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This article was excerpted from: Windows XP Headaches: How to Fix Common (and Not So Common) Problems in a Hurry, Second Edition

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Maybe you have a computer friend who has said something like, “Hey dude, I pump up my computer's virtual memory settings and make things run a lot faster—with less RAM!” Sound right? Wrong! Here's what virtual memory does. Let's say you have three applications open, named 1, 2, and 3. That's a lot of data for Windows XP to have to keep in RAM. If you are using application 3, Windows XP may write the memory data for applications 1 and 2 onto your computer's hard disk until it is needed in order to free up more RAM. When you need application 1 or 2 again, it will read that data from the hard disk back into memory. So, Windows XP has to do a lot of reading and writing to the disk when a lot of virtual memory is required—which is slower than real RAM. Simply put, virtual memory is a way that Windows XP helps RAM, but it is in no way a replacement for physical RAM. You will not see performance gains by boosting the amount of virtual memory that is used.

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