Setting a static page file is mainly a tip that should be reserved for the computer user who has forsaken friends and family for the realm of PC gaming, but anyone can do it, especially if you do video editing, or are a power user of any kind.

the premise behind the static page file is to take away the systems responsibility to manage virtual memory for you, and demand higher performance out of it. The system page file is basically a chunk of your hard drive that is set aside and used as more RAM. now, by no means is this more effective than actual RAM, but it does help greatly.

before you start, decide how much virtual memory you really want. the rule of thumb is twice the amount of your actual ram. so say if you had 1GB of RAM, you would set a 2GB page file. I will assume for this tutorial that you have 1GB for addition purposes.

hit 'windows key + pause', or use the control panel, or whatever method you wish to access the 'system properties' menu. Click the 'Advanced' tab, then under 'Performance' click 'Settings'
Click the 'advanced' tab there, and move down to 'Virtual Memory' and click 'Change'

It will be set to 'system managed size.' and you will see your hard drive in the white box above it. If you have multiple drives, you will see more drives there. Mess with multiple page files if you want, but I've had bad luck in the past, i don't recommend it. select 'Custom Size' and, along with my assumption that i have 1GB of ram, enter the values 2048 and 2048 for Initial size and Maximum size. click 'Set' and apply-ok all the way through, and you will be prompted to re-start your computer. go ahead and do that.

now, if you are already computer savvy, you will know why i used 2048MB for 2GB. that's because in computer terms, 1 GB = 1024 MB.

yeah. i know. crash course: 1 bit is a 0 or a 1. the basic storage capability is 8 bits = 1 byte. the reason 1 GB is based on 1024 MB, is because 1 MB = 1024 KB, and 1 KB = 1024 bytes. 1 KB must equal 1024 bytes, because storage is linked in reaaaaally tiny 8bit blocks, so everything must be multiples of 8: 1024/2 = 512 512/2 = 256 256/2 = 128 128/2 = 64 64/2 = 32 32/2 = 16 16/2 = 8.

I know that seems sorta confusing. But just remember when you are calculating your page file size, that 1 GB does NOT equal 1000 MB, it equals 1024 MB.

a final note on this: it is not recommended to have a really large page file size. keep it to twice your ram, and make sure you have a good amount of space free on your hard drive. If you don't have much space left on your hard drive, you might run into memory issues. clean it out and defrag before attempting this tweak.