Improving Response of XP

[Nick Y]

One of my concerns with XP and my T43 is that sometimes it seems very slow. For example, when opening a folder, I can lose all icons to default for a short while, until XP has decided to redraw them all.

Thinking that this must be related to multi-tasking, I searched on the net and found the following, which, so far, has generally improved the response.

Source: TechIMO Forums at http://www.techimo.com/forum/archive/in ... -5481.html

Posted by 'NDC', in November 29th, 2001, 06:14 AM
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Have you noticed that Windows XP isn's as responsive when it comes to multi-tasking? This is quite apparent when you run an application that is running a heavy process.

For example, when Photoshop is running a heavy filter or resizing which takes may take a few minutes to complete the task, you're unable to click on the START button or any of icons on the quick launch bar and even if you are able to click them, the new process is in a pause state because of the first process. However, programs that are already running in the background may run fine. It appears that XP has problems starting a new thread but what ever is already running in the background works fine. After some fiddling around, I 've found the solution to this problem. Just follow the steps below if you're mulit-task heavily like I do and you're having the same problem as I mention above...

1. Go to start --> Control Panel --> System --> Advanced --> performance --> Settings --> Advanced.

2. Change the option for MEMORY USAGE from PROGRAMS to SYSTEM CACHE.

3. Reboot the system to take the new system settings.


My conclussion is that when you have the "Memory Usage" from programs to System Cache, more system files that would be accessed from hard disk is being accessed from physical memory and therefore less CPU utilization takes place since it doesn't have to fetch the needed system files from the hard disk which utilizes CPU usage. Anyone have a better expanation? This is the only conclussion I can come to...
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There are a few related comments, hence the link above, although some relate to Windows 2000.

Nick

[NovaxX]

The setting of MEMORY USAGE to SYSTEM CACHE sets the priority for system memory to store system data rather than program data.

This would mean that the system files are given higher priority instead. I normally see administrators setting this up only for server environments where the OS stability and performance is important. For the normal user, the default setting of having program priority should work fine.

I would think that a RAM upgrade will help you out of your situation. If the delays persist, it could mean that you have a more than usual number of programs running in the background.