My system's remaining HD space has been decreasing slowly for the past few days, and I was trying to find the cause. I finally found that my paging file (C:\pagefile.sys) was growing far too large (4gb now). I would like to know how I can clear it? Is there a way to clear all the data and have it start over? Also, I already know how to change the size of it, but I would like to know what size would be good for a PC with 2GB of physical memory? Thanks in advance.

P.S. Sorry for asking so many questions.

http://magicboxlive.blogspot.com/20...

3 gig for that system.

For each amount of physical ram (say 512Mb) your page file should be 1.5x times the initial size of that (in this case 768Mb).
How do the math, 2048 x 1.5 = 3072 (well according to the windows calculator and my brain it does anyway:P)

To clear the data you could just tell the system to not have a page file, restart and then re-enable it and then manually enter the max and min size as 3072 meg. Simple and quick(ish) way of doing it.

I think you might find the decreasing drive space is due to system restore, as it gets bigger everytime you install something or update it uses more space.
You can reduce this by deleting all but the latest restore point, or it can be turned off, at the risk of having a problem and not being able to restore to a previous working state.
The page file on the other hand remains a constant size reserved by Windows, if it's 4gig it will stay 4gig if you reduce it to 3gig it will stay 3gig.

Thanks for the answers. They're just what I needed.

Just to say, if the page file is set to allow windows to configure paging size. It can increase of it's own free will and tends to stay at the increased size if the amount it needs is hit so many times. That is why I prefer to set mine manually. Also yes I forgot about System restore. I have mine set to 4% hard drive use just so windows is happy that it has one otherwise I'd turn it off.