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Disabling Windows Page File


porsche6714

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Hello, I have a Vista computer with 2GB of memory.  I dont do any memory intensive tasks and barely use 700MB at max.  Now some say that if you have the memory you should disable the page file for increased performance but others advide against it saying that it could cause problems and wouldnt increase performace at all.  What are your thoughts????

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:undecided:, No matter how much memory I have on my computer Xp always uses some page files , even with the registery tweeks applied ,

I page file onto a second hard drive ,it's slightly quicker,   if I remove this drive (on a Tray ) windows fails to boot up ,

maybe Vista is different  :shrug: ?

porsche6714  check out this link    http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1683239,00.asp

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No, don't disable it.. and it won't increase performance.  If something is going into the pagefile when your physical memory isn't full, then it probably isn't needed badly anyways.  Not to mention I'm not sure Vista would let you disable the pagefile entirely...

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Sorry I gotta put my 2 cents in here. What is it with messing with the page file in xp? Moving it to another drive and or resizing it and or whatever. You are not gonna notice any diffrence. In fact messing may make things worse. Leave it be. While tweaking xp does help, pagefile in xp is one thing you need to leave alone.

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Sorry I gotta put my 2 cents in here. What is it with messing with the page file in xp? Moving it to another drive and or resizing it and or whatever. You are not gonna notice any diffrence. In fact messing may make things worse. Leave it be. While tweaking xp does help, pagefile in xp is one thing you need to leave alone.

:iamwithstupid:

really. one thing windows doesn't always agree with is somebody messing with its memory. and you know it regards the page file as slower ram. windows uses resources. we all know that. let it be. a gig or two isn't gonna kill you.

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Sorry I gotta put my 2 cents in here. What is it with messing with the page file in xp? Moving it to another drive and or resizing it and or whatever. You are not gonna notice any diffrence. In fact messing may make things worse. Leave it be. While tweaking xp does help, pagefile in xp is one thing you need to leave alone.

humm i dont agree

most people install all sorts of programs and have all sorts of data in the main C: drive where the paging file is, this means as the paging file increases it will be scatered (fragmented) all over the place which will take longer to access because the hard disk arm just has to go all over the place back and forward

now if u place the paging file in a partion hard disk just for the paging there is less likely that your paging file gets fragmented i mean a hell lot less change that happens

plus you can defrag that partion and make it easier for windows to access ur "slow ram"

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you can also set the pagefile size to the max recommended by windows as a fixed value and then defrag. that way it will always be x gig big and not fragment.

i am not sure about this

are you saying if u set it to a fixed size that windows will PRE allocate this ??

when i say pre allocate is it will save certain space in memory even before it is used. as my understanding goes windows would let you choose a paging file size and as it uses it, it will put the data where there is available space in the hard disk meaning it will still be scattered all over the hard disk

i think the only way to avoid this is to create a separate partition

am i wrong ? does windows pre allocate data when u set a fixed file size ?

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I run windows xp without a paging file and everything is working properly.  To say that it increased my performance, I honestly have no idea - it's been such a long time since I did set it up that way I don't remember any more.  But it definitely has not decreased the performance either.  The way I look at it is from the theoretical point of view - what is the main purpose of the page file and whether I actually need it.  In my case answer was no.

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Hmm, my XP setup is to page file onto a second hard drive , to a partion specially set up just for that, the reason that drive is sitting idle most of the time ,and it lets "C" drive do it's own thing , (My tech term, lol , )

I set the size to 1536Mb  min and max , I read somewhere it was quicker that way ?

and set the registry entry to  -disable paging of aplications and data files = "1" from the default "0" , is it faster , well it seems to be but i got no real proof ,

but it dosn't seem to do any harm either,  :undecided:............... :lol:

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