Uh, did you even read the 2nd post? A pagefile does more than just provide your system with more memory in the event that your RAM becomes completely used. Let's say I'm using a program which at some point requests 250MB of memory. It's not planning on using this all at once, but knows that it might need it and it's quicker just to ask for it all first and use it as it needs to. Then, in the course of running the program, it uses perhaps 20MB. If you are not using a pagefile, then a full 250MB of your RAM is going to be dedicated to a program that may never use it and no other programs can access it. If you do have a pagefile, then Windows will allocate the program perhaps 50MB of RAM and put the other 200MB in the pagefile because it knows the program might not ever request it. If it does, then it can move the location to RAM. I have 1,024MB (1GB) of RAM, and I let Windows manage my pagefile. That's right, I have a 1.5GB file on my hard drive. Big deal. I think Micosoft developers might just be a little more knowlegeable about how their OS works that you are. Let Windows manage the pagefile.

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I would certainly disagree with Dr Nick on both counts that Ram is wasted and Microsoft engineers/developers know more then those who use the products. For those who insist that no pagefile is wrong/bad/wasteful, please explain WHY Microsoft provides you with the option of NO PAGEFILE. Lets look at the reasons behind "you have to have a pagefile" mentality. 1. you waste ram with no pagefile 2. the system knows best 3. you have to have the ability to do a disk dump during a system crash. 4. you should always have a pagefile Rebuttal 1. Requested memory of 250 meg is NOT some assigned to VM and some to Ram and if you don't have VM its just wasted RAM. Fact is the OS reports 4gig [32bit addressing limit] of addressable space to each and every program. It "lies". The OS then manages what it reports to a program and what it allocates physically in memory. Even physical memory is allocated out for OS paging [physical memory is "paged" in and out of ram in 4k blocks] so the OS's use and assignments are very dynamic depending on its need. It is not going to allocate ram and leave it. This is referred to as a memory leak and is to be avoided. 2. The engineers design systems, even servers, to work "out of the box". This is the "cover every scenerio" configuration. This is what "system managed" is all about. THIS IS NOT OPTIMAL. That is why they call it OPTIMIZATION when you go in and tweak settings for better performance. This is also why the recommendation of 1.5 x ram comes in. Its a "generic" one shoe fits all setup. Every server course I have been to since NT 3.51 says set min and max sizes the same. Why? So your pagefile won't grow/shrink dynamicly, waste cpu cycles doing so and it won't fragment [which severely effects performance]. Think about the folks who put a partition just for the pagefile on the same disk as the OS with its pagefile. They have the same results of a fragmented pagefile. This is because the system is now cyling thru two pagefiles on the same disk. So you have pf1 disk io, pf2 disk io and system/OS disk io all competing for the SAME resource. This is helping the system?!? I think NOT. 3. You have to have a pagefile on the system partition so you can do disk dumps. You ever work with a disk dump? I won't ever waste my time on one ever again. It was a useless tool for troubleshooting my server problems. So why reserve disk space for something you don't need??? 4. I come back to my question of why does MS provide the choice of no pagefile if you HAVE TO HAVE ONE??? Now lets look at some reasoning here. If the disk io operates at a thousandth of a second and RAM runs at a billionth of a second how can reason dictate that doing memory operations to the device that runs at a 1000th of a second is better then only running in the device that runs at a billionth of a second? This is why with enough physical ram running only in memory is faster and better. If the OS is wasting RAM I sure can't tell from my lightning response time and great performance running no pagefile.

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Hey Taco here's how to change the pagefile 1. Log on to the computer as Administrator. 2. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. 3. Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System. 4. Click the Advanced tab, and then under Performance, click Settings. 5. Click the Advanced tab, and then under Virtual memory, click Change. I would add that the MS articles linked by Chuck2 are exactly what I am disputing. Yes they are from Microsoft but when did that make them the demigods of IT? You will see a number of other web pages on the net with the same reiteration of this misinformation. More does not mean correct. I have tested this for years since as a network engineer its my job to optimize systems.

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Hi wandrerer et al, Thank you for your reasoned argument. This however, leads to other questions. One question is that with smaller amounts of RAM is a pagefile not necessary? If it is then the subsequent question is where is the cut off point at which you can ditch the pagefile? Thirdly if there is such a cut off point, then what are the criterea? Bear in mind that PCs get used by people for all sorts of different tasks that may use pagefile / RAM differently. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

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Good questions mosaddique and here are my thoughts. For the average home pc user I recommend leaving the settings at defaults. For active folks wanting to optimize their home system or servers then you have a number of options. If you have smaller amounts of ram, and this depends on the OS, you absolutly need a pagefile. It's the only way the system can "make up" the difference of not having enough physical ram. For example running XP on 64megs of ram. But people with 512meg or more of ram are not what I call "average". They know more ram is better. Only question then is how to take advantage of it and what's the best way. Where's the cut off point? As you mentioned, users and systems are not the same. You have to test. For example on my AMD 2600 system I started with 256. Not liking XP's performance [multiboot with ME and ME was quite happy] I went to 512meg. It was OK with my programs and games but I wanted faster. I set my pagefile to none and got better performance. I had some lockup/game crash issues that lead me to a single malfunctioning ram module. Ended up replacing that 256 with a 512 [same cost :-)] and now I have 768meg of ram. I love it!!! Runs even better than 512 without a pagefile. No lockups/crashes or any negative results. It has been running like this for a year and a half. If you want to get sophisticated with your testing you would use performance monitor and monitor your pagefile over time. This will let you know how much of your pagefile is actually being used. I was using about 40-60meg when I had 512meg but my pf was 768meg. That was almost 700meg of disk space I was wasting! Now on servers I would "right size" the pagefile. I would take the max used in a months time [performance monitor or Task Manager stats (peak commit charge)], add 10-20% and set it as min and max for pagefile. This has always been significantly less then the 1.5x rule of thumb. I have a 5yr old SQL server running NT that has had 200meg pagefile [system has 2gig of ram] and the system has never used more then 120meg. And this is running a financial app with a SQL server backend. This is way more beefcake than most home users ever get close to. I hope this answers your questions.

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I have 512MB RAM and I let Windows auto set it to about 768. When I had it set at 1024, everyone once in a while I'd get a page file related error, usually at logon that restarted my comp, so I let windows handle it. Besides, I don't think IE and Word require a gig and a half size pagefile. Dell Dimension 4600i Windows XP Home SP2 Microsoft Office 2003 Pentium 4 @ 2.8GHz 512MB Dual Channel RAM 40GB HD ...If my computer's not happy, I'm not happy.

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I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that if you put the pagefile on a different hard drive than the operating system you will get better performance also. That's what I do.

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Sure putting the pagefile on a different drive is one of the optimization techiques. This way pagfile disk io and system disk io don't compete. But with enough ram why have a pagefile? Why use a device running at 1000th of a second [disk drive] when ram [physical memory] runs at 1,000,000,000th of a second??

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