Managing your computer's performance

Article
10/08/2009

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Managing your computer's performance

Windows allocates resources according to its settings and manages devices accordingly. You can, however, change the way Windows uses computer memory and processor time to improve performance. You can also adjust the settings for your computer’s visual effects.

Managing computer memory

When your computer is running low on RAM and more is needed immediately, Windows uses hard drive space to simulate system RAM. This is known as virtual memory, and is often called the paging file. The paging file is similar to the UNIX swapfile. The default size of the virtual memory page file (named pagefile.sys) created during installation is 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your computer.

You can optimize virtual memory use by dividing the space between multiple drives and removing it from slower or heavily accessed drives. To best optimize your virtual memory space, divide it among as many physical hard drives as possible. When selecting drives, keep the following guidelines in mind:

Try to avoid having a page file on the same drive as the system files.
Avoid putting a page file on a fault-tolerant drive, such as a mirrored volume or a RAID-5 volume. Page files do not need fault-tolerance, and some fault-tolerant systems suffer from slow data writes because they write data to multiple locations.
Do not place multipage files on different partitions on the same physical disk drive.

You can choose to optimize your computer's memory usage. If you use your computer primarily as a workstation, rather than as a server, you can devote more memory to your programs. Your programs will work faster and your system cache size will be the default size that came with Windows. If your computer is used primarily as a server, or if you use programs that require a larger cache, you can choose to set aside more computer memory for a larger system cache.

Managing processor time

System processing is managed by Windows, which can allocate tasks between processors, as well as manage multiple processes on a single processor. You can, however, set Windows to allocate more processor time to the program you are currently running. This can result in faster program response time. Or, if you have background programs, such as printing or disk backup that you want to run while you work, you can have Windows share processor resources equally between background and foreground programs.

Changing visual effects

Windows provides several options to set the visual effects of your computer. For example, you can choose to show shadows under menus, giving them a 3-D look. You can tell Windows to display the entire contents of a window while you move it on your screen. To make large text more readable, you can choose to display the smooth edges of screen fonts. You can also enable the Web view in your folders, which will display a list of hyperlinked tasks and information on the left side of the folder window. Windows provides options for enabling all of the settings (for best appearance), or none of the settings (for best computer performance). You can also restore the original default settings.

Managing your computer's performance