I'm essentially computer illiterate compared to many of you engineering students/computer people who frequent TWW, so I'm hoping I can use your knowledge to answer my most likely elementary question. Thanks for any help!

When inserting my thumb drive into my laptop, which runs Vista, I get a message asking if I want to use "ReadyBoost" to speed up my system. What I have gleaned from the resulting setup window/help window is that this is a new program for Vista that somehow uses a portion of the memory on the thumb drive to make everything run a little faster by way of some other program called "SuperFetch" which remembers what you do and does some magic computer thing to get it ready to use faster. Sounds great as a reboot of the system is WAY slower than my desktop running XP with less than half the RAM. My questions are:

1) Is this "ReadyBoost" program really going to do anything noticeable using the leftover ~750MB of a 1 GB thumb drive on a computer with 2.0 GHz/2GB RAM? So far I haven't notice much of a difference.

2) Does this thumb drive have to be permanently in the USB drive to see any difference in system startup time? performance starting programs or running many programs at once?

3) If I remove the thumb drive which was being used to possibly make my computer run faster will I somehow mess something up and make my computer slower than before?

2/12/2008 8:04:18 PM

I haven't heard that much about it until now, so feel free to toss my comment by the wayside.

My first reaction was:

cent 1) It would only truly be a boost if your system is running out of available memory. Why would it use the flash drive if the system had a gig or more of free memory to use instead.

cent 2) Flash drives have a finite number of times you can copy/delete to it. Exactly how many copies depends on the quality of the drive. It seems like putting a swap file on the drive would significantly reduce the life of the flash drive.

[/2cents]

EDIT:

Found this info -

Q: What happens when you remove the drive?
A: When a surprise remove event occurs and we can't find the drive, we fall back to disk. Again, all pages on the device are backed by a page on disk. No exceptions. This isn't a separate page file store, but rather a cache to speed up access to frequently used data.

So I guess if it copied the files that were used the most to the flash drive, and those files always stayed on the flash drive -i.e. it wasn't used as a swap file, then it wouldn't be so bad.

[Edited on February 12, 2008 at 8:17 PM. Reason : -]

2/12/2008 8:13:40 PM

it may be able to move the windows page file to it.

2/12/2008 8:14:25 PM

Quote :

"oes this thumb drive have to be permanently in the USB drive to see any difference in system startup time? performance starting programs or running many programs at once?"

yes. the memory (thumb drive) has to be available to windows for you to see any benefit

Quote :

"If I remove the thumb drive which was being used to possibly make my computer run faster will I somehow mess something up and make my computer slower than before?"

no, you won't "mess" anything up. windows just wont have that memory space to use for readyboost



my question about readyboost is does it significantly reduce the life expectancy of your flash drive

2/12/2008 8:15:32 PM

with as cheap as DDR2 SODIMM is (which you are almost definitely running if using vista on a laptop), you'd be better off picking up 4gb of RAM (i got my mushkin SODIMM for $60) and popping it in there instead

2/12/2008 8:28:24 PM

well sure but everyone has thumb drives sitting around, might as well put em to use right?

2/12/2008 9:28:39 PM

its pretty much a worthless feature

2/12/2008 10:02:23 PM

Thanks to all for the input. I found Corsair 2 GB PC2 5300 sticks for $35 so I may just go ahead and bump up to 4 GB. I tried to leave the flash in while restarting and I don't believe it did anything. Time from user password to Vista loading all its little gadgets and shit is a painful 2-3 minutes solid. I'm really going to have to look at the startup programs. I heard Vista wasn't an upgrade from XP, but didn't think it would be THIS slow.

2/12/2008 10:37:04 PM

^^ readyboost, superfetch, or both?

2/12/2008 10:40:53 PM

Don't you have to have 64 bit vista to get 4 gigs?

2/13/2008 7:57:13 AM

you have to have 64-bit to utilize 4gb...you can put in 4gb and use ~3.5gb IIRC

2/13/2008 8:02:56 AM

Huh. I had a Vista machine and it booted in less than 30 seconds compared to XP which is still at 2 minutes or so.

2/13/2008 8:15:02 AM

^ true, vista boots MUCH faster, and you can set delayed start on your services to get up even faster

2/13/2008 8:37:02 AM

32-bit can address 4GB (2GB apps / 2GB windows)
32-bit can address 4GB (3GB apps / 1GB windows) w/ 3GB switch
64-bit can address 16TB

2/13/2008 10:36:43 AM

I think I may have found a tentative answer to the Vista 32-bit RAM maximum issue discussed. I say tentative because I am in no way a "computer person" and to be honest I don't understand many of the things detailed on this page. However, according to my understanding of this page, upgrading to 4GB would be a waste if I don't plan to upgrade to a 64-bit OS in the future, as Windows places some limits on available memory, but upgrading to 3GB from 2GB is an option. If I am wrong about this, and you care to tell me, please let me know.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605

What really brought about this thread/question is that I was a little disappointed with the sluggishness that my brand new computer displayed, especially on reboots and really just overall. As I said, I'm not someone who is going to be able to carryout solutions that require expert knowledge, but I can follow directions and get my way around doing basic things.

