On a server, paging = death

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Why should I even bother to use DLL's in my system?

Larry Osterman's WebLog — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 03:20:00 GMT

re: On a server, paging = death

Lazar — Thu, 27 May 2004 13:47:00 GMT

I've been playing with this 'feature' of win2K/XP for a while now (after losing the ability to reattange the taskbar with buttonboogie I had to find something to tweak!)

I run XP/2K on boxes with at least 512M RAM and have been trying to force the apps to reside completely in resident memory but even with the swap set to 0% on all disks it looks like the 'VM Size' column always contains a value. I see many skillful replies here so I ask you folks; is there a way to get the apps completely resident in memory without switching to linux->VMware?

One thing I have done is set DisablePagingExecutive in HKLM\system\CurrentControl\SessionManager\MemoryManagement
and it helps a little but does not provide a fix.

?

re: On a server, paging = death

Marco Russo — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 12:32:00 GMT

Guys, I know *a lot* of IT professional who really don't understand that the really important column to show in Task Manager is not Mem Usage but VM Size.
Only VM Size tell you:
- if a program has memory leak
- if a program has required much more memory than available physical RAM

Raymond, I know that Windows is used mostly by non-geek people, but the Task Manager naming convention (and default column used in process tab) are some of the worst decisione you could have made considering the consequences in wrong analysis and actions made by people who read these informations, even by IT pro.

re: On a server, paging = death

Jordan Russell — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 16:53:00 GMT

Renaming the "Mem Usage" column to "Working Set Size" might be a start. More cryptic yes, but less prone to misinterpretation.

re: On a server, paging = death

Raymond Chen — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 15:48:00 GMT

This is a general UI problem with Task Manager: If you show the total-geek info, people will misinterpret it since you need to be a total-geek to understand it properly. What's the solution? Short of removing the info from Task Manager altogether.

re: On a server, paging = death

Jorge Coelho — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 15:43:00 GMT

Jordan, I'm not saying that the OS will not trim the working set when memory is low. I'm just saying: try telling Joe User that is what is going to happen and see if he believes you - all he cares is what he sees in Task Manager.

With the type of applications I make we are talking about thousands of Joe and Jane Users, not technological geeks who would understand how memory management works.

re: On a server, paging = death

Jordan Russell — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:01:00 GMT

Jorge Coelho wrote:
> Sorry, for all pratical purposes, it does release memory. Even if the unused bits were just paged out to disk, the fact is that they are no longer using valuable RAM space

Valuable RAM space isn't wasted because the OS will trim your process's working set *automatically* when the system runs low on memory. By forcing your working set to be trimmed, you're basically asking for a performance hit in all cases, as opposed to a performance hit only in low-memory situations.

So why does NT require such a wonking great big paging file on my machine?

Larry Osterman's WebLog — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 19:33:00 GMT

So why does NT require such a wonking great big paging file on my machine?

Larry Osterman's WebLog — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 19:20:00 GMT