pagefile.sys on Windoze XP system question...

[Mini-Me]

Hi all. :)

I have just built a recon PC that I got for free (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?p=453459#post453459).
I upgraded the RAM to 2GB, and now both partions on the main HDD have pagefile.sys sizes of a little over 2GB each - sounds about right, but this is about 4GB of HDD space gobbled up by XP for this.

I have been reading other threads this (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=62821&highlight=pagefile.sys) and this (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=42630&highlight=pagefile.sys) on the forums, and the general concensus seems to be that if you have, in my case, 2GB of RAM, you don't really need 2GB pagefile.sys files.

I am now trying to decide if to turn off the pagefiles completely, or just reduce their size. The latter seems to be the preferred option, but could someone here give me some kind of idea as to a suitable size? I was thinking about 512-720MB or so for the system partition, and nothing at all for the data partition, although the data partition will be used as the working path for other programs, so perhaps leave a pagefile on the data partition too?

[mjc]

You only need 1 pagefile per OS install...not 1 per partition it uses. And yeah, a multi-GB pagefile is OVERKILL. If you are doing something that requires that much RAM, you should seriously think about upping to 4 GB, because about the only thing I can think is serious editing and paging out a media in an editor is going to be too slow to be tolerable.

Eliminating it entirely, isn't really a good idea, because you'll never know when you'll run it that 'vital' app that absolutely needs one in order to run (yeah, there are some of those around...).

[Mini-Me]

Okey dokey, sounds good.
So would a 512MB or so be big enough?
I will disable the one on the data partition.

[Sylvander]

If your Windows OS ever goes wrong it should be able to dump the contents of the [2GB] RAM into the paging file.
In which case your paging file needs to be big enough [slightly bigger than] to take the 2GB of content.

MJC will probably be able to explain the nasty consequence of it not being possible to dump when it needs.
My imperfect recollection is that Windows goes into a cyclic reboot.

[mjc]

Nope...it just doesn't give you a complete report of everything that goes wrong...and it's better if you set it up for 'mini-dumps' anyway, unless you are actively trying to debug Windows and enjoy sending each and every error report to MS. In other words, especially for XP as a normal user, it isn't worth it to have it do a full dump.

More often than not (like 99%++ of the time) the cyclic reboots are caused by the driver that crashed the system, in the first place, instead of the lack of a full dump.

[Sylvander]

My understanding is explained in post #5 here. (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=64644&highlight=dump)
Here's the direct link to post #5 alone. (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showpost.php?p=397896&postcount=5)

Following the link given in post #3... (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314466)

Kernel dump : This is equal to the amount of RAM occupied by the operating system's kernel. For an XP PC with 512M bytes of RAM, this is usually around 60M bytes, but it can vary. For most purposes, this crash dump is the most useful. It is significantly smaller than the full memory dump, but it only omits those portions of memory that are unlikely to have been involved in the crash.
Complete or full dump : This is equal to the amount of RAM in the box. Therefore, a machine with 512M bytes of RAM creates a 512M-byte dump file (plus a little). While a full dump contains all possible data and executables the memory has to offer, its sheer size can make it awkward to save or transfer to another machine for debugging. Windows 2000 produces a full dump by default. (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/041105-windows-crash.html)

[jlreich]

All my systems have 0 pagefile with no ill effects. Actually they run a bit snappier. XP, Vista, and 7. I do however have 4GB ram or more on all my systems.

The only exception to this is my media server that has 2GB ram and a pagefile. But I have actually been meaning to turn the pagefile off. Might get to that today since I actually got a day off work for once. After running for months I have seen the pagefile get as high as 600MB, but only using 500MB or so of physical memory. Doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see any reason to keep the pagefile. :confused:

If you have adequate ram for what you use the system for why would you ever want anything going into the ultra slow pagefile?

Who cares about a mem dump? Anyone ever actually use one? If you are a developer I could see it, but anyone else doesn't need one.

If you use of the programs that actually requires a pagefile, then turn it on. A few clicks and it is there again.

If you were gaming with only 2GB memory, yeah a pagefile would probably be needed. But then you should be upgrading to 4GB if you want to play modern games.

BTW Sylvander, per you links above, I have had system crashes because of video driver issues and have never suffered from constant reboots that you talk about. I get a blue screen with the stop code and that's it. I do untick "automatically reboot" because I actually want to see the stop code so I can see what the issue was. If I didn't see the stop code I wouldn't know it was a video driver problem causing the crash. I love my ATI video card but I will say ATI drivers suck.

[jlreich]

Went to turn off the pagefile on the media server (XP pro 64) and see that I already did. It's been running that way without any issues for quite a while now. :) Runs 24/7.

Currently using ~600MB of 2GB memory. Task manager shows 490MB of pagefile, but pagefile.sys does not exist and the defragger doesn't show any green (unmovable system files). So those are "paged files" but they are paged in physical memory. Works for me. :cool:

My Linux system does have a swap file, but it is always at 0. I have "swappiness" set at 10.

[mjc]

Same here...but with 4GB of RAM, I don't expect the pagefile to ever see much use (and linux 'sees' more of that 4GB than Windows did...like all of it).

[FrankSG]

I have 4GB of ram on my desktop and 2GB on my netbook. I've had the page file disabled for about 2 months now and have had no problem. Now I wish I could disable the Temporary Internet Files as I think they are unnecessary in these days of broadband internet service. Not only is it unnecessary, but in my opinion, it can actually slow things down at times.

[Mini-Me]

Right-o, will disable both, and re-enable if there are any problems, but even then, I will only make it about 512MB or so. Thanks for the pointers, guys - an interesting read. :)