2gb ram, should I disable pagefile?

[neilt]

I was just wondering, with my new system, (just finished building, now I need to set it up), should I disable the pagefile in windows, as I installed 2gb pc4200. Would that be enough memory, so it wouldn't have to use the hard drive for virtual memory? Would this even make a difference?

Thanks

[pangea33]

It is not advised to completely disable your paging file. Some applications rely on it's existance. You can tweak your settings through windows to utilize more ram before writing to a page file.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/paging_file.htm

[saphalline]

The pagefile in Windows is merely the user-adjustable portion of virtual memory used for excess memory for programs. If you turn off the pagefile, that merely takes away virtual memory as far as Win32 apps are concerned. It does not turn off the portion of hidden virtual memory that Windows itself uses.

Go ahead and turn it off if you want, but a lot of older programs and games need the pagefile in order to run properly. I keep a 400-800MB pagefile around no matter how impressive the hardware is. You can get the best CPU and the most RAM and the fastest hard drive you want, but none of it is going to fix Windows. :p

[pangea33]

Finally, the temptation is always great when you have a RAM packed machine to totally eliminate the page file. Don't do it. By design, some components in Windows XP require the presence of a page file, even if they never use it for its intended purpose. You'll likely receive out of memory type errors if you eliminate all page files. Feel free to set the page file to the required minimum (2MB) if you have sufficient RAM, secure in the knowledge that XP won't access the page file unless it's absolutely needed, but again - don't eliminate it totally.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/locating_the_page_file.htm