Running XP with the pagefile disabled

No matter how much memory your system uses it will always use virtual memory. If you have 2 GB of RAM and only 256MB of memory being used a good portion of that can be put into virtual memory. The key to knowing when to disable it is to look at the task manager to see the peak total memory usage. If it does not ever go over your total RAM then you disable it. If it goes over then you don’t diable it. Of course I have had commercial software that act wierd unless they have a lot of virtual memory even if they don’t need it.

I am actually having a problem with my pf in windows. While using programs the thing works fine but even if all the windows are closed and there are no programs running and I have a completely blank usage aside from necessary system applications that always run (ie explorer, wdfmgr, svchost, etc.) my pf usage keeps climbing higher and higher over time. It is almost as if windows refuses to wipe the content off after it has been used. Any others have this problem?

CLEAR PAGE FILE

http://netsecurity.about.com/od/windowsxp/qt/aa071004.htm

What about using a fixed size for the swapfile? I heard it’s good for performance. But messing with these settings can break some apps and games. For example, I was running with a fixed 1048MB of swapfile until resident evil 4 (PC port) kept crashing after a specific event.
Bad Capcom and it’s crappy pc ports…

What about if you use 4gb ram?How much have to set the PF if you need it?

I’ve been searching all over for info on why windows reports page file usage even though I have virtual memory disabled, and finally “Him’s” post linking wikipedia helped explain. Thanx!

I have been running a 1GB XP without a pagefile for a year now, and no problems whatsoever! I never turn my computer or programs off, and I’m experiencing a significant performance boost when switching programs, because Windows tends to stuff unused program in the virtual memory even if there is plenty of ram free.

I’ve been running without a pagefile for 3 years now and I must admit that my PC (7 years old!) is much snappier than the ones with pagefile turned on even though they are theoretically much faster.

For unbelievers: how much time does it take to open a compose window in Thunderbird after having it minimized for at least 30 minutes and working other applications? For me it was like 10+ seconds (once it was 90 seconds!). Now it’s always less than a second. It sounds like a 1000% improvement, isn’t it?

For those who think that Windows doesn’t swap if it’s not necessary: run Eclipse with a very big project (or any other big Java application) and leave it for a night. Then come back and try to do something. It’s almost impossible because the whole Eclipse (java virtual machine) is in the pagefile!

Yes, disabling virtual memory may cause errors in many applications (especially bad written ones), but think this way: what was your total memory two or three years ago? 512MB RAM + 1024MB swap? If that’s the case, then 2GB RAM + 0MB swap is still better than that.

Its really UGLY to see guides just for Windows XP, there are still Stability Fans that use Windows 3.1, can anyone please explain how to disable the paging file throught Control Panel?

Just saying i agree 100% that windows moves stuff to the pagefile when it doesnt need to. turning the pagefile off fixes this. After reading about turning the pagefile to start at 2mb, im going to run that for now and see how it works out for me.

Running Windows XP x64 with 4GB RAM and no pagefile. Everything is super snappy and just fine thank you!

I have to use monstrous Delphi 2006 IDE on my work PC(it has many memory leaks and eats up to 600 mb). With the page file on , every time I open ‘file’ menu the system starts to read hdd. (Without pf it’s allright.)

Look, open taskman, if you minimize any application’s top level window the system will call EmptyWorkingSet() and flush the entire process’ working set (600mb) on your hdd regardless of ram size.

ram_speed = O(hdd_speed) what else can I say?

I’ve recently come across tech enquiries WRT 0MB/No pagefile setups. Seems that certain applications WILL complain about having no pagefile even if you have a ton of physical RAM - sometimes even refusing to run. Even WinXP will warn of the absence of pagefile upon boot (lotta Asus EEEPC users who shoehorned in 2GB of RAM and WinXP got this).

There anyway to bypass these dumb checks? Right now I had folks locking pagefile to the bare minimum to keep programs happy, but that kinda defeats the purpose of killing the pagefile entirely =.=

Oh, and I almost forgot. Can anyone running on “No page file” check the Windows\System32 for a file called Temppf.sys? I am told this is a temporary page file for when the original is either turned off or inaccessible - and the file will still be created even if the pagefile function is turned off…

Re: CLEAR PAGE FILE

When you do this, it takes forever to shutdown because you are clearing the page file out. Why not just set your page file to zero, restart, delete your pagefile.sys and run a defrag. Then recreate it with your min and max the same.

I have a slightly different reason for wanting a zero sized PF. When I Ghost image a hard drive, I’d like to minimize the image size to minimize the media quantity. One DVD used to be enough, but I regularly use multiple DVDs now.

I certainly could set the PF small, 100MB to do this.

But if XP secretly creates a PF the size of memory anyway, I’m still Ghosting the file . . .

Yes, a page file of 1GB is not that much, but it is one of several areas I minimize or delete to decrease the Ghost image size.

todd

@todd:

Imaging software like Norton Ghost, the Acronis equivalent and the like, usually have parameters (or options) to set that excludes files of choice, and the Paging File is usually left out by default.

Good point, tnx. That’s difficult to verify because if I restore, then boot Windows, Windows may create the pagefile.sys anyway, per some of the above comments. I think I’ve seen that.

I’ll have to try Ghosting twice, once with and once without VM enabled and compare the Ghost file sizes.

todd

Given WinXP’s propensity to swap things to the page file despite lots of unused RAM, wouldn’t it make sense to place the page file in a Ram Disk on, say, a 4GB RAM system to reduce hard disk read/write (to a HDD-located page file)?

Page file in RAM disk does sound like an interesting work around. Really you should need a work around if the OS is working correctly… which XP doesn’t.

Here’s the bottom line about swap space. There is absolutely no gain in swapping memory pages if there is available RAM. None. Not a single reason that justifys this. It just slows things down and wastes RAM, end of story. Pointless, brain dead, retarded.

When you get to say 95% then some pages from the file cache can be marked available and any new allocations of RAM loaded in there. When the file cache is gone, then and ONLY THEN, is it time to use the page file. Not before.

Obviously Microsoft were counting there money when this class was going on at Redmond Uni.

Check a Linux system’s swap usage to see it done properly.

Here’s a slightly different twist as well. Consider Windows XP 32bit with 4Gb of RAM. Address extensions aside. It cannot actually address anymore RAM. However when you boot it, it still allocates a 3Gb page file… and puts stuff in it!

My 4Gb system is current running flightsim. I have 2Gb of free RAM and it’s using 1.2Gb of swap space.

Here’s the thing. If it is using 1.2Gb of swap space it cannot actually address 1.2Gb of physical RAM, due to the 4Gb limit.

That’s just stupid.

If I turn off the swap, it simply makes up its own mind and allocates a 3Gb swap file anyway.