memory and the windows page file , a warning

[RipperRoo]

This morning a 512mb stick of pc 133 i'd order for my media pc finaly arrived. being eager to test it i switched the pc off and slotted it in .
the pc made it thru post ok , but crashed and rebooted as soon as it got into windows 2000.

you see i'd forgotten one small detail , the partition i had 2k installed on was only 1.5 gb, just enough for the OS install.
the problem was caused by the windows page file system.
the page file is bigger the more memory you have (about 50% bigger than your installed memoery - 512mb uses 768 MB of page file) so when i installed the 512 stick as well as the 256 that was there.....
well you can imaginne the results the page file size went from 384 mb to a massive 1152mb! and there wasnt enough room on the c drive for both the operating system and its page file

now windows thinks it needs a page file of over a gig I cant just put the 128mb back in and reboot , I've got to reinstall the whole lot and use partition magic to resize the drive , either that or I'll have to copy my entire cd collection again :-(


So , A Warning :
If you plan on installing more memory in your pc , do the math and make sure you have enough room for your page file or you may find yourself in looking at a time consuming reinstall and data loss

[LPDad]

This is a GREAT Post!!
This is a Great Lession to lean...unfortunately Someone had to learn it the hard way. Usually this is way I learn...But I never make the same mistake again.

Thanks for the Heads Up Ripper..

[Cirga]

Ripper you were smart to keep your OS on a seperate partition. Thats how I have mine right now.. but your right.. I wouldnt have thought about the page file either.. blasted. lol thanks bud.

I have mine as 2 gigs.. so hopefully when I upgrade next time it wont push me into a deadly corner.

[RipperRoo]

thought i'd give you peeps an update on things .

because of the problems i decided to install win2k on a 30gig drive i just bought second hand .
the drive was clean so i used win2k's setup to create 2 partitions, a 10 gig for the operatig system with the rest going to backups, no point wasting a 30 gig drive just on the os.

install went fine right up until it blue screened on me :-(

it was hot yesterday afternoon, the 1st hot day we've had since i upgraded that pc to a 1.2 athlon, a quick check of the hardware monitor in the bios revealed a cpu temp of 54c!
needless to say the sides came off the case at once.

after a root around in my mods and sods box ive managed to get the temps under 50 by adding a pair of fans to the inside of the side panel, but i think i need a bigger and better heatsink (o joy more cash spent).

windows is running fine now and the pc is back on the network ,
but its been one hot and bothered day for me

[LPDad]

Did you try the Via Cooling tweak??? (it is in the tips and tweaks section)

It really does lower your processor temps (as long as your processor is not running at 100%)


I have a Thermalright AX7 (Less than $20) heatsink and not only does it really keep things cool, but by using a nice big 80mm fan on it my computer is very quiet.

I noticed that one of our associates/supporters http://www.jab-tech.com/ has a great deal on a Thermalright SLK-700 + Fan whch is pretty hard to beat performance/pricewise:

http://www.jab-tech.com/product_info...roducts_id=372

(that should be WAY more than enough for your 1.2 (probably overkill, but then you could probably overclock the hell out of it..Hehe)

Very effective, Very quiet (depending on the fan you put on) and one hell of a lot cheaper than water cooling.

[RipperRoo]

thanks for the suggestion , well spotted that i was using a via chipset mobo (the sig does come in handy lol)
unfortunatly i use that pc to run seti , so the cpu is always at 100% !
with this in mind i went hunting round the for sale forums of a few uk sites and put an offer in on a Coolermaster X-Dream, bit excessive maybe but its only costing me £10 .

as for the Thermalright SLK-700 + Fan I WANT ONE!
but in the uk they are just too much money
Price: £34.66 Including Tax
(34.66 British Pound = 54.45779 US Dollar)
plus delivery

lucky theres loads of people out there who must have the 'latest' thing and sell on the old parts cheaply

[TrueInsanity]

oops? :p

why dint u have youir page file on your back up drive m8

[RipperRoo]

it was full of media , i didnt have the room there either :-(

[NUTNDUN]

I hope I'm not too late on posting this Rip but read this tip I just wrote yesterday. Take out the new memory and boot up the way it was and do what I wrote in this tip, you can even put the page file on a different partition.


http://www.pctechtalk.com/view.php?id=263

[RipperRoo]

thanks NUTNDUN , i did actualy know how to reset the page file to use another drive , problem was the 60 gig that was in the pc was full to bursting so it couldnt be done without some deleting.
kinda lucky i bought another 30 gig drive before i got the memory huh ?

[NUTNDUN]

LOL ya definately, I kinda figured you may have already known all the details on the paging file but I wasn't sure, at least it is there now for future reference.

[enduser]

I don't think that problem was all that difficult if you were using fat32 for the file system. You could have taken the memory back out and rebooted using a Win98 floppy. It would have been a simple matter of deleteing the pagefile from dos if there was a pagefile. You can unhide and delete the pagefile using the old dos command that changes file attributes. I think Windows would have realized it had less memory and went back to normal by making a new pagefile.

[rastagard]

Ah, lessons learned.

This points out several things inherent to computers and their users.

• No matter how much you know, you can never think of everything
• No matter how much storage space you have you always need more
• You can't overcool an AMD
• Windows will always find a way to screw ya

Dynamite post, Ripp!

[Nimbus]

Is there any nforce2 cooling tweak?