Increase - Virtual Ram - To Make Your System Faster!

PLEASE NOTE! This can screw up your PC, I am not responsible for what happens.

1. Hold down the Windows Key and press the Pause/Break button at the top right of your keyboard (another way is right-clicking your computer and clicking Properties).
2. Click on the Advanced tab.
3. Under Performance, click Settings.
4. Then click the Advanced tab on the button that pops up.
5. Under Virtual Memory at the bottom, click Change.
6. Click the Custom Size button.
7. For the initial size (depending on your HD space), type in anywhere from 1000-1500 (although i use 4000), and for the Maximum size type in anywhere from 2000-2500 (i use 6000).
8. Click Set, and then exit out of all of the windows.
9. Finally, restart your computer.
10. You now have a faster computer and 1-2gb of virtual RAM!

- Ash

(This was a tutorial I posted on my computer site www.itneed.net)

In all of my years using windows, I never knew that Win+Pause/break brought up the system properties tab. I might not have used your RAM boost tip, but that little key shortcut was interesting, thanks!

interesting i think you can do this to with a usb in vista it gives you the option of sacrificing memory to make usb act as ram

Yes, it is called windows readyboost component in vista which does that boost. Any kind of flash storage can be used. I think it was included in windows vista, to promote the usage of Vista during its release back in 2006. Because it asked for almost whole system upgrade who had normal PCs at that time and everybody was talking about the amount of RAM required to run the Aero.

But RAM's have become very cheap today and almost all of the systems bought these days have minimum of a gig of memory. Having more definitely helps for playing all those high-end graphics games.

so, would a 1gb flash drive add 1gb of RAM?

Well, it wouldn't be as fast as real RAM, only as fast as your computer can read/write to the flash drive.  The virtual memory is also called the page file.  (You can read up on it here)

If you have two hard disks, you can also place the page file on your secondary disk to improve your performance.  If Windows tries to access the virtual memory while you are trying to access files on the same disk, the two processes will limit each other because the computer can only read and write to the disk so fast.  By putting the page file on a separate disk (or flash drive or other storage), you can keep the two processes from interfering.

Glad to hear!, They say you learn something new everyday .


Yes you can, However that is not as safe as the following way I provided.


Yes if you put it that way... However it is not very safe and if you do not know what you are doing at all can muck up your boot properties so be careful!

Seems that you liked my tutorial

- Ash.

There is an interesting point raised in this particular thread and that being the use of USB drive as ram in Windows Vista. this is a special feature that you have in Windows Vista that you can use external USB drives or pen drive as Virtual RAM. I used to have an 8 GB pen drive and used it as external RAM. This is a great way to enhance your computer's RAM. this however needs that your pen drive must be completely free and there should be no external data.

The first post which deals about increasing your virtual RAM from within your computer hard disk is not bad either. However it may not be as fast as your USB RAM. If you're using Windows XP you cannot use a USB RAM and therefore extending your virtual RAM from your hard disk is a good option. Most of the time it helps because you have more dedicated space to upload running programme though it may not be as fast as actual ram. However one very important thing that is to be noted is that your hard disk must be defragmented. If you do not have a contagious block of memory that you want to use as your virtual RAM in your hard disk you may not get any benefit at all and even might slow down your programs drastically. You also need enough hard disc space free so that every time your virtual RAM is loaded is not split into multiple parts and/or fragmented.

 Another point to mention is that your real RAM is faster than virtual RAM, so if you have enough RAM to comfortably run everything you need, increasing your virtual RAM may actually slow down your computer.  If you really want to optimize this, this site: http://www.theeldergeek.com/paging_file_pe..._monitoring.htm provides a nice procedure for finding your optimal virtual RAM size and monitoring how much of your virtual RAM you are using.

I have 4 GB of real RAM, and I usually turn off the virtual memory as I don't need it, depending on your harddrive sometimes it can even make your computer slower, it's only good if you need more RAM, if you don't then there is no point.. Some games or software requires lots of virtual memory..

Using USB keys like RAM isn't something new, I remember I done similar things on Amiga computers in 1996.. Just it wasn't USB keys, but HDD partitions, which worked in the same way.. Besides, a cheap USB key usually is very slow, so you need to get a good USB key, and also with time USB keys break due to that you frequently write and remove/delete data into it. Real RAM is much better.