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Disabled paging file and diggin it.

Zebo

Zebo

Elite Member
I've always heard *never* disable the paging file.. so what do i do?

Disable it of course.😛

In all seriousness I started thinking more and noticing more about how poorly Windows caches things after reading anands Macintosh experiance last year where he sites examples how well OSX did. Like while gaming and leaving other apps open in the backgroud, sometimes I'd alt-tab back from the game to Avant browser/and explorer window etc, and windows would pull everything back from slow harddisk it had put there instead of keeping it faster memory where it belongs dispite having a free 700MB ram! Pisses me off even hearing HDD let alone having to wait for get my tabs, pictures whatever back from it. Anyway i disable paging file and the problem seems to have disappeared entirly - whole system seems much more responsive. Try it and see for yourself.

 
Taken from: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html

Myth - "Disabling the Pagefile improves performance."

Reality - "You gain no performance improvement by turning off the Pagefile. When certain applications start, they allocate a huge amount of memory (hundreds of megabytes typically set aside in virtual memory) even though they might not use it. If no Pagefile (i.e., virtual memory) is present, a memory-hogging application can quickly use a large chunk of RAM. Even worse, just a few such programs can bring a machine loaded with memory to a halt. Some applications (e.g., Adobe Photoshop) will display warnings on startup if no Pagefile is present." - Source

"In modern operating systems, including Windows, application programs and many system processes always reference memory using virtual memory addresses which are automatically translated to real (RAM) addresses by the hardware. Only core parts of the operating system kernel bypass this address translation and use real memory addresses directly. All processes (e.g. application executables) running under 32 bit Windows gets virtual memory addresses (a Virtual Address Space) going from 0 to 4,294,967,295 (2*32-1 = 4 GB), no matter how much RAM is actually installed on the computer. In the default Windows OS configuration, 2 GB of this virtual address space are designated for each process' private use and the other 2 GB are shared between all processes and the operating system. RAM is a limited resource, whereas virtual memory is, for most practical purposes, unlimited. There can be a large number of processes each with its own 2 GB of private virtual address space. When the memory in use by all the existing processes exceeds the amount of RAM available, the operating system will move pages (4 KB pieces) of one or more virtual address spaces to the computer's hard disk, thus freeing that RAM frame for other uses. In Windows systems, these "paged out" pages are stored in one or more files called pagefile.sys in the root of a partition. Virtual Memory is always in use, even when the memory required by all running processes does not exceed the amount of RAM installed on the system."
Source: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555223
 
I just use an OS better at handleing memory, like Debian with a lightweight GUI. I can get XFCE4, FF witha few tabs, and Evolution into 256MB ram, and not ever hit the hard drive. Great for relatives who don't care what they have, just that it runs decently and they can browse and check email.
 
Originally posted by: Zebo
Oh I know what they say but I think they are FOS. I see it right before my eyes.
Click to expand...

You wont see any problems as long as you stick to web surfing, email and maybe even online poker. Use programs like Photoshop, AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max, etc.. or start playing a game that uses more memory than you have (i.e F.E.A.R. w/ max settings) and you're going to run into problems.

As long as you don't use more memory than you physically have you'll be fine. My parents could probably get away with no swap file with what little they use. Could I? Hell no. My computer would lock up nightly. I might be able to do it for a bit with 2GB memory, but I'd run into problems sooner or later.

Good luck with that though. You'll learn first hand what many are warning you about sooner or later. 😀
 
Except the second link says that if you have enough ram "the pagefile is essentially, not used."

I'm certain that pagefile considerations are taking for a higher degree of compatibility with the average system setup. Most computers are woefully undersupplied with ram for the task run on them.
 
Except the second link says that if you have enough ram "the pagefile is essentially, not used."
Click to expand...

Generally true. But it is required for allocations that have no other backing store. Executables, shared libraries, mmaped files, etc all never have to hit the pagefile because they can be evicted and just restored from their original file on disk.
 
Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
Most computers are woefully undersupplied with ram for the task run on them.
Click to expand...
Where do people get info like this?
Click to expand...

Most base computer systems are sold with little memory. The money is made by the assembler in the form of upgrades.

Wow that wasn't hard, a Dell 670 for $3,022 comes fully equipped with 512MBs of ram. What a workhorse that will be...

GREAT FOR
Advanced engineering and 3D graphics, heavy technical computing, and I/O intensive, multi-threaded applications or multi-tasking environments
Click to expand...

Yeah buddy, that's a screamer for 3 grand. Multi-tasking with 2 IE windows at once. Adobes website on one page, and Dells support on the other. 😉
 
Originally posted by: TGS
Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
Most computers are woefully undersupplied with ram for the task run on them.
Click to expand...
Where do people get info like this?
Click to expand...

