• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

delete pagefile safe?

N

NiceCold

Senior member
i use windirstat to locate all my data to see which data is hogging all the space.

i found something that says pagefile sys and hiberfil both is 3gig! total 6gigabyte!

i google http://www.techmixer.com/pagefilesys-how-to-remove-pagefilesys-from-windows/

i am still nervious about deleting it. i want to confirm if it is safe to delete it? i dont want to mess up my computer. is it ok to delete it?





i have vista 3gb ram. my hardrive only got about 4gig left. i need to make room.
 
Last edited:
You will not be able to delete the files. You can turn hibernation off and the file will be promptly removed by the system. The pagefile however is the cost of running the OS and you will have to live with it. Yes, you can turn it off, but I really don't want to get into that debate.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730

Open a command prompt as admin and enter:

powercfg.exe /hibernate off
 
Last edited:
Do not delete your page file. It's there for a reason.

People will tell you that you don't need it. I tell them that Microsoft knows more about Windows memory management than they do.
 
The best move, to satisfy everyone and you, would be to reduce the size of the pagefile to very small like 200 megabytes (~0.2 GB). Or maybe if you are adventurous, reduce it to 50 megabytes.

But also enable the setting where it says to allow Windows to enlarge the pagefile if necessary.

That way, you still have the pagefile, and if it needs to grow it will grow, but you would free up nearly all 3 GB of space.

Also turn off hibernation as explained above, that will remove the hiberfil.sys and free up that 3 GB no problemo. So you could save like 5.8 GB total.
 
hibernate? so the hiber sys is actually for hibernation? but how? my computer never go on hibernate, how does the hiber file be so huge if my computer never goes to hibernate?

my screen goes black though after 5 hours or so idling when i go to bed without turning off the computer. does the monitor counts as hibernate too? but the actual machine still running while the monitor just black out.

and man i almost delete those two files directly. must do special method to delete it huh if wanted to. i guess i have to research more and before doing anything about these file.
 
Last edited:
Hibernation is on by default and the file is a mirror of your memory and page file. Just turn it off like I stated above.
 
Those look like Dos commands. I thought Windows shed Dos back in 95? How would I execute these from within Windows? Are certain aspects of Windows still based on executing commands in the shell?
 
Last edited:
bbhaag said:
Those look like Dos commands. I thought Windows shed Dos back in 95? How would I execute these from within Windows? Are certain aspects of Windows still based on executing commands in the shell?
Click to expand...

Type cmd into the Start menu and open cmd.exe from the link. Type in powercfg -h off

Job Done.
 
You need the pagefile for hte 3.2GB ram you have. Set it to custom size

4000 min
4000 max on your SSD boot drive or another hard drive. gl
 
bbhaag said:
Those look like Dos commands. I thought Windows shed Dos back in 95? How would I execute these from within Windows? Are certain aspects of Windows still based on executing commands in the shell?
Click to expand...

It's not DOS proper, but CMD's syntax is based upon DOS so that's what Windows users are stuck with. There's also PowerShell, but it's an even worse interactive shell.

tweakboy said:
You need the pagefile for hte 3.2GB ram you have. Set it to custom size

4000 min
4000 max on your SSD boot drive or another hard drive. gl
Click to expand...

Please stop. Having a pagefile is smart, but setting a max size has no effect other than removing a safety net.

ShintaiDK said:
Didnt use pagefile since 2006. Never missed it.
Click to expand...

Did you also remove the seatbelts from your car to make it faster?
 
Nothinman said:
Did you also remove the seatbelts from your car to make it faster?
Click to expand...

Thats a pretty wierd comparison. 😱

Obviously you removed your seatbelts in accessing the internet 😉

The pagefile basicly serves 2 purposes. One is to offer debug. Other is to make up for the lack of physical memory. And if you move the pagefile away from the boot drive, you also lose the debug.
 
Last edited:
I am with Nothingman here.

A pagefile is a good idea and the few gigs of HDD space should be available for anyone.
Limiting the size of the pagefile is a relic from days where we were concerned about fragmenting our HDDs - that is definately no longer necessary.
 
ShintaiDK said:
Thats a pretty wierd comparison. 😱

Obviously you removed your seatbelts in accessing the internet 😉

The pagefile basicly serves 2 purposes. One is to offer debug. Other is to make up for the lack of physical memory.
Click to expand...