Any other tips to make my computer run faster? If it helps, I am using a Lenovo T61 - 2.0 Ghz/2MB RAM/128 MB Video Card. Thanks in advance for any advice.

2/13/2008 1:27:59 PM

^ kind of why i made this thread: message_topic.aspx?topic=514457

i'm putting 64-bit ubuntu on my laptop to dual-boot with 32-bit vista, so it was worth it to me, at least, to figure out how to enable ~3.xgb of memory in windows, since ubuntu can actually utilize it

2/13/2008 1:52:19 PM

Let me know how that goes.

is ubantu good for finding laptop drivers or what do you do ?

2/13/2008 2:16:48 PM

roommate installed the latest ubuntu 64-bit on his dell XPS laptop (which has integrated bluetooth in addition to the usual things)...it provided functionality for EVERYTHING, including his front volume and video playback buttons

i'll be happy to report back...the laptop's as feature-rich and new as i can afford, but i think it represents a pretty stout test for ubuntu functionality...we'll see

my 4gb of RAM is waiting for me at home right now, so if i figure out which switch or tweaks are necessary for 32-bit XP, i'll post back, as well

[Edited on February 13, 2008 at 2:29 PM. Reason : .]

2/13/2008 2:28:26 PM

yeah see my laptop is a 2.2 ghz asus g1sa1 so it has some pretty gadgets too. i wonder....

2/13/2008 2:49:30 PM

i've written this time and time again, 4GB is fully addressed (in simple terms) in 32-bit Windows XP

whether you use the 3GB switch or not, the only thing the switch does is changes the proportion of how it's managed.

while applications can only use a portion of it (2GB or 3GB), the rest is reserved for windows kernel addressable space, either way it's benefiting you to have the extra available space and your computer will use the extra memory up to 4GB

2/13/2008 4:31:11 PM

^ okay, fair enough...the reason i'm asking the question now (and thank you for the response in my thread...this one's more popular, so i'll probably just ignore that one) is because i keep reading about people's PCs not showing the full 4gb of memory...now, i suppose i should wait until tonight when i pop the memory in to see if it does this, but i'm trying to get all my ducks in a row beforehand, so that i'm not scrabbling all night trying to get it to work

2/13/2008 4:51:56 PM

^its not gonna show 4gb, it'll show ~3.5GB

http://blogs.msdn.com/dcook/archive/2007/03/25/who-ate-my-memory.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/08/14/699521.aspx

2/13/2008 5:05:49 PM

^both of those are good reads that help explain it.

2/13/2008 5:13:01 PM

my vista takes about 3-4 minutes to boot up...

my xp took about 1 minute. what gives

2/13/2008 5:45:16 PM

showing 3.25gb...meh, 4gb cost $60, and i was going to spend the money to put 2gb in my new HTPC anyway (so i just gave the old 2gb to that and kept the 2x2gb pieces for myself)

would there be a noticeable advantage to the 3gb switch? i mean, would kernel REALLY need more than 1gb of RAM? i would assume that that would be enough, and the remainder would be used for the programs

[Edited on February 13, 2008 at 7:22 PM. Reason : .]

2/13/2008 7:08:49 PM

we use the /3gb switch on all our 3d/workstations in our firm, if you have 3GB+ of memory you should run the /3gb switch

2/13/2008 8:05:52 PM

bttt per request

8/14/2008 8:52:40 PM

I'm gonna hijack this thread for:

Quote :

"Vista machine...booted in less than 30 seconds"

mine used to as well, but now it can take anywhere from 2-5 minutes. I haven't added anything and I don't really have many things set to run on startup.

the longest part of the booting process is between the bios type screen and then the log on screen. the screen goes blank, but the mouse shows up and moves. it just sits there for a few minutes, then goes to the log on screen.

suggestions?

8/14/2008 9:29:31 PM

update your bios. set it to boot to the hard drive first. look for other settings in the bios to speed boot time

8/15/2008 10:00:18 AM

weirdness...i have my bios set to boot in this order:

removable media
optical drive
hard drive

and my boot time is definitely less than 30 seconds (64-bit ultimate, 4gb RAM)...i've wondered about throwing the OS onto an 8-16gb 150x SDHC card in my built-in slot, to see if it would make any difference (wait, can you even do that?)

8/15/2008 10:17:05 AM

^That would likely be slower than the hard-disk.

8/15/2008 11:53:49 AM

WELL, THEN, NEVERMIND, OKAY?

8/15/2008 12:11:39 PM