Diskcache plays a very important role in WinXP. However, the default I/O pagefile setting of XP is conservative, which limits the performance. Some better values for different RAM are given below.

1. run "regedit";
2. goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit];
3. modify the value in Hex depending on the size of your RAM:
RAM: modified value(Hex)
64M: 1000;
128M: 4000;
256M: 10000;
512M or more: 40000.
4. reboot.