OT: Web runs slow after RAM upgrade

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Found it. And it's in the Annoyances book whose author and title I was
trying to recall. (David A. Karp [nomen et omen?], Windows 98
Annoyances, O'Reilly, 1998). The Windows swap file, he says, "grows
and shrinks with use, and quickly becomes very fragmented." He recommends
gong into control Panel, System, Properties, Virtual Memory, and setting
Maximum Size and Minimum Size to the same; "a good size is roughly two
and one-half times the amount of installed RAM." He also explains that
one needs to defragment the swap file. (I've also read that it's a good
idea to keep it on another drive than C: if one is avilable.) If you have
another drive (or partition), defrag one drive, move the swap file to it,
then defrag another and move the swap file there. If you've only one
partition, disable the swap file, defrag your C: drive, then re-enable
the swap file. Disabling it can be dangerous if you're low on RAM, but
with 256 you should be OK, though Win98 is an awful RAM hog.

Karp says that the virtual cache (VCache) can also grow and eat up all
your RAM. His cure is this: Open System.ini in a plain text editor. Add
these lines to to the [vcache] section (add the section if it's not
there):
MinFileCache=0
MaxFileCache=4096
That number, by the way, is what he recommends if your total RAM is 16
Mb, with 8192 if you have 48. The math doesn't make much sense to me
(16/4096=c. .004, whereas 48/8192=.005) but maybe it does in binary.

Hope this helps.
Patricia