Hi Alan,
First, I am not an expert, and only know what worked for me.
I’m using a three year old Dell PC with Windows XP Home w/SP2. I have Microsoft Professional Office products among several other software programs suited to create grapics loaded on. I use my PC at home to do professional work as an emerging artist. I recently added Photoshop CS3 Extended.
When I first set up my PC three years ago, I used Partition Magic to partition my hard drive and followed its instructions – to start with. The only reason I used Partition Magic was because I had used it for my old Windows 98 on my other PC and it was familiar to me.
Then when I started using my scanned picture files to create posters and high quality, large digital images of my paintings, some of my software programs predictably began to run slower, and slower, and some them would "hang", … to eventually result in memory errors particularly when trying to open or to save large picture files in more than one program. The error message was similar to Dale’s, and admittedly, I do not recall the exact message because this was many months ago. But, like David it didn’t make sense for my set-up and purported capability. I don’t even have as much RAM or memory as he does, and haven’t even set up a "crash drive" yet, and I don’t get any memory errors or problems so far!
I figured out that my computer was not set up in its inherent design for that type of commercial quality use — a home xp version with professional graphics and photo manipulation types of softwares. But I am stuck with it…and determined to make do with what I’ve got until I can afford to upgrade.
Just as a test to see if what I suspected on my own was true, I went from 1000 MB to 2000 MB swap file size. I suspect that there will have to be some sort of computation to determine the exact size of the swap file David or anyone would need according to what the computer would need in order to have "room" to think about great big picture files, especially when working on them across several software programs. In Partition Magic there are instructions on how to determine it, and I believe it is a number that is "relative" to certain coordinates that i honestly do not fully understand. What I have been told, and I am not certain this is true, but if the SWAP file is either too large or too small then it will compromise how fast the computer can "think" and even shut you down if it is off really far. So, I wouldn’t dare to give you a number just off the top of my head.
Anyway, for me, doubling the size worked like a dream. I had estimated the largest size picture I would want to use across my softwares was actually twice as large as I had ever worked on before the error messages started. That’s how I arrived at my current number. I did some reading in Partition Magic to see if that was dangerous and I determined it was not and it could be reversed if it did not work. And I am prepared to increase the SWAP file yet again should the problem arise as I progress to more and more advanced types of graphics.
It became obvious that if the clipboard became too populated that the swap file was too small to allow any movement through the strings of information associated — and I think it is possible that the clipboard will corrupt what’s on it if the SWAP file is too small. Like David, my clipboard was telling me it was clear, but in fact it had corrupted "bits" that remained until the SWAP file size increased.
It took me all of about 10 minutes to make the change.
I hope this in some way helps, and I think that there is probably a similar set of computations in Window’s version of partitioning software.
Best wishes for success!
Holly Carmichael
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http://www.artistrising.com/galleries/HollyCarmichael>