Most base computer systems are sold with little memory. The money is made by the assembler in the form of upgrades.

Wow that wasn't hard, a Dell 670 for $3,022 comes fully equipped with 512MBs of ram. What a workhorse that will be...
GREAT FOR
Advanced engineering and 3D graphics, heavy technical computing, and I/O intensive, multi-threaded applications or multi-tasking environments
Click to expand...

Yeah buddy, that's a screamer for 3 grand. Multi-tasking with 2 IE windows at once. Adobes website on one page, and Dells support on the other. 😉
Click to expand...
Wait a sec here.. you say "The money is made by the assembler in the form of upgrades." which means that the machines may be offered w/ "little" RAM (512 isn?t a little bit of RAM, btw) but most are upgraded before they leave the factory. And then you're talking about "Most computers" and you link to an obscure $3000 Dell Workstation as your proof? - podna, if you wanna believe you need a gig or 2 of RAM to do whatever you're doing that's cool (maybe you actually do need it) but don't try and sell that sort of unqualified opinion to others who may swallow it hook, line & sinker and go out and waste their money when all they're wanting to do is run some Office apps, check their email and watch a movie every so often.
 
Now you go beyond the joe sixpack theory, and start to venture into the realm of the informed consumer. I linked to a three thousand dollar generic dell workstation, to highlight the fact that computers typically are configured with the least amount of hardware.

Entry level at 256mb

Mid-tier offers 512mb

and not until you hit the thousand dollar mark, does the dell come with 1GB standard.

Mid-High end

From an experienced computer user perspective, I would think that if a user required a 3GHz+ or Dual Core system, a GB of memory would probably be the low end for applications that required such hardware. Though I'm sure every Dell customer(and Joe Sixpack) share the same sentiment. ( 😉 )

Edit: Mister winky was sleeping on the job

Edit2: When I talk about memory utilization on higher end systems, I'm talking about modern programs that actually demand large amounts of memory. By todays standards(yes I see your system sig) 512MB is not a lot of memory. For Windows 2000 or XP, most would argue that 256-512MB would be the bare minimum for fluid GUI functions.

Edit3: Also, I'm not saying that you need a ton of memory for web surfing, or using notepad. I'm inferring that people that game or use high memory usage applications, probably don't have enough memory to fit all application data within system memory. You'll have to show me where I said, low memory usage apps require 2GB of ram? In the context of this topic, with games and secondary applications I would bet that most people are running just enough memory to run one or the other. Then you get questions from people that are manipulating page file locations to another drive to help solve the alleviate the problems of not having enough memory in their system.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Oh I know what they say but I think they are FOS. I see it right before my eyes.
Click to expand...

Right. Somehow you know more about VM and the NT kernel than the people who wrote it?
Click to expand...

Don't hate too much till you try it.. Launch say firefox/avant and open about 60 tabs// w/ images and flash and such on each, start econding a DVD then launch FEAR or farcry play a couple hours and see diffence alt tab both w and w/o page file. Night and day IMO.

If you don't have dual CPU then forget the DVD encode.
 
Originally posted by: TGS
Now you go beyond the joe sixpack theory, and start to venture into the realm of the informed consumer. I linked to a three thousand dollar generic dell workstation, to highlight the fact that computers typically are configured with the least amount of hardware.

Entry level at 256mb

Mid-tier offers 512mb

and not until you hit the thousand dollar mark, does the dell come with 1GB standard.

Mid-High end

From an experienced computer user perspective, I would think that if a user required a 3GHz+ or Dual Core system, a GB of memory would probably be the low end for applications that required such hardware. Though I'm sure every Dell customer(and Joe Sixpack) share the same sentiment. ( 😉 )

Edit: Mister winky was sleeping on the job
Click to expand...
Are we talkin' about "most users" or users that "require a 3GHz+ or Dual Core system"? In the grand scheme of things the latter system or rather, the folks that actually require those systems are extremely rare. Most users don't game or use Photoshop or use ProTools.. most users could (and do) get by w/ a system like the one in my sig just fine. Dell et al will sell you anything you've got the money for but that doesn't mean you need it.
 
Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
Originally posted by: TGS
Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
Most computers are woefully undersupplied with ram for the task run on them.
Click to expand...
Where do people get info like this?
Click to expand...

Most base computer systems are sold with little memory. The money is made by the assembler in the form of upgrades.

Wow that wasn't hard, a Dell 670 for $3,022 comes fully equipped with 512MBs of ram. What a workhorse that will be...
GREAT FOR
Advanced engineering and 3D graphics, heavy technical computing, and I/O intensive, multi-threaded applications or multi-tasking environments
Click to expand...

