That is true for sure !
I will dive into it seriously. Thanks.

I am sorry, but you really should dig up the posts that present the calculation to you.
For your two hours this would be 4.2GB plus the, say, 600 MB the OS (Vista) needs.

About the other stuff, you might call "not physical memory" virtual memory not being on the hdd, but unless it's on the CPU itself I wouldn't know where it is. Of course, you say it is in physical memory itself, but the only conclusion I draw from that when it is true, is that this is stupid dealing with memory (management). Just a waste. That is, I wouldn't know (nor design it) why to copy a part of memory to another part of memory, sitting there and waiting for when it's asked for. As said, unless it's on the CPU, although that's really the other way around (because that's fast memory (which we tend to call a cache)).




PS: About the 2GB limit and what happens then, I tend to believe. There is no way though that I would call that virtual memory.

PS: Another thing is, that the page file really isn't used when all of the above is applied;
If you'd stroll through this topic : 0.9u-12 --> Hiccups and Clicks, you can derive from there that it sure was before (and I bet this was about the prefetching idiocy). Especially see this post from that topic.

The fact that the page file isn't used anymore can easily be checked with the Source Control program. During playback with XXHighEnd that is.

I sure don't want to catch you on wording , but you seem to think the swapping is going somewhere else (hence not to disk) ?


Why should you try 2GB ? the 4GB is much better of course (and note you can address that in W2008), but there's a calculation somewhere in here that it really is not (it was 9GB I think) when you only play the high samplerate and high bitrate files at the best quality. But watch out : this is not related to the swapfile thing at all, because with or without, XX will die when too much memory is needed. It just can't use the swapfile. However, other processes will need the memory at the same time XX eats it (almost), and that is where you'll get the unexpected errors.

But as said, when you are comfortable with the settings as you explained, nothing stops you. I just don't want to explain the obvious to those who have the errors.


Just for your reference : Re: Track length (remember, unrelated to the virtual memory, but indicating that your 4GB sure isn't enough some times ).

I don't think this is true for Vista;
First of all, this just CANNOT be shut off, no matter you think you did. The OS will just keep on doing it for herself, which you can see in TaskManager. However, if you can prove (!) that for your system this can actually work, then yes.

Secondly, you will receive unexpected errrors (hence errors which otherwise don't appear), especially when you indeed are able to really shut it down (see above).
Also, please note that at certain settings and track lengths you just *will* run out of internal memory, or can't control (= expect how much) that decently, which is subject to the way XX works.

All 'n all it is certainly *not* my advice to shut down virtual memory. Otoh, anyone who feels comfortable with that, including what he can expect hence interpret the errors from it ... go ahead.

---

For those who already shut down the Service for defender : (as described earlier more above)

When you already shut down the Service for Windows Defender as decribed in the above, you must restart it manually first (go to Services, find Windows Defender, rightclick - Start). Now Defender can be started to give entry to the options described below.
Leave the service to start Manually anyway.

---

This is a new version of the not so nice solution as described in an earlier post :

Important : Obviously you must be confident in not using Defender, or beause you just are confident without, or because you have other means of spyware (etc.) protection.

Start Windows Defender (you can search in Windows Help (StartButton) for Defender which allows you to start it);
See the first picture below and choose the option where the arrow points at, followed by "Options" as shown in the left.
Now untick all leftmost checkboxes.

Next (which is merely to be sure) shut off the Service for it (set it to Manual). See the second picture below.

I forgot to tell :

These reoccuring few I/Os once per X minutes will always keep your systems HDD alive (and if it sleeps it will wake up).
Now, assuming we can't get rid of these, this will be *the* reason to have a SSD (Solid State Disk) in there for the OS. 40GB is more than sufficient.

On a side note :
Since I keep my Galeries on the OS disk (which is the one running always anyway, as explained), it will highly improve "Galery performance" when those Galeries reside on the SDD (much faster access time).

And for those who didn't know : no matter how many disks you have, when using Galeries to access the data (hence find the album to play) all your music disks will keep on sleeping, except, eventually, for the one that holds the physical album you chose to play.
The fact that disks fall alseep (which is an Energy setting) can only be guatanteed for (S)ATA disks with (S)ATA connection. E.g. with USB it is guaranteed that they can't be shut down (at least, not that I know of).

For those who really don't want spinning disks during playback : it is very easy now for me to create functionality that orders for a whole album (better : whole Playlist) to load into memory instead of doing this track per track like it is now. Even better would be to load that onto the SDD (which allows rather infinite Playlists). That way you can switch of all the disks after the smallest allowed time (1 minute ?), and the system just keeps quiet.
Btw, I think that the SDD can be shut down just the same (which would matter for SQ then), but with the big difference that it will "spin up" very fast, so you could set that to 1 minute spindown time as well.

