Windows 7: Is Memory Faults Causing Lagginess?

I find that I am experiencing lagginess on my laptop, relatively old: C2D T9300, 4GB DDR2, 1280MB GeForce 8600MGT

Is high memory faults the cause?



Sometimes, the faults are "maxed" out near 100/sec throughout that chart. What are memory faults?

Hi jiewmeng, I had a Ram problem in my Laptop I found this out by using Windows Memory Diagnostic from Microsoft "its free", burn to a CD and run at Boot.

Microsoft Online Crash Analysis

A hard fault is when referenced DATA is no longer in memory, but rather has been swapped out to disk (PageFile)

It is not an error.

But if you are getting a large number of hard faults, it would explain the app in question being a bit slow, as its reading from the disk more than memory.

More memory usually helps reduce Hardfaults.


The laggieness, or slowdowns may not be related to the hardfault issue however. It may simply be that the system is being taxed a bit too much.
Lots of open Programs, many writes/reads to the HD etc.


My guess is your memory is just fine itself, but testing it certainly would not hurt anything.
If you want to test the memory, to be safe:

Windows has a built in memory tester.
Hit your start Orb, and in the search box, type "memory"
The first result will be "Windows Memory Diagnostic"

A better, more accurate method is with Memtest86.
Please see this tutorial for more information:
RAM - Test with Memtest86+[2]=Performance Maintenance

Hmm, I read before if I have 4GB RAM, I should disable virtual memory so that Windows will be forced to use RAM. Is that a good idea? I used to do that, until I got errors that I lack memory. I don't play too much games at the moment so I guess I should be fine?

Recommend that you "Let Windows choose what's best for my computer" - found under the performance options in the Advanced tab of your system properties.

Regards

I read about that too, but also read that it is not a good idea as some programs do expect virtual memory. I tried it anyway but I did not notice any difference (positive or negative), so I returned to automatic settings.

Windows 7 does not use the PF that often, but when a application does require it you'll run into issues.

I too would strongly advise re-enabling it, regardless how much physical RAM you have installed.
My machine has 8GB of RAM, and I still have a PF.

There are occasions when its needed.