Page File Question

  • Thread starter Thread starter WGD
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WGD

Why am I showing that 500-700mB is being consumed for Page File stuff when
(virtually) nothing* is going on and I have 2G Ram sitting there? I
understood PF space is another way of saying Virtual Memory, i.e. swap space
when RAM is choked.

WayneD

* right now, OE-only is open plus whatever else XP does in the background.
 
WGD said:
Why am I showing that 500-700mB is being consumed for Page File stuff when
(virtually) nothing* is going on and I have 2G Ram sitting there? I
understood PF space is another way of saying Virtual Memory, i.e. swap space
when RAM is choked.
Click to expand...

As you say, Windows is a Virtual Memory system. Total memory is
installed RAM + page file size. When there isn't enough RAM to satisfy
a request for allocated memory, Windows swaps some memory pages not
accessed recently to the page file to clear space in RAM. Windows keeps
track of what pages are whwere, so it's transparent to you and your
applications.

But Windows has to *have* a page file. You can specify the size, or you
can let Windows manage it, but one must exist. In a default install,
Windows manages things, and grows and shrinks the page file dynamically
to handle the load.
WayneD
Click to expand...
* right now, OE-only is open plus whatever else XP does in the background.
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter. There must be a page file.

One trick folks have do to boost performance is to specify the page file
size as a fixed amount. This forces Windows to preallocate the file,
and eliminates grow/shrink activity. Another, if you have more than one
physical drive, is to specify that the page file be physically located
on another drive, so that disk access to the page file is seperate from
disk access to the Windows drive. (If you do this, the drive with the
page file should be at least as fast as the boot drive, and located on a
different IDE connector.)

Since 500MB-700MB is a small faction of current hard drive sizes, why do
you *care*?
______
Dennis
 
Even if you had 64GB of memory (which you can't of course), the way Windows
is designed is to unload stuff from memory and push it to the pagefile. So
there will always be a pagefile being used by Windows.

JS
 
Hello,

To add on the other replies, you may want to disable the page file entirely
if your memory requirements are not high.

However, I would not recommend it for 2GB RAM if you play the newer full
screen 3D games as some have been known to take up more than 1GB of RAM and
may cause your system to crash if it runs out of RAM.

On our 3GB (used for all kind of purposes including gaming/designing)
system, we disable the swap file.

--
Singapore Website Design
http://www.bootstrike.com/Webdesign/
Singapore Web Hosting
http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/faq.html
Windows XP FAQ
 
SingaporeWebDesign said:
Hello,

To add on the other replies, you may want to disable the page file
entirely if your memory requirements are not high.
Click to expand...

NOT a good idea. There are some applications that won't run without a
pagefile being present. set it to minimum, yes, but do NOT disable it.

See here for the definitive pagefile information:
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm
 
Hello,

Which applications? I have not had any problem with any applications that we
run here - except that in the rare case we were doing two 7z archives of 2
huge folders of files using a 128MB dictionary size (thats 2.5GB of RAM
required).

That's when we get a "Out of memory" from 7z and "Windows - Out of Virtual
Memory" bubble coming out - but no crashes other than 7z quitting out.

Besides, there is better performance without the page file as there are
lesser hits to the hard disk.

--
Singapore Website Design
http://www.bootstrike.com/Webdesign/
Singapore Web Hosting
http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/faq.html
Windows XP FAQ
 
No, turning OFF the pagefile will cause windows to create its own on drive C
anyway. There has to be a pagefile on the boot drive. When it decides to
create that pagefile you also end up with an error message.

Pop`
 
SingaporeWebDesign said:
Hello,

No, it does no such thing on our PC here. We have hidden and
protected files set to be shown.

The error message only appears when your RAM usage is higher than the
available amount of RAM (see my earlier post above)
Click to expand...

I'll bet it did happen, and perhaps someone just set it to not do the notify
any longer, or there's someting else I've never come across as in maybe it's
different with lots of RAM.
Since I've been wrong before, I just tried it here; XP didn't like not
having a pagefile and went ahead and created one on its own, complete with
the pagefile message.

It's not an issue for me since I have mine well set up, but ... being
ever-curious, can you think of any other reasons for the difference between
 
Hello,

I am unable to find the answer to my question in the link.