Here you go : How I tweaked my Vista virtually dead

Btw Chris, I found that the Latency Checker runs a service itself ... (even when you didn't start the program).

This one may have taken me most of the time to find, and it was the last I/O always being there (once per minute IIRC). This one stops and immediately starts again. I couldn't find where, but setting this interval to 0 does the job.

Look at the bottom for the full key.

The below can be reached by Manage like in the before post. I think you can recognize by means of the icons where to go.

With the first one (14c) I could not prove that it really helped, but the intention with this one is to make the system at rest earlier after a boot. My Vista for sure is, but I don't know whether this one cause it.
Please note that this kind of "weak" one, actually had to be a full stop of Event Logging, but I don't think it can be done. This is about the one above this one (look at the right) which is similar but for normal operation. The one here (14c) is only for during startup.

14d u/i 14f speak for themselves.

Here's the most nasty part of it all, creating I/Os which you couldn't imagine.
Note : Do not think you can shut this off by shutting off the Event Log Service, because that requires the Task Scheduler to shut down, and I won't even attempt to try *that*.

So, the first screen shows you where to go to (via rightclick MyComputer and Manage). Note you need to be at the bottom of that screen and the Windows folder shown there ("Backup" is just the first entry of the long list you see in the second screen).
The second screen shows all the logging events to shut down.

Rightclick on each of the "Operational" entries I show, and choose "shut down log" (similar).

Important : All the log files can be shut down, but I only chose the ones which may create just too many IO's. So, you could shut them down all, but a. it really isn't necessary and b. they are there for you to be informative when something is the matter.

I actually didn't know it, but Windows Task Schedular controls a lot of things at preset times, many of which you wouldn't want. Below is one example I also didn't know it was happening : auto-defrag.

The first screen shows you how to get there, and the second screen shows the Status of Defrag which I shut off ("Uitgeschakeld"). Mind you, my 4 TB of disks will take a huge amount of time when they are defragged, and the shown trigger (which I did not create) may nice and easy go off each Wednesday at 1pm, but you can bet that when I want to play music somewhere in the afternoon, the bugger is still running.
Besides that defrag has always looked dangerous to me, and I'd really want it to run that one time I need it (which is completely never because I take care of the music data not being fragmented).


Note : I didn't do much further with the many many tasks which are in there, because most of them wouldn't harm me (they run a short time only, or just are performed once per year , etc.).

SuperFetch : Another stupid so called intelligent thing, that tries to pre-load and prepare for files to load a next time faster. One of the most I/O incurring services.

ReadyBoost : Honestly I shut this down because many people report problems with this one (and otherwise I forgot). I didn't notice any slowing down of file copying or whatever, after shutting this one down.

A special remark about Windows Search :
This one too can scan your whole disk but for other reasons than "indexing". It is related to being friendly to you;
Look at the Start Button (as you still have it). There's no room to "Run" like with XP, but typing e.g. RegEdit it will show you a link to RegEdit.exe for you to click (and run). Now, *this* will not work anymore !!
You really must shut down this service, but be prepared a bit for this now lacking help feature !

Below is a row of Services you really don't need, and which I shut down for a maybe strange reason : Vista will shut them down anyway (at least that can happen) during playback with XXHighEnd. So I thought they can be in the way ...


Set the Start Type (4th column) to the value I show, and where "handmatig" means "manual".

Note : The first one (03), about the Tablet PC should be left as it is when you actually use a tablet PC under Vista.

Careful : You can see for yourself that the others may not be nice for you to shut down. I did it anyway, because (e.g.) I don't print from the audio PC, I don't capture images from a camera, and I sure don't want Defender to scan along. Note with this latter : looking at Defender01 you must know that at each boot that window appears (Edit : don't apply this, better look here : Shutting off Windows Defender). It tells you that the (Defender) Service has stopped, which is really no problem. It may be my fault that I don't know how that get away with this more formally, so that window keeps on appearing.

---

Edit :
I realized that my way of shutting off Defender isn't a nice one. Better do this :

Find Defender and start it (you can use Windows Help and search for Defender). See the screenshot at the very bottom in this post. Choose the option where the arrow is, then choose "Options", and in there untick *all* the leftmost checkboxes.
IMPORTANT : When you already shut down the Service for Windows Defender, you must restart it manually first (go to Services, find Windows Defender, rightclick - Start). Now Defender can be started to give entry to the options just described.
Leave the service shut off anyway (see more above), or reboot to shut it off when you just had to start it in order to change the Defender settings.

Now the message as shown in Defender01 (below) doesn't show anymore at booting.

---

Also look at the last one. This says "start delayed", or IOW start when you ask for it. You might need that at times, and in normal situations ot won't run now.

The poor thing can only guess wrong here, but does it anyway.

Set the value as shown to 0.
Btw, if it is active it will be set to 3. You might have shut this off already by other means.

Look at the bottom for the full key to this entry.