Lag..

[Markoman01027]

Sometimes when I load programs into RAM(AIM, IE, Sonique, Kazaa Lite) and then when I play my computer game(Dark Age of Camelot) and when I exit out of the game, I run AIM, and it takes a long time for it to load up, after that, I exit out of the program, and the program starts automaticly, the same goes with IE, Sonique, etc) I only got 256MB and the RAM is at 2.5 but I am running it at 2.0 right now. Is this normal? I don't have any viruses, no spyware, nore do I have any trojans installed. My swap file is set to run at 384MB. I don't have much programs running in the background and I have disabled most Services from running. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Reformatted the hard drive like 6 months ago, and been running flawless since.

This sometimes happen if I leave the computer running for a long time, I come back and try to run the program(s) again.

Little run down of what I got, MSI Motherboard, AMD Athlon XP 1800+, Windows 2000 Professional, Netgear FA311 NIC, Sound Blaster Live, IBM Quickstar 80GB ATA 100 Hard Drive, Lite on 48X24X48 CD-RW, 3.5" Floopy

P.S- I noticed this with my friends computer too I think and he is running a P4 2.0Ghz so I guess this could be normal.

Thanks,
Matt

[sleepypost]

I would try setting it back to 2.5 and see if that works. Or, aren't you supposed to be able to let your RAM "sit" for a while and everything clears out? (when PC is off) ??

[Nuclear Krusader]

Are you experiencing slow browsing too?

[Markoman01027]

This happened when I had 2.5 too, so I tried to put it to 2.0 to see if it would perform better, but it didn't. Browsing is fine. ..Any idea guys?

[reboot]

It's not the RAM speed. I'll bet the game is not releasing any of the RAM when you exit. It could be just about any other piece of software you have too. Something is using up RAM and swap, and not completely exiting. Plenty of software does this, mainly because it's poorly written, and although the program does exit, there could be half a dozen .dll's still loaded.

[Markoman01027]

Thanks for all of the reply guys! So it is just a Windows/Game problem and nothing to do with my computer? Sounds like you are right Reboot, makes sense to me. Will adding more RAM stop this?

[Cricket]

Originally posted by Markoman01027 Will adding more RAM stop this?

WinXP loves RAM and adding more definately wouldn't hurt. Add another 256MB and see if things improve.

Cricket

[Iman74]

Also keep in mind sometimes apps have memory holes and when closed sometimes slowly eats your memory and that itself can cause a lag. A perfect example is Adobe Photoshop.

[Markoman01027]

I am running WIN2K, and I recently ordered another 256MB of PC2100. So we'll see how it all works out.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Yup, Iman is right. Some games have memory holes. Arcanum, for example, you start fine but after 1 to 2 hrs the game becomes so insufferable slow that you need to exit and reboot the system.

[reboot]

Originally posted by Cricket WinXP loves RAM and adding more definately wouldn't hurt. Add another 256MB and see if things improve. Cricket

XP simply loves to eat RAM. The OS itself will release any RAM not needed, but programs, especially some games (as noted by NK) don't release it at all.
On a PIII system, I figured that a gig of RAM was minimum for decent XP speed, including games.
On a P4 system (including AMD Athlon XP's) 512 is minimum.
Any less, and it's a huge bottleneck, no matter if you're at 1.4ghz or 3ghz.

[KHT]

Here`s a reg hack I found that may help.

Open [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] Create a new sub key (DWORD VALUE) named "AlwaysUnloadDll" and set it to 1.

It`s supposed to disable *.dll caching by Explorer and clear memory when an app is closed.

[Markoman01027]

I added more RAM, and everything is running smoothly. Nomore lag after playing the game, etc.

[Markoman01027]

One more question..how can adding more RAM cause the lag to stop or whatever even if you are not using all of that 256MB?

[glc]

Win2K/XP will use all the ram it can, no matter how much you have. I use TClockEX to monitor my free RAM, when it drops under 100 I know its time to close stuff or things will start to get sluggish - I have 512 and 2K with a fixed 768 pagefile. The "lag" you are getting is things swapping in and out of the pagefile, which is slow - that's the hard drive.

[Markoman01027]

My Hard drive is ATA100, but only 2MB Cache. I am not sure if that would do it. So it's just a hard drive thing? Nothing my fault?

[reboot]

Nothing your fault. The way windows manages RAM and the swap is what's doing it. As RAM get's used up (and not released properly) the system gets prograssively slower, as read/writes to the swap get more frequent.
Either restart the computer more often, or add more RAM.
XP will get to a point (at about 1 gig), depending on how many programs have been run, or are in the taskbar, where it will maintain it's speed, no matter what you do to it.

[Markoman01027]

Reboot, since you said the Swap is what is doing it.How can I fix the swap? I have 512MB right now, but for my pagefile, it is 384MB initial and 768MB for Maximum.

[Cricket]

Are you still experiencing the lag problem even with the added RAM?

edit: Oops...nevermind, I just saw your earlier post about not having the lag problem anymore. Read the posts by glc and reboot again, they explain what was happening with to your system.

Cricket

[Markoman01027]

The lag kinda stopped, but I have not yet rebooted the PC after I put in the RAM, and I changed the PageFile settings a little while ago, and they require a reboot for the changes to take effect. So I won't really see a difference until I reboot. Sometimes I get the lag, but it's not as bad as It used to be with 256MB. Will post back later about it.

