Adding RAM to XP Pro System

I just ordered 4 gigs or RAM for my new notebook, ungrading it from 2 to 4 gigs.

Will I need to reconfigure anything in XP, like the page file or anything, or will it automatically configure everything itself?

EDIT: XP Pro 32 bit.

 

It should automatically recognize the new RAM. However, unless you have the 64-bit version of XP I think it will only use something like 3.2GB of it. Some of the address space is reserved for talking to hardware devices I guess. I'm sure you can find threads here about it. That's about all I know, since my laptop only has 3GB.

 

Yeah, I know XP 32 bit won't be able to utilize the whole 4 gigs.

 

Yeah once you start your system up after your install it should recognize it and you'd be good to go.

 

That completely depends on how many things you want to run at the same time, and how much virtual memory they need..!!
I read a while ago that in Windows XP, when you added more memory to your computer, you had to manually go and increase the size of your paging file to correctly match the amount of memory in your computer. Windows Vista does away with this by automatically setting the optimal size for the paging file, even after you add more memory to your computer. Although I never knew about this when I upgraded the ram on my PC and manually increased the page file to the recommended value shown....which was 3057MB for 2GB ram..!!(it was 20--MB something initially)....Size of page file - with 1GB it is roughly 1.3GB and with 2GB it is almost double..!!
I have now set my page file's initial and final size both set at 3050MB, 'cause m friend told me, that way the system won't be allocating disk space for page file while you're trying to play your game. But i never played a game on the notebook on the notebook ever since but it seems to be fairly quick even with a celeron in it.. Another thing he told me to do was(which I did), is to first turn off the page file; reboot; run a disk defrag; then enable the page file with the above settings. This will ensure that the page file is contiguous (not spread out) on your HDD.

 

From what I know u should set the page file to the same number of mb for the Initial and Maximum sizes. This is a tweak for better performance..so I've learnt in college. And it should be 1.5 X Amount of Ram. So if u have 4GB the page file should be set to 1.5 X 4096 = 6144mb

Now this is done manually for XP...I don't know anything about how Vista automatically sets this.

 

I always fix the page file size (this avoids the problem of the pagefile progressively fragmenting with consequent slower access). However, As you increase the physical RAM then you can reduce the size of the page file so that the total RAM remains the same. 3GB + 3GB is probably plenty.

John

 

If using 3GB of RAM, can you reduce the page file to say 500MB or will that lead to immense slow downs? My reasoning is that if I am no where near using the 3GB of physical memory, by increasing the pagefile, am I not "encouraging" the system to use slower memory (i.e. hard disk)?

 

I am not very sure about it....but would advise you to keep at least 1-1.5GB for page file....unless you are absolutely out of HDD space....!!
and try to defragment the system once with the page file disabled....

 

Use PageDefrag to defrag the paging file.

John

 

OK, XP is just not working out for me on this new notebook, so back to Vista I go.

Thanks for all of the great responses everyone.

 

Anytime. Have fun with with your new RAM.