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Old July 17th 09, 05:26 AM posted to microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup
truthkid
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Posts: 46
Default How to get Vista to use more memory?


As far as I understand it, no. Here's a bit from MS themselves:

Pagefile

RAM is a limited resource, whereas virtual memory is, for most
practical purposes, unlimited. There can be a large number of processes
each with its own 2 GB of private virtual address space. When the
memory in use by all the existing processes exceeds the amount of RAM
available, the operating system will move pages (4 KB pieces) of one or
more virtual address spaces to the computer’s hard disk, thus
freeing that RAM frame for other uses. In Windows systems, these
“paged out” pages are stored in one or more files called
pagefile.sys in the root of a partition. There can be one such file in
each disk partition. The location and size of the page file is
configured in SystemProperties, Advanced, Performance (click the
Settings button).

A frequently asked question is how big should I make the pagefile?
There is no single answer to this question, because it depends on the
amount of installed RAM and how much virtual memory that workload
requires. If there is no other information available, the normal
recommendation of 1.5 times the amount of RAM in the computer is a good
place to start. On server systems, a common objective is to have enough
RAM so that there is never a shortage and the pagefile is essentially,
not used. On these systems, having a really large pagefile may serve no
useful purpose. On the other hand, disk space is usually plentiful, so
having a large pagefile (e.g. 1.5 times the installed RAM) does not
cause a problem and eliminates the need to fuss over how large to make
it.

----http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555223----

Considering your max ram usage you know of is 3GB, I doubt your page
file gets much use, as it's rare for a user to actually need 8 gigs
unless they use some high end multimedia rendering software.


--
truthkid