Can the Virtual Memory be turned off on a really large machine?
Strictly speaking Virtual Memory is always in operation and cannot be
“turned off.” What is meant by such wording is “set the system to use no
page file space at all.”

Doing this would waste a lot of the RAM. The reason is that when programs
ask for an allocation of Virtual memory space, they may ask for a great deal
more than they ever actually bring into use — the total may easily run to
hundreds of megabytes. These addresses have to be assigned to somewhere by
the system. If there is a page file available, the system can assign them to
it — if there is not, they have to be assigned to RAM, locking it out from
any actual use.
Click to expand...

If you are referring to the above, yes, that is why I said that you should
have a large amount of RAM ( > 2GB) before switching off virtual memory.

If not, perhaps you might be so kind as to quote the text?

--
Singapore Website Design
http://www.bootstrike.com/Webdesign/
Singapore Web Hosting
http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/faq.html
Windows XP FAQ
 
Hello,

Are you sure you Set it to disabled on all drives? That is all I can think
of.

See
http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/3891/asdasdasvh3.jpg

The Paging File Size column should be blank for *all* rows.

You might also want to delete it off directly. If it is in use, it should
fail with a delete error.

I am using XP SP2 with all latest updates as well.

You might want to post your issue as a new thread for more answers.

--
Singapore Website Design
http://www.bootstrike.com/Webdesign/
Singapore Web Hosting
http://www.bootstrike.com/WinXP/faq.html
Windows XP FAQ
 
message
I am unable to find the answer to my question in the link.
Click to expand...
<snip>

I can't think of any examples but I am sure that Gordon is correct - there
are definitely some applications that won't run without a pagefile (albeit
relatively few I should think). If I can remember where I've read this (and
it's recently) I'll post back...

Ed Metcalfe.
 
WGD said:
Why am I showing that 500-700mB is being consumed for Page File stuff when
(virtually) nothing* is going on and I have 2G Ram sitting there? I
understood PF space is another way of saying Virtual Memory, i.e. swap
space when RAM is choked.

WayneD

* right now, OE-only is open plus whatever else XP does in the background.
Click to expand...

WGD,

A little pedantic of me, but...

It is a common misconception that "Virtual Memory" and "pagefile/paged
memory" refer to the same thing.

To be precise Virtual Memory is physical RAM plus swapfile size. Windows
combines the two into virtual address space and the Memory Manager deals
with swapping data in and out of physical RAM as required.

Ed Metcalfe.
 
WGD said:
Why am I showing that 500-700mB is being consumed for Page File stuff when
(virtually) nothing* is going on and I have 2G Ram sitting there? I
understood PF space is another way of saying Virtual Memory, i.e. swap space
when RAM is choked.

WayneD

* right now, OE-only is open plus whatever else XP does in the background.
Click to expand...

The PF usage figure reported by Windows XP Task Manager includes a
fair amount, sometimes a lot, of "phantom" page file usage. For
example, on my own XP Pro system at this moment Task Manager says that
PF Usage is 634 mb. However my pagefile is only 162 mb in size, so
obviously Task Manager is reporting something other than actual
physical usage of the pagefile.

The explanation is found in the unused portions of memory allocation
requests. By design, Windows must provide memory address space to
satisfy all of the memory allocation requests that are issued by
windows components, application programs, and device drivers. And
what normally happens is that these memory allocation requests are for
more memory than will ordinarily be needed under normal circumstances.
So what Windows does is to allocate addresses in RAM only to those
portions of the requests that are actually used, and the unused
portions are mapped to available space in the pagefile. Note that
this mapping of unused memory requests to the pagefile does not
require any actual disk activity - all that is needed is to make
entries in the memory mapping tables maintained by the CPU.

Hope this explains the situation.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2008)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
 
SingaporeWebDesign said:
Hello,

To add on the other replies, you may want to disable the page file entirely
if your memory requirements are not high.
Click to expand...

That is not good advice under any circumstances, as what it does is to
force Windows to allocate RAM to the unused portions of memory
allocation requests thereby making that RAM unavailable for other
purposes such as disk cache.

See also my comments to the o.p. in this regard.



Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2008)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
 
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