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I was using Dreamweaver and noticed that not all of its modules load in the RAM at once on startup. Those modules load only when we use them.

When I click on the File in the header, my cursor shows a sand clock that something is loading, then the drop-down options appear. Same with the other options. When I use Dreamweaver (and some other programs too), they hang my system for 2-3 seconds (I think at that time the program loads into the memory,) and after that, it runs well.

So am I right here that not all modules load in RAM at once and start loading when we access them? And if I'm not wrong, is there any way by which we can load the whole program in RAM at once?

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  • Starting a program should not cause the entire system to hang.
    – Daniel B
    Jun 5, 2017 at 21:42

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You are right. Modern operating systems allow files to "fault in" as needed. When you launch an executable, the file is mapped into memory in such a way that the kernel is invoked when a page is accessed for the first time. When the kernel is invoked, it reads that part of the file into memory and "backs" part of the mapping with that page of RAM.

Windows already has a prefetch scheme that causes pages that are very likely to be needed to be loaded into memory before they fault to avoid precisely these delays. It's quite good at what it does, so remaining delays are likely unavoidable without either adding more RAM to the system or replacing the mass storage device with something faster.

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