System Managed vs Custom Page File

[siouxdax]

Hello all:
I'm running Windows 7 64-bit on a custom PC with Pentium Dual-Core 2.50GHz and 4GB RAM and have been having some "low memory" issues occasionally, seemingly due to Firefox hogging up memory.

So I looked at what my paging file settings were. They're currently set as "system managed": minimum 16MB, recommended 6141MB, and currently allocated 516MB. It says in Windows Help that it automatically sets the initial paging file as minimum four times the RAM plus 300MB, and the maximum as three times the amount of RAM. Obviously it hasn't set these parameters.

My question is: should I change the settings manually to reflect these recommendations?

BTW: I have less than 1GB on the drive, so would Windows change the settings to reflect this, or does it allocate it separately?

 

[Wrend]

Sounds to me like you need to upgrade your hard drive (or at least free up some room on it), and your RAM. However, 4GB should probably be enough for general use, including Firefox web browsing.

What exactly is your computer doing? Are you just getting a pop up warning that Firefox is using a lot of RAM? Is your computer crashing?

 

[siouxdax]

Firstly, I can free up some space on the hard drive. I'm in the process of doing that now. And yes, on occasion I'll get a pop-up saying I'm low on RAM, or sometimes things will just freeze up until it allows me to pull up my task manager so I can kill a process or two. It never actually crashes though. Should I adjust my paging files settings though? Would that help?

 

[Wrend]

It might, but then it might not. I would probably leave it managed by Windows for the time being. 4GB RAM should be enough for general use, unless you have a lot of stuff running at the same time. Either way, I would definitely free up some hard drive space. That might be the problem.

 

[pscowboy]

Daniel, you have only 1g of ram listed for memory in your specs. What is it?
If you indeed have 4g, that's enough for most folks. Leave the page file settings alone!!!

BIG BUT; If you only have 1g of free space left on your 250g boot drive, you're BEGGING for trouble. You must quickly get that up to at least 40-50g. File corruption can easily occur when a drive gets under 5% free.

Uninstall some benign programs, then download and install CCleaner & run it 3 times.

Are you sure you don't have a malware infection?

 

[siouxdax]

Daniel, you have only 1g of ram listed for memory in your specs. What is it?
If you indeed have 4g, that's enough for most folks. Leave the page file settings alone!!!

BIG BUT; If you only have 1g of free space left on your 250g boot drive, you're BEGGING for trouble. You must quickly get that up to at least 40-50g. File corruption can easily occur when a drive gets under 5% free.

Uninstall some benign programs, then download and install CCleaner & run it 3 times.

Are you sure you don't have a malware infection?

I need to change my specs page, sorry. I do indeed have 4GB RAM. So far I've freed up about 7GB of space. Also my boot drive is 500GB, not 250 as listed. I also discovered that my hard drive is in dire need of defragging, which I plan to do this weekend. Unless I hear on here otherwise I will leave my paging settings alone.

 

[OldMX]

Run CCleaner, then defrag,....

 

[siouxdax]

Run CCleaner, then defrag,....

Will do. Thank you so much!