And that's just a horrible waste of disk space!
No it isn't. And so what if it is? If you are that low of disk space where the few gig taken up by a PF matters, then you have other problems - and certainly you are not a typical user - for most users have plenty of disk space. And I note, used disk space has zero impact on performance.
Not to be overly contrary -- but, given Digerati's perspective, how do you explain that I can run without a page file on a mere 2gb of ram?
Whoa! That's not my perspective - please don't twist my words around, or insinuate something I did not say. I never said or implied ANYTHING approaching you could not run without a page file!
And furthermore, 2Gb of RAM, even by today's standards, could hardly be called, "mere".
The thing is that Windows will use a pagefile if it's there, it will fill it with bits and pieces of operating system, chunks of data and so on. But it will do that even if memory is not "full to the brim"... it swaps stuff when a window loses focus, when a DLL is inactive, when the system is preparing to standby and under a dozen other circumstances, even if there is a ton of space left in memory. This may be safer from the view of data loss, but ultimately it does take time and space to manage and houseclean a pagefile...
No. Loses focus? No. It uses very refined algorithms to guess what data it might need next, or to temporarily store data it knows it will need again soon. You did not read what I said earlier. As I said, the priority stuff goes in RAM. But more to the point, stuffing stuff in there is what it is supposed to do! Forcing everything into RAM, by eliminating the PF, causes your total memory to be used up faster!!! Why? I said it earlier - because many programs (the OS, Office, your security programs) use VM. If no VM, your system RAM will be used, and locked out from other uses.
The thing is that when everything is fresh the pagefile is basically a 0 filled file but as Windows starts putting bits and pieces of memory into it it has to set up a system not unlike a disk directory to find them and swap them back into ram as needed. This starts out nice and tidy and slowly gets more and more messy over time. Killing the pagefile may not do anything obvious on a new machine... but try it on one that's 3 years old and in daily use... It's quite the revelation... (Of course Win7 isn't there yet)
Oh wow! Sorry, but that's not how it works. The contents of the Page File are cleared the tables at every shutdown. The contents are then rebuilt during next use and from there, constantly evolve, depending on the expected tasks - not time. Yes, that has to be managed, but unlike data stored normally on the drive, that mapping is done in fast RAM, not the slow MFTs.
This "same core elements" argument is so old and just as flawed. Just because the NT kernel is still used, it does not mean it is the same, or suffers the same limitations for EVERY aspect of older versions. And for the record, for the vast majority of XP users, Windows managed PFs worked just fine too - with no problems - as long as there was sufficient free disk space for the page file, and the creation of OS and program temp files.
But hey! If you want to limit the virtual memory resources your fully capable OS has access to, that's fine - but don't believe for a minute you know better than the eggheads at Microsoft - or that it improves performance, as suggested. I ask again, if you believe disabling the PF improves performance, please show some substantiating evidence - like links to a real test report from Tom's HW or Anandtech or some reputable review sites.
Yes, Windows will use every byte of memory it can find - I call that a good thing.