I like the analogy because the net effect is the same. You've removed a safety net in order to get yourself better performance but it will really have no appreciable affect.

That's all it does at an absurdly high level, yes. But the effects it has are much more than that and unless you've helped develop the Windows VMM system I doubt you can accurately list all of its use cases. And the fact that MS spent all that development on mobile Win8 and still has a pagefile setup in WinRT surface tablets should be a good indicator that it's still a good idea to have one. If MS can't reliably disable it in a limited environment like that why do you think it's a good idea in an open environment like a normal PC?
 
Since you go the MS route of knowing better. Then there must be some very scary warning if you try to dsiable the pagefile right? Plus the ability to disable the pagefile shouldnt be so easy.

MS makes a default setup that can 2 things. Debug and run on all hardware. Nomatter if you got 1GB memory or 576GB memory.

And again, debug goes down the drain if you move the pagefile from the boot partition.
 
Last edited:
ShintaiDK said:
Since you go the MS route of knowing better. Then there must be some very scary warning if you try to dsiable the pagefile right? Plus the ability to disable the pagefile shouldnt be so easy.

MS makes a default setup that can 2 things. Debug and run on all hardware. Nomatter if you got 1GB memory or 576GB memory.

And again, debug goes down the drain if you move the pagefile from the boot partition.
Click to expand...

I think there should be a scary warning, but I'm guessing there's not because they didn't think anyone would even consider that. You can disable it easily because you can disable the pagefile on any single volume, apparently the dialog isn't smart enough to warn you if you stupidly disable it on all volumes.

Surface isn't a "default setup" for running on all hardware, it's a tablet install for a very specific workload on a very specific set of hardware much like iOS and Android.

tweakboy said:
Once you have 4GB of RAM usually you don't have to use it unless a certain program just simply needs to have it. gl
Click to expand...

That's a completely arbitrary number which means nothing. Please just stop.
 
It's not a "scary warning," but in Win8 on my notebook with 8GB RAM, I got an error message when I tried to reduce the page file to 128MB (like I had in Win7) which said I should not set the minimum to less than 400MB if I wanted error reporting to function. On my desktop with 12GB RAM, it said the minimum should not be less than 800MB. Like a good little Borg drone, I complied.
 
NiceCold said:
hibernate? so the hiber sys is actually for hibernation? but how? my computer never go on hibernate, how does the hiber file be so huge if my computer never goes to hibernate?
Click to expand...

But if you ever WANTED to hibernate then windows will save a copy of your RAM into that file. Which serves as an empty placeholder to keep the space from being used up by other programs (and then the hibernation process fails)

the hibernation file size is always equal to the amount of ram you have. I have 16GB of ram
 
hiberfil.sys is necessary for hibernation but it also is necessary for the 'hybrid sleep' function (Vista and later) - with hybrid sleep, before your computer enters sleep mode, the contents of RAM are written to that file, so that if power is lost during sleep mode, Windows can resurrect the session from that file.
 
mikeymikec said:
hiberfil.sys is necessary for hibernation but it also is necessary for the 'hybrid sleep' function (Vista and later) - with hybrid sleep, before your computer enters sleep mode, the contents of RAM are written to that file, so that if power is lost during sleep mode, Windows can resurrect the session from that file.
Click to expand...

My experience has been that whenever that happens my keyboard and mouse would not work and I would be unable to login or do a proper shutdown (since the PC is locked when it loses power). Forcing me to do a hard reset. As a result I have been disabling hybrid sleep
 
Just to add to the confusion, my 6GB RAM Win7-64 system has run ever since I installed it with no page file on the boot drive. I did specify a 4GB page file on my first 500GB HDD (drive F: for me) but I have no idea if it has ever been used.

I have read that a page file has to be on the boot drive, but I don't know if this is really true. Seems to me that if it were true there wouldn't be an option to put a page file on non-boot disks. But there is.
 
Phynaz said:
Do not delete your page file. It's there for a reason.

People will tell you that you don't need it. I tell them that Microsoft knows more about Windows memory management than they do.
Click to expand...

You dont need it, turn it off, delete it.



🙂


I dont use one and in the history of windows i've only ever had one fault directly related to it, some version of excel demanded to have a pagefile present or it wouldnt start.
Friggin weird and not true now.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top