As you have XP then anything above 3.5 Gb is wasted as windows will not recognise it
4x512 will give you a marked improvement as the swap file will hardly be used, if at all
Thank you very much, essexboy!
Glad to hear that it can help. This week I’ll buy 4x512 and put it in my PC, I have positive thoughts that it will solve my problem.
I’ve got only one more question to you - when I will have 2 GB of RAM, how should I set the swap file?
I’ve read a few articles on web and don’t find the “best” answer.
Sometimes people write, that minimal value should be 1,5 times RAM and maximal should be 3 times RAM.
In other threads I read that when having e.g. 2 GB the minimal and maximal value should be the same and be equal to the amount of RAM, in this case 2048 MB.
I don’t really know how to set up this values, maybe you could give me an advice as experienced user?
Generally it is best to select the “let windows decide” option as that will then optimise itself to your RAM
Hello Mattata
With 2 GB your PC will be faster and you can run more programs without the swap file is used. After upgrading the memory, the size of the two files pagefile.sys (the swap file) and hiberfil.sys (hibernation on disk) will be increased to more than 2 GB each one. Your hard drive is 80 GB capacity and almost full? Perhaps, it’s time to change the drive also? You can use various disk cloning tools to copying your actual drive (Acronis True Image by example) on bigger one.
I did a test today on a PC that I use almost never. The CPU is an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.5 GHz) with just 256 MB running Windows XP SP3. There have been just few Windows updates after formating in 2012. Avast (free) 2014 is installed with Firefox and Opera too. I’m using Startup Control Panel.cpl http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml (looks like msconfig) to configure Windows XP for just the bare minimum of programs launched at startup.
So, what is the score for this outdated PC (Your PC is faster and have 2x more RAM).
- The total system startup is completed after 2 minutes-2 minutes 30s (I mean no more disk access, all programs loaded).
- Open a folder is immediate or just take few seconds.
- Launch Firefox v25.0.1 takes 2 minutes.
- Opera v17 is “faster”, just one minute to wait!
- If I open new Tab in browser or launch other programs, the performances decrease (it’s not a surprise with just 256 MB).
This is why I was surprised with 512 MB the performance of your PC are so low (3 to 4 minutes to load Opera and few minutes to open folder?), even with almost none programs launched at startup, as indicated by essexboy? This is why I also said to check the hard drive (multiples read errors/retry, can slow the disk). Or 100% CPU usage also! the old PC 256 MB I tested have a problem with the Windows Update service using 100% CPU! I had disabled this service to do the tests. With WU activated, for example, Firefox starts in 4 minutes instead of 2! Eh eh, it looks like a little bit what happens on your PC? My other PC have 512 MB (Windows XP/OpenSuse Linux), 1 GB (XP/Win7 or XP/OpenSuse), 2 GB (ex-3GB) for Win7/Win8 on my (Lenovo) Notebook…
This is a screenshot of my recent test with Windows XP SP3 on 256 MB outdated PC (using PC with just 256 MB is really NOT recommended!).
Hello again, thank you both for your answers!
I bought additional RAM today - 4 x 512 MB of DDR 400 MHz PC3200, each of them the same so they could work in dual. I installed them and they work fine.
I’ve been testing my PC for about an hour now and it looks like it’s working noticeably faster. As I work through the oncoming days I’ll see if it works fine enough and without big lags. I’ll report to you soon, thanks!
@bernado - I was also suprised! I thought this amount of RAM (512 MB) is enough to just use the basic programs, I never thought that everything would work so slow. I thought that might be a virus or unwanted program, which “eats” memory for own purpose or something like that.
I have no need to change my disc, sometimes I’m out of space, but then I do some cleaning and uninstall unnecessary programs and delete wastes, this gives me few extra GB to meet my needs. I just don’t want to invest more money in that old PC, maybe next year I’ll buy a completely new and fast PC. But now I just have to work on that.
If my page file is going to be this high, maybe I should set the page file limits myself?
With the additional RAM you can now set it at minimum or let windows decide, if it is controlled by windows it will increase/decrease as required 
I just let the Windows decide about the size of page file.
I’ve been testing my PC for two days now and I can fully say that extra RAM helped a lot, I don’t lose my patience while using computer, everything goes “normally” with the speed that is fully satisfied for me!
Looks like you found the cause of my problem and helped me! I’d like to thank you, very much, that was a great help!
Glad to be of assistance