When you run a RiverWare model on a computer, there are other applications that are competing for the computer’s memory resources (such as the CPU or a disk). If your model is small and your machine is “big/fast”, there is no conflict. If the opposite is true, your model is big and your computer is “small/slow”, (this is more likely if you are reading this), then there may be competition between applications for the limited system resources. This section describes two approaches to make the RiverWare model run faster by adjusting other applications or changing the configuration of the operating system.

When other applications are running at the same time as RiverWare, it is possible that competition for system resources will degrade RiverWare performance. The obvious solution is to close the other applications. But, if you do not want to close out of other applications, it is possible to tell the operating system to give preference to RiverWare by increasing its priority. To change the priority:

On the Task Manager, select the Processes tab. Locate the riverware.exe process, (note, there may be more than one if you are running multiple models). Right-click riverware.exe and select Set Priority, then High. It will warn that system instability may occur. Select OK.

If RiverWare is paging and you cannot reduce the amount of paging, then you can sometimes configure your system to reduce the overhead associated with paging. First, move the page file off the disk that holds your system partition to another fast, dedicated hard disk. By moving your page file to a dedicated disk, you can reduce the time to write and read pages. In addition, if you can spread the page file across several non-system disks, you can decrease page file competition.

It is beyond the scope of this discussion to provide all the potentially relevant details for various systems configurations, however your system administrator or IT department should be able to assist if necessary. For other resources, search the internet for “windows page file”.