Because of corporate reasons we are limited to 32-bit XP machines. Ramdrive (PAE) provides a nice alternative to using a bit more memory, but the paging file set on the ramdrive is almost not used and it never grows. I've tried some of the options under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management but I have not seen any different behavior. I've set up the page file to be minimum 2GB, maximum 4GB, but it never grows.
What I would like to know is how to force Windows XP to page more and evict less. Not quite a programming question, but might concern a lot of other programmers.
If you are looking to set the paging file to allocate a larger area to begin with I would suggest setting the Virtual Memory paging file to a minimum of 4GB so it does not need to take the additional time to allocate additional space.