[reboot]

The lag you're seeing is the swap file activity.
As the machine is left on, things pile up in RAM, and eventually they pile up in the swap. As programs are shut down, RAM is emptied out (or should be) and the swap file will have less usage.
Programs that don't empty out of RAM properly, get written to the swap, when a new program is loaded into RAM. If this program unloads correctly, then no more lag. If this program doesn't unload from RAM, then when another program is loaded, taking up RAM, the old one gets written to the swap. Eventually swap is full, and remains that way, as programs simply overwrite each other trying to get out of RAM. A restart will NOT empty the swap, but it WILL completely dump the RAM contents (into the ether).
The system will run nicely, until the same set of circumstances arise again, when programs do not empty out of RAM properly.
With 512 meg of RAM, you get far less lag, because there's so much more RAM for programs to use, before they get written to the swap. As a new program is loaded, it loads into RAM, no swap file writes, because RAM is big enough to hold both. Load another program, and maybe only a portion of program 1 gets written to swap, because there's still room in RAM.
Now for serious multitasking, a gig leaves even more leeway, and it's NOT a linear progression, eg:
256 meg, the swap needs to be written about every 3rd program loaded.
512 meg, the swap needs to be written only about every 10th program loaded.
1 gig, the swap needs only to be written only about every 50th program loaded.
Of course this depends on the program size, how effectively they use RAM, and how many dependancies they have, etc, but you get the idea.
Hope this helps.

[Markoman01027]

Thanks Reboot and all the people that responded!

[mattg2k4]

If you had a lot of ram, say a gigabyte or more, would it improve performance to set the swap file to 0 bytes, so nothing is ever written to swap?

And is there any registry setting that will delay moving ram to swap, because my swap and used ram rarely add up to my total ram (512mb).

[Markoman01027]

So you are saying that even if I have 512MB and I am not using all of the 512MB with all the programs that I have open and ran before, some of it gets written to the swap file? Why is that? How come it cant use all of the 512MB instead some of it has to go to the swap file? Thanks!

[reboot]

The way Windows works, back in the Win95 days, when RAM got full, it's entire contents was written to the swap, and the process repeated. This causes HUGE slowdowns, as the RAM would get full in the middle of something important, and one could wait minutes for the swap to catch up.
Win98 improved on that, by writing bits and pieces of RAM to the swap, based on it's last accessed time, so the older the data, the sooner it went to swap, and the less likely it would be used. Works good in theory, unless that particular bit of data was the one you really needed, and then it had to be written back into RAM before it could be used, so using the last accessed time wasn't always the best way.
2K and XP keep track of the last accessed time, as well as program size, how frequently it has been accessed in the past (this is where the task manager keeps track of things), and a couple of other variables, such as data size (it tries to keep whole chunks of related data in one place), etc.
As RAM got cheaper, and we all started thinking in terms of megabytes instead of kilobytes, the swap file got used less and less. Great, in theory, but it still got used, and not very effectively.
In Win98, one could manipulate certain variables to increase efficiency.
Setting VCache, and Conservative swap usage in system.ini made Win98 far more efficient with the swap. XP has those "tweaks" built in, and uses far more RAM and far less swap (if possible) than any previous MS OS.
With a gig or more, one could theoretically set the swap to 0, and everything would function normally, but there's always one progam or another that is going to want a swap file, and won't work without it.
XP will try and make a swap that's about 1.5xRAM. Fine if you only have 256 meg, but totally out of proportion if you have a gig.
Who needs a swap file that's over a gig and a half, if you have a gig of REAL RAM onboard? 512 meg is the breaking point. With 512, you can set a fixed swap of 768meg, and probably NEVER get an out of mem error. With a gig, a swap of 256 meg, or even less, will usually work fine.
XP will usually put services in the swap. Services that start with Windows, but are not used after that, go into swap first, and programs after that.
The only tweak that I use in XP is to put ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 into the [386enh] section of system.ini
This forces Windows to use up more RAM, before writing to the swap. The only downfall, is that when the swap get's written, it's more like the Win95 method. A whole bunch of stuff is written all at once, instead of little bits as needed, which defeats the whole purpose. I don't recommend using this in XP, but it works really well in Win98.
The swap file is dynamic. That is, if you set it to a max of 768, and windows needs more, it will use more. Setting the max size is now a "suggestion", and not a firm limit as it was in Win9x. If the hard drive starts getting full, the swap will usually resize itself as needed, instead of "out of memory" errors, XP pops up the balloon tip "disk space getting full" or some other equally useless message.
In some systems I have seen swap files in excess of 5 gig, but only about 80 meg getting used at any given time. Who cares? If the hard drive has the room, leave it. It is NOT really taking up any room at all, because it's dynamic.
Another big argument is about swap file fragmentation.
Who cares? Defrag your swap if you want to waste the time doing it. It's MUCH easier to delete it, and let Windows create a new one the next time you restart.

[Markoman01027]

Thanks for the reply Reboot..how do I defrag my swap file? How do I delete it? I know part of it. You have to boot up into DOS and remove win386 or something like that.

[reboot]

To delete:
In Win98, just put a line in Autoexec.bat that says:
IF EXIST c:\windows\win386.swp DEL win386.swp /y
In XP:
IF EXIST c:\windows\pagefile.sys DEL pagefile.sys /y
In 2K:
IF EXIST c:\winnt\pagefile.sys DEL pagefile.sys /y

If you've moved the swap to a different location/partition/drive, change the path appropriately.

Don't bother with defragging the swap, it's useless.
Set it's min and max the same size, and it won't ever get fragmented.