap file even if you've disabled it, but it will only be about 200MBs max. I set mine to 1024/1024, which seems to work just fine.

Well, I got rid of all my pagefiles except the one on my hardly-used F: drive, set the min to 100MB and the max to 2GB and that seemed to speed things up quite a bit.

LoneWolf121188 said:

Well, I got rid of all my pagefiles except the one on my hardly-used F: drive, set the min to 100MB and the max to 2GB and that seemed to speed things up quite a bit.

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I keep a small page file (256mb min 512mb max) on my system drive. That way you can get the error logs in case of a crash. I've never used them, but maybe some day I will.

Edit: That's in addition to the 2gb page file I keep on my backup drive.