pragnar

Hi all,

I bought this computer:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/sh...=d4999t_series

With a few upgrades, though not the memory upgrades, because HP overcharges for those. It comes with Windows Home Vista, 2GB of memory, etc. I started playing games, and noticed that they were not nearly as fast as I expected. I'm not talking about new games -- I mean, like NWN 1. I started poking around, and here's what I've noticed.

Vista itself takes maybe 650MB of my memory. This is to be expected. What was _not_ to be expected is that even when I'm playing a game, task manager puts my memory usage at 0.99GB -- it never goes higher than that. Which means that for some reason half of my memory is off-limits! Why might this be?! Is it fixable, or do I need to tell my credit card company to charge back my payment to HP?

Thanks!

Placehold

Virtual memory or paging implementation in Windows Vista ensures that the operating system can properly handle and open large set of data that does not fit into physical memory. As a result, the paging file in Windows Vista can grows in size over time. However, uers can tune and configure Windows Vista to use free space on any available drives for page files storage, set a minimum and maximum size allowed for the paging files, or simply turn off virtual memory paging feature. The following guide will show you how to tweak virtual memory settings in Windows Vista by setting the size of paging file (pagefile.sys).

1. Open Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> System.
2. In the left “Tasks”, click on Advanced System Settings.
3. You should come to “Advanced” tab. In “Performance” section, click on Settings button.
4. Click on Advanced tab.
5. In the “Virtual Memory” section, click on Change button.
6. By default, “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives” setting is selected so that Windows Vista system can manage the paging file without user’s interruption. If you want change the paging file size, move the pagefile.sys to another drive, or disable virtual memory paging, uncheck the check box of Automatically manage paging file size for all drives.
7. Select and highlight the appropriate drive that users want to change the paging file settings under the box of “Drive [Volume Label]”.

Virtual Memory Settings
8. To fix a permanent size for the paging file, click on Custom size button, and set the values of Initial Size (MB) and Maximum Size (MB). Both values can be of same size to make the size of pagefile.sys static. Then click on Set button.

System managed size is useful for users who do not want pagefile.sys to locate on system drive root and want to move its storage location to another drive, but still want Vista to dynamically manage and allocate the drive space for the paging usage.

To move the paging file to another drive, click on No paging file radio button, and click on Set button. Then select a different drive to set a new pagefile.sys with custom size or system managed size.

To disable paging file or virtual memory, simply set no paging files on all drives.


Hopefully this is helpful in some way

l_b_rex

I think the best start is to make sure Windows detects your 2GB of memory. Go to system properties and it will display the detect processor speed and installed ram.
Note: The processor will likely show a lot less than you actually have, this is a feature called "Cool N Quiet" technology. The processor only runs at the speed needed for the particular task you are doing at any time. Yes, it can be changed.

If there is 2 GB showing in system properties got to :
Start->all programs->Pc help and tools-> Hardware Diagnostics
This program will allow you to run tests on all the installed hardware and provide fail codes if anything is defective. If anything fails call HP with the test name and the fail code.

Also 2GB should be okay for games but not excellent. Have you checked for updates for your games? This game was released for XP, you may need to get an update for vista to run it properly.