Resource Monitor Memory "Hard Faults", no paging file.

Hi, i've read some other posts about hard faults not being an issue, eg:

Hard faults!!!!!!!!!!!

Does the same principal apply if you've disabled the pagefile? I've got 16gb of RAM and on advice disabled the HDD swap.

I get these 'faults' consistently, but not a great deal. It doesn't seem to go over 3-4 a second and is often less than that. It's not 3-4 for every program at the same time, it seems random.

Thanks :)

A "hard fault" isn't a real fault, at least not in the normal sense of the word. They are a completely normal and necessary part of system operation. The majority of hard faults do not involve the pagefile at all. Hard faults are involved when the system boots, when applications are launched, and a great deal more. Disabling the pagefile will not eliminate hard faults, it may even increase them.

Hard faults are not normally an issue unless the number is large and you have provided no evidence of that.

There is an enormous amount of misinformation on the Internet concerning the pagefile. Even many computer professionals do not really understand how it is used. The pagefile is NOT some kind of overflow area that is used only when RAM is short. It was designed to optimize the use of RAM, however much that may be. It does this by providing a place where rarely used data can be offloaded, leaving more RAM for more important purposes. In most cases it improves performance.

With 16 GB RAM you probably don't need a pagefile but disabling it is unlikely to be beneficial.

A pagefile on C: is needed to capture a dump file if the system crashes.
Some programs also require a pagefile, and may cause errors if there is no pagefile.
To save space you can manually set the pagefile size rather than let Windows manage it.
For starters, you could try a min 1024 MB and max 4096 MB pagefile.
That will save space and allow for dump files and programs that want a pagefile.
With 16 GB RAM you probably will never see the pagefile increase in size beyond the min allocated.

The OP says you have 16 GB RAM, but your specs show 4 GB RAM.
Maybe it's time to update your Specs?

logicearth said:

Any time a program accesses the HDD, aka., a file that is not in memory will create a hard fault.

To be a bit more precise: when parts of memory mapped files that are not in memory are accesed. A file that is not memory mapped will not trigger them.

DavidW7ncus said:

The OP says you have 16 GB RAM, but your specs show 4 GB RAM.
Maybe it's time to update your Specs?

Ah yes, I only relatively recently upgraded my PC. I've now updated.

Thanks to all for the info.