paging file...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron Rossi
  • Start date Start date
R

Ron Rossi

Okay I got myself in a bit of a bind. When I boot I get the
message "Your system has no paging file, or the pagin file
is too small". The Knowledge Base tells me to go into
MyComputer properties to make changes there. The problem is
I never get windows to boot that far! Anybody have a
suggestion for me??? Details follow...

I am migrating my laptop to a larger hard drive. The larger
hard drive is from another users machine which has Win2K on
it. When I booted with both hard drives in the system, my
original drive was used as the boot drive (a good thing).
However the new larger drive came up as drive C: (not a
good thing)! I tried a few things to keep this from
happening. Chaning the jumper setting on the new drive to
make it slave did not help.

The last thing I tried was to change the logical drive
mapping of the new drive to E:. This should have worked
great, however somehow the paging file on that drive had
become the system paging file and the one on my boot drive
is not recognized! I saw the file on both drives before I
rebooted this last time.
 
Your issue relates to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:

223188 "How To Restore the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows"
(http://support.microsoft.com/?id=223188)
249321 "Unable to Log on if the Boot Partition Drive Letter Has Changed"
(http://support.microsoft.com/?id=249321)

Best regards,

Frank Szita [MSFT]

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Hi, Ron.

Without getting into the rest of your problem, let me tackle just the paging
file issue. But I haven't booted Win2K since installing WinXP 3 years ago,
so my memory of the Win2K steps has faded - and they are not quite the same
as for WinXP.

Each time we reboot, the paging file is created anew. So, look in Explorer
(or the "DOS" window) for the file dates and times. The one whose creation
time matches your last reboot is the one that is actually in use. The
other(s) \pagefile.sys should show dates/times from earlier boots; these can
be and should be deleted (after you deal with their System, Hidden and
Read-only attributes).

In WinXP (and in Win2K, as I recall), go to System Properties | Advanced |
Performance Settings | Advanced | Virtual Memory Change. First, note how
much VM is currently allocated (Total paging file size for all drives). On
the Change page, set ALL volumes to zero (and press Set after each), then go
back to the ONE volume that you want to use and Set it to System managed
size (or the size you choose). Then OK your way out, reboot, and delete
\pagefile.sys on any volume except the current-dated file on the volume you
want to use. If you choose System managed size, Windows will set it to 1.5
x RAM.

For more discussion of virtual memory and paging files, see MVP Alex
Nichol's explanation at:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

RC
 
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