Page file usage

andygeeeeezer · #1 07-01-2003, 02:47 PM

Hi there,
cheers esualidine for the answer to me favourites problem

But i Have experienced heavy sytem slowdown and when i opened windows task manager i had no processes that were using any cpu (apart from system idle process which was using 90-99% but i think thats normal when you only have windows task manager open)
But in the 'performance' tab it showed the page file usage as 750 Mb so i increased it to 1.5 Gb . . . restarted my pc.
After 5 mins i had the same system slowdown problems in windows task maanger the page file usage showed as 1.46Gb or so . .. I have now turned page file totally off and my sytem is running smoothly again
But now even though page file is turned off it is showing as using 197Mb?????
My 2 questions are :
1) I have 512Mb ddr ram and 120Gb H/drive pentium 4 2.5Ghz. is it necessary for me to have a page file set up.
2)anyone know why my pc was slow as f**k till i disabled the page file?
Cheers people
Take life easy

LooseChippings · #2 07-01-2003, 03:10 PM

When you are in Task Manager does anything have an out of the ordinary Mem Usage?

Does the Page File become full if the machine is left static after boot?

Can you hear the HDD spinning / tracking?

My system has 1024 MB RAM but still uses around 234 MB Page File immediately after boot.

Reset the Page file to 750 MB and if it becomes full with the machine static you have got something going into a loop or a very large file such as a video trying to load.

andygeeeeezer · #3 07-01-2003, 03:35 PM

When you are in Task Manager does anything have an out of the ordinary Mem Usage?no

Does the Page File become full if the machine is left static after boot?yes

Can you hear the HDD spinning / tracking?no

cheers for de help

LooseChippings · #4 07-01-2003, 04:39 PM

Have you got the SP1 installed on your machine?

Is your AV package up to date?

ESALADUANE · #5 07-01-2003, 11:35 PM

If you have alot of RAM you might be tempted to completely disable the page file. You shouldn't do that because XP requires a page file for a number of core functions, and several 3rd party programs will cause out-of -memory errors if you try to get rid of all virtual memory. Windows doesn't actually use the page file until it's needed, so you won't gain any performance advantage by doing this.

andygeeeeezer · #6 07-02-2003, 03:09 PM

Hi All,
I have a partition on my h/d which i was saving to use for if i need to re-install windows so i could put all my music n stuff on so i changed the paging file to that partition and everything seems to be ok with it on there,
Cheers for all replies to my post
see y'all later
ANDY

ESALADUANE · #7 07-03-2003, 01:18 AM

Microsoft has recently published a new page entitled, "Optimize Virtual Memory for Performance in Windows XP"

http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/e...s/03june16.asp