http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=3&var1=143&var2=0

A very helpful article to optimize your Windows system. I've tried the suggestions on my Windows XP Pro laptop. There is a significant and noticeable difference now. Diskeeper is required to defragment the hard drive and the page file. A trial version of Diskeeper is available.

The article provides a good explanation of Windows memory fundamentals. A free page file defragmentation utility is available from Sysinternals.

This is what I have done to my system (Intel Centrino 1.6 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 60GB).

1. Install Diskeeper, and defragment the hard disc.
2. Check the page file usage using the taskmanager performance tab. Monitor the max size under normal use(Outlook, winamp, OneNote,Word, Visual Studio,Opera,Azureaus).
3. In the virtual memory settings, set the initial size to 512 MB and the maximum size to 768MB. 
4. Use Diskeeper to defragment the page file at the next boot.
5. Schedule Diskeeper to run regularly.