Windows 7: Huge pagefile.sys file

For almost 7 years, I have NOT run a pagefile at all and have never found a game/program that wouldn't run. And any that require a pagefile are not worth running.

Because of the way that some applications are written it is not a good idea to remove the pagefile completely.

However if you have a lot of available ram you may gain disk space by setting the page file size to a lower number (at least 512 MB) just to keep any programs that require it's presence happy.

Due to the way the pagefile is used if you have sufficient RAM the pagefile should never be used so would not slow the system down.

The pagefile is where the Windows Memory Manager stores data that isn't currently in RAM. It does this under several conditions - the most common being when there isn't enough RAM to work the system.

Some programs (particularly video games) will require a pagefile. If you attempt to run them without a pagefile they'll complain about it and refuse to run. I ran an XP system a while back without a pagefile and it worked well until I ran into one of those games referred to above.

Any "average" system with at least 4gB of RAM shouldn't have issues with the pagefile unless there's a lot of stuff open and working. Corrupted programs can cause excessive pagefile usage - and monkeying with the pagefile may help out, but that's just treating the symptoms without fixing the problem.

You can easily create a pagefile if one is needed. Go to Start and type in "sysdm.cpl" (without the quotes) and press Enter
Click on the Advanced tab
Click on the Performance Settings button
Click on the Advanced tab
Click on the Virtual Memory Change button
That will get you into the dialog to create, edit, or delete the pagefile.

A final caveat is that, if you don't have a pagefile, you won't be able to create memory dump files in the event of a crash.

Windows will page to disk no matter what. If you run in to something that requires one it is going to take a lot longer for the OS to create one and start one, than if it were there to begin with. Just change it to something small if you have 8GB of ram, like 1024MB (1GB)

I have 6GB of ram and still create one just as big.

Has anyone ever been able to prove this? Are there any benchmarks or something that show this is true? Or do people just "feel" like it's faster.


With HDD's being 1+ TB nowadays, losing 5-8 GB to pagefile is no big deal. But it would make sense that it's not worth having anymore. I like the idea of setting pagefile to something very small like 512MB - 1GB.

With SSDs becoming a little more popular the pagefile becomes more comlicated than it is already. I have turned mine off because I don't want needless stuff being written to it. Seems to be fine.

Now that there are SSD out in the wild and with wear I would turn it off. But since I still have a standard drive and use programs that want to have a swap space I leave it set to 1.5 of my ram, I also have stuff open all the time. You will find people all over the place that says to leave it or to turn it off, let windows choose the size or set it manually. I've see all of them done and used all of them and each machine works differently with each setting. I would say try it off see how it run, then set it to a size or just let windows do its thing. I would love to see programers stop using the swap space and just use ram or unload items when needed. People have the ram now and faster hard drives so the swap drive is not needed as much as before.
Test each of the settings see how your machine acts then go with the best results.

Even if you disable the pagfile, if it needs it, it will create it or page to kernel won't it?

You dont actually have to have a page file especially if you have 4gigs or more of ram. You want tro set a lower and upper limit not let the system manage it. I have zero page file and nothing has happens. If you are more caoutious set on on a diff drive than where yhe OS is and make it abt 1.5 times the amount of ram

Hope this helps and let me know how it turns out



Ken

Hi there, folks!
Just to state that this amount of virtual memory that I've set was proposital. I'm currently using 3d programs for CGi, such as 3ds max, which requires a bunch of memory.

I didn't say that my machine is running slow ever since It's running quite well though

Anyways, thanks for the answers. It's been an interesting discussion.