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Size of pagefile.sys on Windows 7

A friend of mine is running Windows 7 with 24 GB RAM and her pagefile.sys is also 24 GB in size. She is not running with anything that takes up that much RAM or diskspace.

I searched a bit and ran into this user with similar question:

Windows 7 pagefile size with large RAM and SSD

So I think the pagefile size is normal. But how does Windows 7 determine the size of the page file? I had always thought MS Windows assigned the page file size according to the size of the RAM usage. (When there is more thrusting, pagefile.sys grows in size). Or is it actually a pre-assigned disk space that gets allocated on system start?

How does Windows page when there are multiple pagefiles on multiple disks? [duplicate]

Let's say I have two internal HDDs and configure Windows to place pagefiles on both of them. How do pagefile writes occur?

Are pagefile writes spread evenly across the disks?

Does Windows prefer accessing the higher-performing disk (perhaps measured through pagefile I/Os)?

Does Windows access them sequentially, starting on disk #1, and only proceeding to the pagefile on the second disk when the first is full?

Why I ask: If there are two disks with greatly different performance characteristics (a 5.4K HDD and 15K HDD, for example), it could potentially be a detriment to place a pagefile on both disks if the one on the higher-performing disk will never be accessed.

Windows Swap (Page File): Enable or Disable?

From my personal experience I've noticed that disabling the page file in Windows XP has given me, in general, the most speed gain out of any other software change I can make. Obviously this has to be done when a significant amount of RAM is available. Typically I find that it works nicely with +2GB of RAM. The only issues I've ever really had were loading up Adobe Photoshop.

Is this really a speed improvement or am I imagining it?

Note: In order to actually turn it off, you must not just set it to 0MB, but disable it. Otherwise Windows will just expand it when it needs to in order to meet its needs.

Increase page file or buy RAM?

I've a 10+ year old XP PC which surprisingly still works however one of the 256MB RAM finally died. Now I am left with just 256MB. As expected the PC became slower however when I tried to increase the page file to min 4GB max 4GB it become quite fast again to an acceptable level. My question now are:

1. Will it help if I buy more RAM since the current performance is already acceptable, will it be even faster?

2. Will just having 256MB RAM but 4GB page file have some implications (maybe the HDD is being pounded or something)?

Windows pagefile size with large RAM and SSD

I just upgraded my Windows 7 machine from 12GB to 24GB RAM - both for running more VMs and for future proofing.

My C drive is an SSD with 129GB formatted size.

I was surprised to find out that the SSD only has 68GB free (most of my files are on D: to G:). Researching I found 24GB of my precious C: SSD are taken up by the virtual memory pagefile in the root.

Do I need such large amounts of virtual memory when I have 24GB or RAM? I bought this size of memory so I'd not have to go to disk.

What is the purpose of "C:\swapfile.sys" in Windows 8?

On Windows 8 there are the following two files in C:\

1. pagefile.sys - no surprise. It is as big as I configured as my page file size
2. swapfile.sys - it is 256MB in size

What is the purpose of this additional swapfile.sys file?

I'm looking for an authoritative answer on this. There is already enough speculation about this on the web.

Windows page file on multiple hard drives

I cant find any documentation or articles online online for this...

how does Windows handle page files on multiple hard drives? Does windows treat them as a concatenation, writing to one till its full then moving to the next? Or does it treat them like a stripe, writing to each one incrementally? Does it write to the first one free? Or perhaps some other method?

Should I put my page file on its own partition?

I have enough room on my OS hard disk to make a separate partition for the page file, but my power supply isn't enough to give it its own drive.

Is it better to put the Windows page file on its own partition, reducing fragmentation of the other partitions but increasing disk seek time (?), or to put it on the OS partition> (Or one on each)

How can I move the page file to another physical disk location?

I would like to know exact instructions for moving the page file from 1 disk location to another disk in Windows 7. I.e. from an SSD to a non-SSD drive.

I've spent about two hours searching - Google, Bing, Blekko - and read many forums. Please don't post philosophical discussions on speed increases or why its a bad idea to disable paging.

I'm looking for a concise answer on how to move the page file.

How to keep program always in memory (no swapping)

I'm using KeePass (on Windows 7) for storing passwords. The application is running on my laptop almost 100% of the time, but I'm using it rarely.

The problem is, that activating the window after long time takes huge amount of time, I'd say that OS realized the application is no longer used and swapped it.

I don't want OS to swap my KeePass (because of the loading lag, and also because of security - I don't like the idea of password keeping program's memory to be stored anywhere on HDD).

Is there any possibility how to tell OS not to swap some program? Or, is this achievable by some programming?

Should I disable swap file if I have lots of RAM or should I move it to a virtual RAM drive?

Imagine I have tons of RAM. Let's say 64GB. That's a lot for even gaming PCs. Now the default location of a pagefile in Windows is on the main OS drive, be it HDD or SSD, which are faster in general, but still not as fast as RAM.