Yeah buddy, that's a screamer for 3 grand. Multi-tasking with 2 IE windows at once. Adobes website on one page, and Dells support on the other. 😉
Click to expand...
Wait a sec here.. you say "The money is made by the assembler in the form of upgrades." which means that the machines may be offered w/ "little" RAM (512 isn?t a little bit of RAM, btw) but most are upgraded before they leave the factory. And then you're talking about "Most computers" and you link to an obscure $3000 Dell Workstation as your proof? - podna, if you wanna believe you need a gig or 2 of RAM to do whatever you're doing that's cool (maybe you actually do need it) but don't try and sell that sort of unqualified opinion to others who may swallow it hook, line & sinker and go out and waste their money when all they're wanting to do is run some Office apps, check their email and watch a movie every so often.
Click to expand...

The company I work for manufactures memory and supply it for computer upgrades. We also keep a database on every new system we find. This year from Jan 1st as of yesterday shows:

7636 - Systems Total Collected
416 - No memory (bare bones)
6133 - 512MB or less
1087 - 1GB or more

The information is based on the standard configuration of the systems. This includes workstations and servers. The majority of workstations currently come with 512MB standard. I could go back through our records several years, but I figured for this topic this year alone would be more relevant.

Even our Dell workstations here at work only have 512MB standard. It's not enough for many here, myself included, to do our jobs comfortably. If it wasn't for the swap file I wouldn't be able to do my job at all, actually.

One last thing, 512MB isn't a lot in this day and age. It allows many home users to perform the operations they need, but still many of them hit the page file. A year ago this sort of thinking may have flown. Now that memory is so cheap, it's difficult to not suggest at least 1GB even for your average home user. In 2006 we'll see an increase in systems offering 1GB standard.

This reply would have come faster if our SQL server wasn't sluggish from the jobs running on it.

Edit:

Re-reading this, I realized I lumped the 7 systems we collected that have 768MB standard into the 1GB or more category. I'm not going to change it. They're all notebooks with 256MB soldered memory and one 512MB DIMM. I just wanted to include this information here for arguments sake.
 
You guys have been in the forest waay to long.. you can't see the trees anymore! - for the average user you need around 512. Period. I support hundreds of average users everyday of my life. You guys aren't average users. I've been talking about (and TGS was talking about.. at least I thought he/she was) average users/MOST users. To have Outlook, Word and a couple instances of IE open 512 is nearly overkill. Most people (average users) don't require much more of their machines than the 3 mentioned applications. And to say if it wasn't for the pagingfile is sorta dumb b/c that's what the paging file is there for. By design. If your pagefile gets full on a regular basis (1.5x your existing physical RAM)? get more RAM (duh). But average users rarely even need the pf much less another $50 to a $100 more RAM.
 
Originally posted by: Cynicist
512mb of memory is a lot, what do you do at your work?
Click to expand...

Research. Normally I have Outlook, an RSS Reader, Excel, a few IE windows, a few copies of Access and a homebrewed application my company uses. With that open I'm easily able to breach the 512MB limit.

All three of my home PC's have 1GB+ in them. Two are used for gaming and one is a media center. The media center also does many server functions and can't run smoothly with only 512MB. My desktops are used for gaming and those definitely need the memory just for that.

Like I said previously. Many home users that have 512MB hit the paging file wether they realize it or not. Run something as simple as Google Earth and check out how much memory it takes. Have a couple IE windows open, Outlook, listen to some music and open up Google Earth and whoops...you went over 512MB. It's not uncommon at all. There is a reason professionals recommend leaving the paging file enabled.
 
Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer
You guys have been in the forest waay to long.. you can't see the trees anymore! - for the average user you need around 512. Period. I support hundreds of average users everyday of my life. You guys aren't average users. I've been talking about (and TGS was talking about.. at least I thought he/she was) average users/MOST users. To have Outlook, Word and a couple instances of IE open 512 is nearly overkill. Most people (average users) don't require much more of their machines than the 3 mentioned applications. And to say if it wasn't for the pagingfile is sorta dumb b/c that's what the paging file is there for. By design. If your pagefile gets full on a regular basis (1.5x your existing physical RAM)? get more RAM (duh). But average users rarely even need the pf much less another $50 to a $100 more RAM.
Click to expand...

Average users go over 512MB of ram all the time. At work and at home. It's extremely common. Most don't even realize they're going over their limit until they complain to a professional that their computer is running slower than it used to. Then more memory is installed and their problems go away for a while. It's been happening for years...

edited a typo
 
Originally posted by: Zebo
I've always heard *never* disable the paging file.. so what do i do?

