pagefile.sys disappears after receiving Virtual Memory Warning

[grant56]

My system is a Win 7 X64, with 8 gig of Ram.

Something's been happening recently that seems odd, and I don't see any other reference to it searching the Internet.

I do run quite a few memory hogging programs at the same time, and have two manually sized pagefiles:

1) 1 Gig on the C: Drive

2) 5 Gig on the D: Drive.

Both are on the same physical SSD.

So when I get the The Windows Resource Exhaustion Detector notification that the computer is low on virtual memory, I usually close one of the active programs.

I'm slowly increasing the size of the pagefile on D: to see if I can eliminate the problem altogether.

What seems odd, is the D: pagefile is often DELETED on it's own. So I have to go back in and recreate it. The computer does not crash , and I don't seem to lose any data.

Has anyone else seen this, where the file just gets wiped during the session?

 

[Megahertz07]

If you also have a HDD, disable virtual memory on C: (SSD) and enable it on it (HDD). Make Max and Min equal and set to 16G.
That is: Put virtual memory in one drive only and set Max and min = 2 times your memory

 

[grant56]

I'm trying that now, but still had another 7 gig pagefile just vanish .

Surprised no one else has chimed in with an explanation of why.

 

[grant56]

So far a 16gig swap on another drive seems to have cured the out of memory error.

Still strange the pagefile would actually DELETE itself ,and I don't see any other reference to that on the internet.

 

[Eric3742]

Hi

It is better for Windows OS to decide on the size of the pagefile.

As you manually make the decision, and using "run quite a few memory hogging programs at the same time"
then maybe you could read the info in this link;

Learn Best Practices for Optimizing the Virtual Memory Configuration


Sometime it is better to understand more on such matter instead of following own decision, which may be wrong.

That is to say, do a bit of research for better understand before making a fatal mistake.

 

[grant56]

Thanks for the advice, though in my case , after near 40 years of computing, I'm probably safe

Ran this install for 5 years with a modest pagefile size, but something, possibly a program demanding a large amount of reserve memory, caused this problem.

There's nothing wrong with setting the pagefile to a single size and not letting windows grow and shrink it. Unlikely anything fatal would happen in any case.

So setting mine to a generous 16 gig (+ 1 gig on the C drive) seems to have stopped all memory problems.

You'd think a problem that actually caused the pagefile to DELETE itself would crash the system , but it never did.

 

[Layback Bear]

Many of us for years tinkered with memory to get things to work better.
Sense Vista and later. Windows 7, 8 and 10, tinkering with ram is no longer needed.

I let Windows 7 manage all my ram including pagefile.
I tried doing all kinds of things with memory and pagefile in Windows 7 and found that it did not help in any fashion. Many things I tried made things worse.

The old ways of tinkering with pagefile like we did with XP is not valid in Windows 7.
I took off my XP hat and hung it in a place of respect and put on my Windows 7 hat and things work just great allowing Windows 7 to manage the memory.

Just my opinion and thoughts.

Jack