Something tells me that disabling the pagefile on the hard drive or creating a virtual RAM drive and letting the pagefile be there could make Windows move all its virtual memory to RAM, and so increase the system's performance, but I'm not very knowledgeable in that area, so that might not be true at all.

I tried both, but I couldn't analyze the results to reach a definite conclusion with my knowledge level in memory things.

Would this work? If not, why?

How can I make my computer use more RAM?

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit with 8GB of RAM. The problem is, I very rarely use all of it.

I do some video editing from time to time and it definitely comes in handy then, but for everyday use, I'm not making best use of it.

Are there any settings I can change which will force my operating system to use more RAM, for instance, stopping it using pagefiles? I'm happy for it to use up to 4GB itself when I'm just mucking around browsing and moving files around. As far as I know, having more of the operating system in memory would make it more responsive. It's not exactly bad at the moment, but surely it can't hurt especially as I'm not using it for anything else.

I'd also like it to stop swapping pages out of memory onto the disc when running other programs like browsers, media players etc. unless it really has to. This would lengthen the life span of my disc, and also make everything generally more responsive.

Please let me know if I've got any of my facts wrong here.

How can I shrink my 12GB pagefile.sys?

Even though I only have 4GB of RAM, I have a 12GB pagefile.sys. From what I've read about the topic, this is bigger than the x1.5 rule-of-thumb and it's also taking a huge chunk of space on my hard drive. I tend to run a lot of applications and tabs withing web browsers, so the last time this happened, I closed everything down and restarted my computer. When I ran WinDirStat again later the pagefile was down to 3-4GB. Now my pagefile is up to 12GB again and closing programs/restarting is not working.

My first question is what actions cause pagefile.sys to grow so large in relation to the installed RAM (computer on for long amounts of time, too many programs running, too many browser tabs open)? Second, how can I get my pagefile.sys down to 6-7GB?

I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 with 4GB of RAM

How to kill tasks in Windows 7 when even Task Manager won't open or respond?

Occasionally one of my computers will get so bogged down that everything locks up, Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work, Task Manager won't open, or they work, but are opening so slowly that it will take hours or days to shut down other processes and regain control of the computer, etc.

Is there a way to, for instance, force Task Manager to be highest priority so it always opens immediately with Ctrl+Shift+Esc even when some other process/driver is hogging the CPU? Is there some other program that can run in the background and open immediately like this?

This question isn't about fixing "underlying problems". No matter how much memory you have, it's still possible for a rogue process to eat it all up and lock up the computer in page fault thrashing, hog the CPU, etc. This question is about how to take back control of the computer when that happens.

Basically when these kind of lock-ups happen, I want to open some kind of task manager that pauses every other process and allows me to kill one of them, and then let everything resume so I can save my work, etc. Otherwise my only option is to hold down the power button.

Antifreeze is supposed to do exactly what i want, pausing all other applications and starting a task manager to kill the offender, but in my testing, it actually does neither.

Any reason not to disable the Windows pagefile given enough physical RAM? [closed]

The question of disabling the Windows pagefile has already been discussed quite a bit, for example here and here and here. People continue to upvote answers that say "you should not disable your pagefile even if you have plenty of RAM", but I have yet to see any concrete, verifiable reasons being given for this advice. As far as I can see, if you never need to read from the pagefile (because you have enough RAM) then performance could only be worse with it enabled due to Windows pre-emptively writing to it. At best, performance would be the same. I can't see how it could possibly be improved by writing data you never need to read.

So my question is:

Assuming that I have enough physical RAM for everything I do, is there any reason I should not disable the pagefile?

Let's say the version of Windows is Windows XP x64 SP2 or Windows Server 2003 x64 SP2 (same thing). If it's different for Windows Server 2008 x64 I'd be interested to hear an answer for that as well. I'm looking for specific, objective reasons from good sources, not just opinions. Something like "here are the benchmarks done with and without a pagefile and the results were better with a pagefile, even with enough RAM" or "according to this MS KB article problem X occurs if you disable the pagefile".

So far the only reasons I've seen mentioned are:

• Even if you think you have enough RAM you might run out. OK, but for the purposes of this question, let's just take it as a given that I have enough. Maybe I only ever read my email and I have 16GB RAM. Or 128GB. Or 1TB. Or whatever - but it's enough for 100% of what I do, 100% of the time. Another way to think of it is: if I have x MB physical RAM and y MB pagefile and I never run out of RAM in that configuration, would I not be better off, performance-wise, with x+y MB physical RAM and no pagefile?
• Windows is "used to" having a paging file and it might not function as reliably (from Understanding the Impact of RAM on Overall System Performance That's rather vague and I find it hard to believe, given that MS has provided the option to disable the pagefile.
• Windows knows what it's doing better than you. No - it doesn't know that I won't run more programs or load more data, but I do.