Size of Paging File

  • Thread starter Thread starter DaffyD®
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DaffyD®

I continually get messages that I'm low on virtual memory. Right now it's
set at 938 MB, initial size is 850 MB, max size is 1250 MB. Are there any
suggestions as to where I should reset it?



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523,552 KB RAM, or 512 MB.


John John - MVP said:
How much RAM have you got in the machine?

John



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Windows 2000 usually runs very well and without many complaints with
512MB of RAM. Of course it all depends on the applications that you run
but for most users 512MB is more than enough, maybe you should take a
look at what is running on the computer to see if memory hogs are
running for nothing.

There is no set rule for pagefile sizing, recommendations are usually
anything from 1.5 to 3 times the size of the installed RAM with 1.5
times being usually suggested as a suitable size for most systems.
Being that your system complains a lot I would set it to a static size
of 3 x RAM (1536 min & 1536 max) and see what happens.

Is your pagefile on the same partition as the operating system? Do you
get this message when the computer boots or at anytime when heavily
using the computer? What kind of applications are you running?

If your computer is making heavy use of the pagefile then performance
will suffer, the computer will be slow. You should trim down
applications which may be running for nothing and ditch memory hogs like
certain AV programs in favour of less demanding ones. If you can't trim
the applications then the only real fix for this is simply to add more
RAM to the machine.

John
 
John John - MVP wrote:
[snip]
There is no set rule for pagefile sizing, recommendations are usually
anything from 1.5 to 3 times the size of the installed RAM with 1.5
times being usually suggested as a suitable size for most systems.
Being that your system complains a lot I would set it to a static size
of 3 x RAM (1536 min & 1536 max) and see what happens.
Click to expand...
[snip]

John, why would you set the pagefile higher if you have more ram?
Buffalo

PS: If you move up to 3GB of ram than you say your pagefile should be set to
around 4.5 to 9GB of ram.
If you have 512MB of ram, than your pagefile should be set to 768MB to
1.5GB.
I really don't understand.
 
There's AV and firewall software running, a number of processes that I don't
understand per Task Manager. I've reconfigured the pagefile size per your
recommendation. I'll let you know how it works. I usually see the low
memory warning with heavy use of the computer, not at reboot. The computer
has spontaneously rebooted a few times; I'm not sure why that's happened.

John John - MVP said:
Windows 2000 usually runs very well and without many complaints with
512MB of RAM. Of course it all depends on the applications that you run
but for most users 512MB is more than enough, maybe you should take a
look at what is running on the computer to see if memory hogs are
running for nothing.

There is no set rule for pagefile sizing, recommendations are usually
anything from 1.5 to 3 times the size of the installed RAM with 1.5
times being usually suggested as a suitable size for most systems.
Being that your system complains a lot I would set it to a static size
of 3 x RAM (1536 min & 1536 max) and see what happens.

Is your pagefile on the same partition as the operating system? Do you
get this message when the computer boots or at anytime when heavily
using the computer? What kind of applications are you running?

If your computer is making heavy use of the pagefile then performance
will suffer, the computer will be slow. You should trim down
applications which may be running for nothing and ditch memory hogs like
certain AV programs in favour of less demanding ones. If you can't trim
the applications then the only real fix for this is simply to add more
RAM to the machine.

John



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Click to expand...
signature database 4327 (20090811) __________
The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com
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__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4327 (20090811) __________

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Buffalo said:
John John - MVP wrote:
[snip]
There is no set rule for pagefile sizing, recommendations are usually
anything from 1.5 to 3 times the size of the installed RAM with 1.5
times being usually suggested as a suitable size for most systems.
Being that your system complains a lot I would set it to a static size
of 3 x RAM (1536 min & 1536 max) and see what happens.
Click to expand...
[snip]

John, why would you set the pagefile higher if you have more ram?
Buffalo

PS: If you move up to 3GB of ram than you say your pagefile should be set to
around 4.5 to 9GB of ram.
If you have 512MB of ram, than your pagefile should be set to 768MB to
1.5GB.
I really don't understand.
Click to expand...

It depends on the applications that you use, each process has access to
a flat 2GB virtual memory space. If you run really hungry programs
(video editing, CAD/CAM or large spreadsheets, for example) they can
consume large amounts of RAM and thus may require a bigger paging file
should the system need to page out code and data, so you need a larger
pagefile in case you need to free up RAM for other processes. As a
general rule the pagefile will be at least equal to the installed RAM +
a few MB. However, as you point out, with more RAM installed the need
for the paging file will (or should) decrease.

On Windows 2000 the pagefile size limit is 4095MB, that is the largest
that it can be... but if need be you can create multiple pagefiles.
Some hungry servers are sometimes setup with multiple pagefiles but few
workstations ever need to use multiple pagefiles, a workstation with 3GB
of RAM will not likely need to page often or much to the disk so the
pagefile could be much smaller, as I said earlier, there are no set
rules for the pagefile size, just general guidelines. Monitoring the
pagefile usage is the best way to determine what is best for your machine.

John
 
Spontaneous reboots could be caused by flaky hardware, or by bad
software. Look in the Event Viewer to see if there is anything recorded
when these spontaneous reboots occur. You can also change the way
Windows handles fatal errors and have it halt on a BSOD (Blue Screen)
when errors occur, you may be able to get valuable information from the
error message. The Automatically Reboot option can be changed in the
System Properties | Advanced | Startup and Recovery section.

Looking at the Commit Charge (Total and Peak) in the Task Manager will
tell you how much memory the computer should have.

John
 
I continually get messages that I'm low on virtual memory. Right now it's
set at 938 MB, initial size is 850 MB, max size is 1250 MB. Are there any
suggestions as to where I should reset it?
Click to expand...
Set the maximum size as high as you can (limit is 4095MB). No
point in trying to restrict the max size to below the allowable
limit - it'll only use what it needs. The less physical RAM you
have, the more virtual memory you'll need. Also put the pagefile
on a different physical drive from the system files if you can.

GC
 
Thank you for your advice. I'll give it a try. I'm not sure how to move the
pagefile to another drive.

Set the maximum size as high as you can (limit is 4095MB). No
point in trying to restrict the max size to below the allowable
limit - it'll only use what it needs. The less physical RAM you
have, the more virtual memory you'll need. Also put the pagefile
on a different physical drive from the system files if you can.

GC

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I see errors in the event viewer but I can't tell what these are from. How
do you get more details on the events?

John John - MVP said:
Spontaneous reboots could be caused by flaky hardware, or by bad
software. Look in the Event Viewer to see if there is anything recorded
when these spontaneous reboots occur. You can also change the way
Windows handles fatal errors and have it halt on a BSOD (Blue Screen)
when errors occur, you may be able to get valuable information from the
error message. The Automatically Reboot option can be changed in the
System Properties | Advanced | Startup and Recovery section.

Looking at the Commit Charge (Total and Peak) in the Task Manager will
tell you how much memory the computer should have.

John



__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus
Click to expand...
signature database 4332 (20090813) __________
The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com
Click to expand...



__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4332 (20090813) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

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Double-click on the event. Click on the Clipboard icon if you want to
copy the event information, you can then paste the information to your
replies if you need help on the event.

John
 
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