Windows memory polling - Does your PC need more memory?
Windows memory polling - If your computer does not have as much memory as Windows needs, it will find something to use in its place: your hard drive.
Windows will create a virtual memory area on your drive, and it will move files in and out of there just as it would from real memory, using a process called polling.
The problem with polling is that your hard drive is a mechanical device, which means it uses moving parts (namely, a spinning disk and several read and write heads) to store and retrieve data.
This mechanical nature makes your hard drive several orders of magnitude slower than RAM (which has no moving parts).
Beefing up your computer with more memory is one obvious solution, but here's how you can tell if this will make a difference. Next time you're using your PC, keep a close eye on the hard-drive activity light on the front panel. If the light flickers madly every time you do something (loading or saving files doesn't count), Windows is polling and your PC needs more memory.
Feb 17 - 
05:23 PM PT | filed under Troubleshoot | 
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