Running XP with the pagefile disabled

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I can’t help commenting on this thread as well since this is a topic that has buggered me for a while. I have no in-depth knowledge of Windows system internals when it comes to virtual memory, page file and swapping, but I do get the basic picture and I understand the concepts. I have always wondered why on earth Windows swaps out pages from inactive processes even if there is plenty of RAM available. The only effect I see in this is the fact that a machine with 4 GiB such as my development PC behaves like a 10 year old underfurnised office box when I have many windows open and switch to one that was backgrounded for a while.

What annoys me even more is the fact that ‘experts’ keep repeating that this is not the case when it clearly is and strongly advise against disabling the swap file when, as most people who did this reported here, there is no harm in it but in fact a benefit. I have now disabled paging altogether in my machine and it has become extremely snappy and fun to work with. So far, I have not encountered a single problem even while running memory intensive applications.

The only situation I can imagine where this would cause problems is when applications rely on inter-process memory mapping or file mapping. As I understand it, this definitely requires a page file.

Bests - Dietmar

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I tried it on my Win XP laptop. My Outlook 2007 started failing with the following error:
Faulting application outlook.exe, version 12.0.6316.5000, stamp 4833a470, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, stamp 00000000, debug? 0, fault address 0x06dc9580.

The error got resolved once I turned it back on and restarted.

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Learn/understand what swap-space is an after that start giving advices.
Start learning from books, not forum’s or blogs.

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Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals has put together a very insightful guide:

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

Of course you need an IQ of over 200 to understand it, but it’s surely a better guide than the possibly confused testimony of the average passer-by.

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I setup for NO PAGEFILE and UltimateDefrag 2008 would die on Analyze-Options-Boot Time (which is the interesting part of the program), with a C++ runtime error. Everything else ran fine w/o a pagefile, but adding one of 20Meg made UltimateDefrag work again.

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With an i7 and 6GB RAM I hardly see the need for it. With everything I need to load my RAM sits at 20 - 22% used, (Around 1.2/1.3GB) which includes Firefox, Winamp, Xfire/MSN, uTorrent, IRC etc.

I don’t think any programs or services are likely to spontaneously expand 4GB.

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Interestingly after setting a custom pagefile with a minimum size of 100mb, max 1000mb, Task Manager reports around 600mb used.

When I observed the size of pagefile.sys it was 100mb.

After using the machine for a little while XP popped up with a ballon informing me my pagefile was too small and will increase it. Looked again and pagefile.sys was about 110mb.

Loaded Warcraft 3, started a game and alt-tabbed out - pagefile.sys was now 104mb, Task Manger reported 720mb usage.

This is a far from comprehensive test, but it seems as if XP will use RAM for the pagefile as much as possible; given that (possible) fact I personally like to have a small windows pagefile set up for the small percentage of applications that might require it. Plus I don’t want to run the risk of my PC doing unexplainable weird stuff…

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Forgot to add: am running a Dell laptop with 4gb RAM.

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You mention that if we wasn’t using X(our limit) amount of memory we wouldn’t use the pagefile anyway…

…but doesn’t the pagefile get used when memory in the ram is idle, regardless of if it is full or not?

I have been using pagefile-less for 5 or so years. My main XP machine has 4gb (3.5gb as im still using 32bit) and never had any problems. Even with win2k on 2gb no issues (except the start up message, but that’s not an issue).

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Photoshop CS3 demand paging file and refuse to start without it.

Tried this a couple of times. Same result

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For those of you that want to disable your pagefile via the registry, just copy and paste the following to a text file, save it with a .reg extension and run. You will need to reboot for the change to take effect.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
“PagingFiles”=hex(7):00,00,00,00

If you want to set the pagefile, you’ll have to set it manually to get the hex number from your registry. For example, I use the following when setting up new computers.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; This will set the paging file to C:\pagefile.sys using 4096 as initial and maximum.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
“PagingFiles”=hex(7):43,00,3a,00,5c,00,70,00,61,00,67,00,65,00,66,00,69,00,6c,
00,65,00,2e,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,20,00,34,00,30,00,39,00,36,00,20,00,34,00,
30,00,39,00,36,00,00,00,00,00

We use a lot of old legacy applications along with some new memory hungry applications. This setting works for us even if it isn’t ideal. And this is for Windows XP. I always found it odd that Windows XP would set the initial pagefile lower that the recommended initial. But I suppose 10-11 years ago, they never considered we would be running Windows XP with 2 - 4GB memory. Especially since Windows XP 32bit can’t use all 4GB of memory due to its own limitation. Call me crazy, but I don’t trust Windows to manage my swap file, which is the default in Windows 7. I might try disabling my pagefile at home to see what happens, especially when I play some of my CPU hungry games. :wink: