Member Avatar for The Geeky Kid

I want to make my computer think that it has a little more RAM than it actually does, can anyone help me out?

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Short version: you can’t really “trick” the machine into having more physical RAM. As suggested, the practical fix is virtual memory (the pagefile) — it gives the system more usable address space but at disk speeds, not RAM speeds. and point you in the right direction for changing it; below are the important things those posts don’t explain.

What the pagefile does and its limits

  • The OS keeps frequently used data in real RAM and moves less-used pages to disk when it needs room. That makes more programs runnable, but any page moved to disk runs many times slower than it did in RAM.
  • On 32-bit Windows there’s still a per-process address-space cap (typically 2GB unless special boot options are used), so a huge pagefile won’t let one program use more memory than the OS permits. The pagefile mainly prevents “out of memory” errors and lets many apps coexist, it does not speed them up.

Practical, low-cost advice

  • If swapping is heavy your best short-term wins are: close unneeded programs, stop unnecessary startup services, and watch memory usage with Task Manager/Resource Monitor so you can see what’s actually being paged.
  • If you do change the pagefile, putting it on a different physical hard drive (not just a different folder) helps on older HDD systems. For SSDs, keeping the pagefile on the SSD gives much better responsiveness; modern SSDs tolerate normal paging.
  • Long term, adding real RAM is the only way to get true speed. If new sticks are too expensive, look for compatible used DIMMs locally or online. ReadyBoost (Vista+) or zram/zswap on Linux can help in some cases, but they’re not replacements for more physical RAM.

Final note: don’t attempt hardware “mods” to memory sticks — risky and unreliable.

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Member Avatar for lightningdemon

You can increase your Virtual Memory. Short of modding a memory stick, that is the only safe and stable way to not only fool your pc, but sort of speed it up. Albeit not much. With RAM being so cheap these days, I dont see why anyone cant scrape up about $30 fo a 256MB DIMM.

Member Avatar for The Geeky Kid

Because my allowance is a dollar a week...but I don't completely understand, how do I increase Virtual Memory, I couldn't find anything on the net!

Member Avatar for Trace--

go to Start>Settings>Control Panel. open System, go to Advanced tab. Click on the Settings button in the Performance box. on the new window, again go to the Advanced tab, and then click the Change buton.

I like a total of 4 gigs of Virtual; gives my computer room to work.

Change the button to Custom Size, and then use one of the numbers for desired amount of VM. 4 gigs is as high as you can go i believe.

for 1 gig = 1024 in both boxes
for 2 gigs- 2048
for 3 gigs- 3072
for 4 gigs, 4096 in both boxes.

Hope i could help.

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