Should I disable my Page File?

Hey Japastor,

Greetings!

I have respect, for your precise and apt details, about how, why and when a Page File (swap file) needs to be used on Win7.

I am a hobby photographer - but hey your PS usage is humungous.

I have a few questions, which I am thinking might help an average user like me, who like most folks, is more interested in a very fast boot up process and zippy responsive OS and Programs.

I have come half way and need your advise on how to walk the rest of the way, by tweaking pagefile.


I have a Win 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 on a Sony VAIO S Series Laptop with 8GB RAM and 6Gb/s SATA 5400 RPM HDD.

• After clearing up my start-up Programs and Services to a bare minimum (which includes disabling most bloat-ware by Sony except the mandatory essentials) by using 'msconfig' I achieved a considerably fast boot and user profile loading time.

• Then I made my machine suddenly super responsive (which was surprising) by setting Visual Effects (system properties->performance options ->'Visual effects' tab) to ""Adjust for Best Performance"" (customised to use only Smooth Edges for Screen Fonts, for better readability).

Yeah my Win 7 Ultimate looks like Win 95 - but it has a 500% responsiveness increase - From a Camel to a Passenger Jet.

I want to turn it into a Supersonic Fighter Jet - WITHOUT spending MONEY.

(don't we all want that?? Heck we already spent on Hardware and Software didn't we? So why upgrade when we could get what we want out of what we have - just by expert advice! )

• My usage (monitored for all my tasks using "Resource Monitor" - Office, Web, Music, Maps, Video - together) resulted in max usage of 4 GB of my physical RAM. Available physical RAM was always 4GB or more. This made me think, that I must disable my Page-File. When I attempted to do that it said, 'Windows might not be able to record system errors for analysis, if the page file is disabled'. I don't really care for logs on this machine. Memory Dump -not really!

Questions:

• In my situation, will completely disabling all Page-Files result in an issue apart from a non available memory dump?

• Since Pre-Fetch Folder records programs that are frequently loaded onto the RAM, after a few days of usage and reboots, all needed program and most parts of the OS would be loaded onto the RAM while booting. Therefore effectively reducing the need to frequently access the HDD which is a sure bottleneck. Am I thinking right?

• If disabling a Page File reduces the number of times the HDD will be accessed it will surely increase my number of hours available on a single charge - because mechanical HDDs are the biggest Hogs of Power in a Notebook / Laptop PC.

I am grateful that you read my message and hope YOUR ANSWERS will help many average users (including me) who are trying to achieve zippy performance, speedy start-up from their Portable PCs, Dependable stability from the Win 7 (Less parallel processes in memory = less hangs ) while extending battery efficiency.

Cheers!

Sid..!