Memory Management

Memory management in Windows is often misunderstood. This is not surprising, because its memory management model is both complex and evolving.

Links:

 The definitive source of info is found in chapter 7 of this book. 5th edition is due out soon!

• Perris Calderon explains pagefile hoaxes at Tweakhound.
• MSDN: Managing Memory Mapped Files (1993!)
• MSDN: Managing Virtual Memory (1993!)
• MSDN: other articles
• KB: RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile and all that stuff (2004)
• MSDN: Virtual Memory Functions (coder oriented)
• KB: How to Increase the Memory Capability of Your Computer (very basic: add RAM, change pagefile settings)
• Russinovich: Pushing the Limits of Windows: Physical Memory
• MSDN: Memory Limits for Windows Releases
• Russinovich: Inside Memory Management Part 1 (behind paywall)
• WHDC: Advances in Memory Management for Windows (Word doc from MS)
• Alex Nichol (aumha): Virtual Memory in Windows XP
• Russinovich: Inside the Windows Vista Kernel: Part 2 (ReadyBoost, Superfetch, dynamic layout, and more)
• Russinovich: Inside Windows Server 2008 Kernel Changes

Perfmon's Memory: Pages Input/sec counter. This is the performance counter that'll tell you if you're short on RAM. Occasional spikes are expected (unavoidable in fact), but the goal here is that the avergae is as close to zero as possible.