Page file elimination

[ridgerunner]

Will I increase, decrease, or have no effect my systmem stability and performance by eliminating my page file because I have 2 gig of sys. memory.

 

[rvnguy]

unless you are short on hd space, I do not suggest eliminating it.

with 3gb mem you/it should not utilize it often, but if not there & needed you will see a real slowdown.

The OS only uses it when and if needed.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[wolluf]

theoretically you could eliminate it (unless you run multiple virtual machines for example) - as in normal use, XP won't ever need 2GB of RAM. However, for some reason best known to MS, XP seems to need to use pagefile when there's lots of RAM left free (you can check in task manager to see how much its using) - and it also seems to need a lot of pagefile (eg, I've had it set to 200MB with 1GB RAM, 5-600MB RAM in use, still get that message about being low on virtual memory, and windows is increasing it). Hmmm, this is turning into a bit of a rant!

I have run with no pagefile, 1GB RAM for a while, with no obvious problems, but now run with something like the recommended amount (daft as that is to me!), so that I don't get complaining messages!

 

[stduc]

There is no real reason not to have a swap file unless you don't have the disk space to spare. Highly unlikely.

N.B.

The amount of pagefile reported by task manager as PF Usage is not what it is using it's what it would use if everything that is in RAM that can be swapped out was!

Yes I agree (before anyone comments) - pretty useless statistic for taskmanager to report.

XP actually has a 2GB limit which can be increased by adding /3GB at the end of the WINDOWS= line in boot.ini

That's not the whole story. But its Friday & I'm tired!

 

[wolluf]

stduc - where did that info about task manager come from - sounds totally bogus to me! (and nothing I've found backs it up).

 

[stduc]

I read it some place when I was trying to resolve some issue or other. I can't remember now.

However a quick google brought this up

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=20631

The point I was trying to make is the PF usage in the task manmager does not indicate stuff that is swapped out of RAM. It's more complicated than that.

 

[stduc]

A bit more googling found me this:-

http://techrepublic.com.com/5138-6240-728930.html

Install the page file logger (registration required)

I believe it backs up what I have been saying. However I could be wrong!