Before you blow anything up, let's make sure you're looking at the right variable:

Are you looking at PF (page file) useage? or RAM ? and do you have multiple MS Office apps open at the same time when you're checking task manager?

R

stop the violence, make sure you guys are looking at the right processors % and not at the RF as mentioned by gresch nor the processes which just notes how many active "applications" are in the background

WOW!!:wow: Interesting stuff. You guys sound like you really know what your talkin about. :trustme: :NOADD: :rofl:

What like System Defrag won't solve the problem?

system defrag will move all files and make it easier to be found in the file allocation table which will speed up the time it takes to open applications but it will in no way remove processes nor decrease CPU%

:withstupi
+ the system defrag that come with windows will not defrag the page file, you need a separate program for that that will defrag the page file on the next boot-up.

only if the partition is in FAT, not NTFS :)

here's some info for everyone:

A blank unformatted disk is like a newly constructed parking lot with no lines.

Formatting puts the lines in and in those spaces, or blocks (the correct phrase) on a disk is where files are written. Blocks can vary in size and the size is determined by what the disk will be used for. For commone every day use like a home PC, a small block size is best as most files are small. On a machine that stores HUGE files, a bigger block size is best. Why? Because if you put a small file in a big block, whatever space that isn't used in the block is wasted (i.e. putting a 4k file in a 10k block wastes 6k or 60% of the space). Writing a HUGE file to small block sizes makes the disk work harder as it traverses all of those tiny blocks instead of doing a looooong read on a big block.

Another example: Say you've written 10 files to a disk and delete files 5 & 6 in the middle. The next time that the OS needs space to write a file it knows that the blocks taken up by files 5& 6 is available so it plunks all or part of the new file in that space. If the file is too big for the space, the OS writes a part of the file there, then seeks to a new spot and continues to write.

Why does this matter? Because now that new file is written all over the disk and to retrieve (open) it, the disk heads have to traverse all over the disk to get it.

What does defrag do? It reads the disk and puts all of those "fragmented" files back to together in 1 contiguous space so that when they are retrieved the drive does less work by reading the file from 1 place.

All of that being said, NTFS does a better job of not letting a disk get fragmented, while a FAT drive is usually a mess and needs to be defragged a lot.

*puts pocket protector away and continues on with day.

Have a nice day :)

bringing up the machine in DOS prompt only, you can delete the page file and when windows restarts in normal mode, it will recreate the page file. This is good because the page file itself can become fragmented and then you'll have a ton of problems potentially.

Thanks for the 'Three Finger Salute; Ctr+Alt+Del' alternative. I need to keep it up with time.

another way to prevent programs from running at
start up is from the registry. i believe it's the
hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\windows\curre ntversion\run folder
and the hkey_lolcal_machine\software\microsoft\windows\cur rentversion\run folder.