Memory tweaks

Here is a list of various memory related tweaks for Windows XP tweaks.

Memory Performance Tweaks

There are several memory tweaks that can be performed with Windows XP
Load the Registry Editor by going to 'Start Menu -> Run...', then type 'regedit' and press enter.
Navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management'

Disable Paging Executive

In normal usage, XP pages sections from RAM memory to the hard drive. We can stop this happening and keep the data in RAM, resulting in improved performance.
Find the key called 'DisablePagingExecutive' and change the value from 0 to 1 to de-activate memory paging.
(Note that only users with a large amount of RAM (256MB+) should use this setting.)

System Cache Boost

Changing the value of the key 'LargeSystemCache' from 0 to 1 will tell Windows XP to allocate all but 4MB of system memory to the file system cache, basically meaning that the XP Kernel can run in memory, greatly improving it's speed. The 4MB of memory left is used for disk caching, but if for any reason more is needed, XP allocates more. Generally, this tweak improves performance by a fair bit but can, in some intensive applications, degrade performance. As with the above tweak, you should have at least 256MB of RAM before attempting to enable LargeSystemCache.

Input/Output Performance

This tweak is only really valuable to anyone running a server - it improves performace while a computer is performing large file transfer operations. By default, the value does not appear in the registry, so you will have to create a REG_DWORD value called 'IOPageLockLimit'. The data for this value is in bytes, and defaults to 512KB on machines that have the value. Most people using this tweak have found maximum performance in the 8 to 16 megabyte range, so you will have to play around with the value to find the best performance. Remember that the value is measured in bytes, so if you want, say, 12MB allocated, it's 12 * 1024 * 1024, or 12582912. As with all these memory tweaks, you should only use this if you have 256MB or more of RAM.

Unloading DLLs

Windows Explorer often caches DLL files in memory for a period of time after they have finished being used. This can result in large amounts of memory being taken up by DLL files that are not even being used. To stop this happening:
Load the Registry Editor by going to 'Start Menu -> Run...', then type 'regedit' and press enter.
Navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\' and create a new DWORD value called 'AlwaysUnloadDLL' with a default value of 1. To disable this tweak, delete the key.
(Note: Windows has to restart for this tweak to take effect.)

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