Increasing the Cache File System - Windows XP

[Philip21]

By default, Windows XP uses only 512 KB of RAM to handle exchanges with the hard disk. If you have at least 1 GB of RAM, you can increase the amount of buffer: reading and writing files will be faster.

Before Editing Regitry Be sure to make a backup of it.
Here the link showing How to Backup registry

Backup registry

1. Click the Start button and then click Run.
   
   
2. Enter the command regedit and click OK.
   
   
3. Navigate to
   
   

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

4. Double click on the DWORD IoPageLockLimit.
   
   
5. If it is not there then Create it.
   
   
6. In the window that appears, select Decimal.
   
   
7. Enter the number 983,040 in the field Value data. If you have 2 GB of RAM or more, feel free to double this value (1966080). Finally, click the OK button.

[Quimby]

Hmm. I have Vista Home Premium with 1GB of RAM. Maybe I should try this, but I don't know the adverse effects.

[MACAWI]

So, ideally, this should speed up the system if the system has a large amount of RAM. Taking into consideration all the other aspects stated above (like "… system is opening and closing many files in the same file set and is not already using large amounts of system memory for other applications or for cache memory…"), can 2GB of RAM for a laptop be considered "ideal" to make this tweak speed up the system?

[Keegan]

Does this trick work for Windows Vista ?

[Philip21]

Hmm. I have Vista Home Premium with 1GB of RAM. Maybe I should try this, but I don't know the adverse effects.

In regards to the fear of adverse system failures, remember that you can always F8 your system at boot-up and then choose to start the system under the last successful boot.