Registry Home > Windows > File System > Caching and Memory

Change the Size of the Virtual Disk Cache (Windows 95/98/Me) Popular

This tweak allows you control the minimum and maximum amount of memory being allocated as disk cache. It can be used to speed up your system and possibly avoid some memory problems.

This tweak can be easily applied using WinGuides Tweak Manager.
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Using notepad or another text editor, open your SYSTEM.INI file from your Windows directory.

Find the section starting with [vcache], and add the following two lines, or modify them if they already exist.

MinFileCache=0
MaxFileCache=4096

These values set the amount of memory in kilobytes to be used for disk caching, if you have more the 16Mb of RAM you may want to increase the MaxFileCache size, to about 25% of your total RAM (i.e. if you have 128Mb use "MaxFileCache=32768")

Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

Note: If you are receiving an error like "Error: An I/O subsystem driver failed to load" try increasing the maximum size to 6144.

Registry Settings
Value Name: MinFileCache, MaxFileCache

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Disclaimer: Modifying the registry can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. We cannot guarantee that problems resulting from modifications to the registry can be solved. Use the information provided at your own risk.

Last modified: May 12, 2002