http://www.bootdisk.com/ 166 July 2004
The BootLIST Welcome to the 166th Edition of The BootLIST
INDEX
1) Defrag Your Pagefile?
2) Need Motherboard That Handles 8 GIG RAM
3) Notes On 30 Gig Hard Drive Limitation
4) Notes On XP WPA [Windows Product Activation]
5) Yahoo Mail
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1) Defrag Your Pagefile?SA asks - How do I defrag my pagefile. I have only one hard drive. I am running windows xp.
Ron M. explains:
Pagefile fragmentation is one of those issues that is right up there with the bogeyman and dracula - lots of hype and no substance.The best, if not the only, solution to any and all performance related issues regarding the page file is to have sufficient RAM so as to eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, the need to actually move memory content back and forth between RAM and the page file.
Page file fragmentation can only become a performance issue if you are using the page file so extensively that the extra delays in reading from or writing to two or more fragments of the page file in the same paging operating amounts to a significant amount of time. And in that case the fact that you are actually writing to or reading from the page file at all will be several hundred times more significant than any possible effect of fragmentation.
In understanding the page file function it is important to appreciate that perhaps the most important function of the page file is to provide the memory address space needed to satisfy the *unused* portion of memory allocation requests. All requested memory must be mapped to an existing memory location, either in RAM or the page file. By mapping the unused portions of requests to the page file Windows allows RAM to be devoted only to those portions that are actually being used.
And mapping unused portions to the page file requires no disk activity, just an entry in the internal mapping tables maintained by the CPU. So page file fragmentation is irrelevant. And these unused portions of memory requests can easily amount to several hundreds of megabytes on a heavily used system.
Hope this clarifies the situation.
*** A pagefile is a temporary file which is reset to default on bootup anyway. No need to defrag it. You'd just be wasting your time.
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2) Need Motherboard That Handles 8 GIG RAMCosmo mails - I just got this IT job and I need to build some servers that can handle 8 gigs of RAM. Any ideas? I figure I can save my dad's company $5,000 or more if I build them myself.
Tina replies:
SuperMicro has some that can go up to 16GB (Xeon):
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/Tyan has some that go up to 36GB (Opteron):
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/fam_thunder.htmlAnd Xeons that go up to 8GB:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/xeon.html
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3) Notes On 30 Gig Hard Drive LimitationJasper posts - I'm going to build a file server from a Pentium-II computer. Its mainboard chip possibly cannot recognize hard disks with size over 30GB. I've heard a few solutions to solve this problem; flash the BIOS, buy another mainboard.
But is it possible to install an IDE-controller, so I can use disks of size over 80GB? I mean: is there a replacing BIOS-like chip on the controller that accessed the disks, or does it use the chip from the mainboard and simply add 2 IDE channels to the system?
Jim B. replies:
You can buy a Promise (brand name) [or SIIG] IDE controller card, stick it in a PCI slot, and assuming your OS and partitioning can handle the greater size you wont have any more BIOS limitation problems.*** Yes you can buy a controller. You get the added benefit of additional ide channels as well, ie you can still use the mobo channels for the older drives. Many folks also report that a hard drive connected to a new controller will run faster as well.
Mr. U. says:
Not quite right. Just format it in partitions of 20gig and leftovers and it will be able to see the lot.*** Incorrect Mr. U. If he has a 32 gig bios limit ie meaning the bios wont see the disk at all then guess what, neither will fdisk or other disk partitioner after a dos boot.
There is a slight chance that the drive will have special jumper selections to be used in conjunction with the drives disk manager [overlay]. However, I'd still go with a bios flash or new controller card.
Also remember that the new drives use 80 conductor cables so a new controller card that accommodates this seems to be one of the better options.
Thor adds:
Yes, they are [the add-on controller cards] U-ATA. But then again, any IDE connector can accommodate an 80 conductor IDE cable, since pin-wise they are no different.
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4) Notes On XP WPA [Windows Product Activation]Craig inquires - My understanding is the WPA system checks for ten categories of hardware then assigns votes to them. If my machine always has seven yes votes (meaning unchanged hardware) I will not need a new activation number. But, what if my machine doesn't have all ten of the hardware categories?
Does WPA have a set number of votes to assign and will distribute them to whatever hardware is present?
For example, if my machine only has the motherboard, RAM, an Athlon (with no serial number), hard drive, CD rom, and video card...will WPA assign each item multiple votes until it's vote quota is reached?
Alex N. answers:
An absent category will be seen as a positive vote - until you add an item that falls in the category, when it becomes seen as changed, and the vote is lost (and stays lost). This applies especially to SCSI controller, which many machines never have; and to Processor Serial Number which only exists on P III processor chips.The votes are to categories; first item in each category that is found at set up is the one that matters. Later, at boot, the system will search for all in that category and count Yes if it finds the item that was there originally (or establishes that there still isn't one)
You can see the state of play for your machine with a free tool, XPInfo that you can find at:
http://www.licenturion.com/xp/
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5) Yahoo MailCompetition is good. In case you haven't heard, Yahoo now offers, for free, 100 meg email accounts and ten meg file attachments. What I like best tho is the service [webpage] is now about three times faster with a dialup ISP.
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