I nave a windows NT server and am getting a message stating the followin: The following error occured applying security information to C:\pagefile.sys The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process do you wish to continue? Do anyone no what this means?

Pagefile.sys is WINNT's swap file, basically, and thus it is considered by the OS to be a 'system' file. Although the operating system can add to it, subtract and even shrink or expand it, certain other functions can't be done. For instance, you can't delete it, change it's properties or move it. Make sure whatever you are doing when then error occurrs is not trying to illegally access this file. Otherwise, if this message just pops up 'unwarranted', I would suggest it is corrupted somehow. Go into My Computer properties advanced and set the size for this file to '0'. It will say not to do this, but do it anyway. Restart the system and then go back and set the pagefile.sys size to around twice your RAM size, or whatever it was before. Restart the system again, and the error should go away.

twice RAM + 11 = M$ recommended Pagefile size.

I am getting the same error on a fresh install of NT - as a trial prior to installing a new software package. I wiped the drive, reinstalled, and get the same error when trying to apply security info as mentioned above. Will try solution mentioned, but intuition tells me it is something else.

Hi, I would like to add a query to this. I have found that on one of the Partition under Win 2000, the Pagefile.sys file is 200 MHz !! Can I just delete it to recover the hard-disk space ? Or do I get problems.... thanks for answering errico

If you have more than one disk, you can move the pagefile to another disk or partition by going into Properties by right-clicking on My Computer. Under the Performance tab, click on Change in the Virtual Memory section. Set the size on the original disk to 0 min and 0 max; set the min and max to what you desire for the new drive to hold the pagefile. When you restart, the pagefile will be on the new drive and removed from the old drive.

Boot into Recovery Console. Because you boot into the %SystemRoot% folder (most commonly the C:\Winnt folder), type the following command: cd \ Type the following command to overwrite the existing Pagefile.sys file with Boot.ini: copy c:\boot.ini pagefile.sys Type the following command: del pagefile.sys After you copy Boot.ini over to Pagefile.sys, Pagefile.sys appears in the directory listing.