Windows XP

[Leeloo]

Currently I have 1GB memory and 512MB swap. I could really just skip the swap file and use ramfs to create a small swap-file in memory (increases performance, rather than having no swap at all).

I'm not sure if that still holds, if it does it's really a bug... Besides, executables and shared libraries can be "swapped" out even with no swap space.

 

Btw, it does make sense to have some swap, even if you have the RAM you need, because stuff that doesn't run very often (cron, your mail program checking mail every 10 minutes, anything minimized) can be swapped out and the memory used for disk caching instead. Of course if you have enough RAM for both programs and disk cache, you still shouldn't need any swap.

 

I tried that on a freshly installed webserver, with 1 GB of RAM. As the web site was not on the server yet, but only the system, it only used 192 MB disk space. No matter what you do in that situation, you are not going to get it to cache more than 192 MB.

[Korgan]

I just don't get how I can be doing something wrong. Assume I just reinstalled XP... Now, what do I need to do to make it fast?

It could be this really really old virus that many people suffer from.

 

It's called Intel.

 

Anyhoooo... Could be some kind of conflicting hardware. No, I'm not talking about checking Windows for conflicts. I'm talking about the possibility of some of your expansion cards being incompatible with your motherboard, for example, or even some integrated parts being faulty. If I were you, I'd try with "vanilla" settings, as in only graphics card for starters. If you use an integrated sound chip, turn it off from BIOS. Also see that all your settings for speeds and memory are correct. I kid you not, a badly configured BIOS can mean 50% "oomph" loss in the worst scenarios. (Yeah, someone is bound to disagree, but disagree all you want -- I care not.)

 

You might also want to try disabling fast write on AGP (Which everyone should have off anyway, unless you have like a high-end Athlon64), disable plug&play support... As such they shouldn't affect generic speed of your system, but for example Hauppauge TV-cards are notoriously crappy with VIA/etc chipsets, so some slowdowns might be caused indirectly by something like this, as some expansion card is jammin' the system "at the other end".

 

All I can say is that WindowsXP has worked for me best out of any Windows thus far. With my current computers, Athlon XP 2400+ and Athlon XP-M 3000+, WindowsXP works perfectly. At school, 2,4 GHz Celerons run it smooth. Heck, one classroom with hyper-outdated Celeron 300's with only 128 megs of RAM run it good enough, after all the initial boot-swapping is done.

 

That probably didn't help, but it's like I usually tell people... "I can't help more unless I see it first-hand".

 

-- Korgan, the quasi-friendly computer nerd/pro dwarf

 

PS. Am I the only one who has to put up with like basic Word/Excel BS just so you can get some kind of proof of your computer skills? School sucks. I'm too old for that crapola.

[Leeloo]

Current machine is an onboard everything, so expansion cards shouldn't conflict (hopefully). But apart from that, Windows has been slow on every PC I used it on so far, with the possible exception of when my brother had Win98 on his multi-GHz machine.

 

And yes, I am talking about a P4.