Windows??™ System Restore feature can consume up to 15% of
the total capacity of your hard disk for restore points and
shadow copies. To reduce its usage or turn it off entirely, see
???Go Back in Time with Restore Points and Shadow Copies,???
in Chapter 6.
Optimize Virtual Memory and Cache Settings
One of the most frustrating and irritating things about Windows is the way
that it can seize up for several seconds with seemingly random, pointless
disk activity. One of the causes of this behavior is the way Windows handles
disk virtual memory by default.
Normally, Windows loads drivers and applications into memory until it??™s
full, and then starts to use part of your hard disk to ???swap??? out information,
freeing up more memory for higher-priority tasks. The file that Windows
uses for this type of ???virtual memory??? is the paging file (a.k.a. swap
file), pagefile.sys, and it is stored in the root folder of your Windows drive.
Because your hard disk is so much slower than your physical memory, the
more swapping Windows has to do, the slower your computer gets. This is
why adding more memory speeds up your PC: it reduces Windows??™ appetite
for virtual memory. But regardless of the amount of installed physical
memory in your system, there are always things you can do to improve virtual
memory performance.
Windows??™ defaults here are rather conservative and can fortunately be modified
for better performance. It??™s important to realize, though, that some
experimentation may be required to achieve the best configuration for your
setup.
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