Disable it of course.😛

In all seriousness I started thinking more and noticing more about how poorly Windows caches things after reading anands Macintosh experiance last year where he sites examples how well OSX did. Like while gaming and leaving other apps open in the backgroud, sometimes I'd alt-tab back from the game to Avant browser/and explorer window etc, and windows would pull everything back from slow harddisk it had put there instead of keeping it faster memory where it belongs dispite having a free 700MB ram! Pisses me off even hearing HDD let alone having to wait for get my tabs, pictures whatever back from it. Anyway i disable paging file and the problem seems to have disappeared entirly - whole system seems much more responsive. Try it and see for yourself.
Click to expand...



Benchmarks?
 
Yes Zebo, you can run without the pagefile. But, it is not recommended by MS. The first task the file does is save the OS settings. If system does a BSOD, that info is available for a post-mortem (sent to MS or CER if you have it implemented.) And if you get one bad app that decides to 'test' to see if that memory is really there (hopefully everyone got the message and does not do that anymore), the page faults will eventually "use" all of the memory and you will get a memory error or possibly a crash (as you have disabled a key feature used in the VM system). Enjoy your new found freedom, but don't expect the rest of us to climb on board 😉

As for 512MB, too little. Run .NET Frameworks and Visual Studio... 😉 I have my editor and animation package open and can quickly kill 1GB if it is a big project.
 
Originally posted by: wexsmithAverage users go over 512MB of ram all the time. At work and at home. It's extremely common. Most don't even realize they're going over their limit until they complain to a professional that their computer is running slower than it used to. Then more memory is installed and their problems go away for a while. It's been happening for years... edited a typo
Click to expand...
1st of all, how do you know what sort of resources average users are using all the time? Is adding more RAM your cure-all or do you have something to back up that claim? Cuz you're gonna need it when you try and convince me and the rest of the folks supporting the free-world that average users are using/needing more than the functions I've described to take place at one time. If you're supporting machines used for what I described that are needing more than 512 then I think you?d better take a look at your standard image and figure out where you guys went wrong. - I work for a Fortune 100 company w/ over 300,000 employees and 95% of 'em somehow get by just fine w/ 512. And the vast majority of them prolly have an instance or 2 of Excel running in addition to the 3 I've already listed.
2nd of all.. wtf is wrong w/ using the pagefile that was designed SPECIFICALLY for what you?re complaining about?? So if your pf is utilized then you must need more RAM?? Are you seriously trying to convince someone of that??


 
1st of all, how do you know what sort of resources average users are using all the time?
Click to expand...
I don't. I'm only talking about the average user in my experience.

Is adding more RAM your cure-all or do you have something to back up that claim?
Click to expand...
Adding RAM isn't a cure all. It's what you do when someone needs more RAM. When a system runs sluggish it's many times caused by the paging file. If the paging file is being used enough to hinder performance then, obviously, you need more memory.

Cuz you're gonna need it when you try and convince me and the rest of the folks supporting the free-world that average users are using/needing more than the functions I've described to take place at one time.
Click to expand...
Nothing comes from convincing strangers on a forum of something they don't want to believe. I'm not going to lose any sleep if I don't convice you in my lifetime. I'll let you win this one.

If you're supporting machines used for what I described that are needing more than 512 then I think you?d better take a look at your standard image and figure out where you guys went wrong. - I work for a Fortune 100 company w/ over 300,000 employees and 95% of 'em somehow get by just fine w/ 512. And the vast majority of them prolly have an instance or 2 of Excel running in addition to the 3 I've already listed.
Click to expand...
I'm not supporting machines for what you've described. In fact, I described the machines I was supporting. They're running programs that average users use. Outlook, Word, Excel, IE, Google Earth, Quicken, WMP, Quicktime, etc... Many of my clients aren't good at memory management or don't want to worry about system performance dropping due to the paging file. It might just be the area I live in. When I can look at their peak commit charge and see that it's greatly going over the 512MB of physical memory available then I can make the call that it's time to move to 1GB. It's pretty basic stuff. I'm sure the IT department at your company could fill you in on it.

2nd of all.. wtf is wrong w/ using the pagefile that was designed SPECIFICALLY for what you?re complaining about?? So if your pf is utilized then you must need more RAM?? Are you seriously trying to convince someone of that??
Click to expand...
This is actually your third question. Nothing is wrong with using the pagefile. When it's accessed enough due to lack of memory it can slow down performance. If that's the case then yes, you need more RAM. If I tried to run my computer with 512MB of RAM it would work, albiet very slow. Just because my computer can chug along doesn't mean I shouldn't fix the problem with it. That's like saying, "My car only does 30mph when it used to do 65mph, but I'm not going to fix it." I'm seriously trying to educate you.

This thread was originally about turning the pagefile off altogether. In the case that it's completely shut off and needs to be accessed it can lock up your computer altogether. I can't turn mine off because I'm not what you call an average user. Like I said before, there's a reason it's suggested to leave it on. If someone wants to turn it off it's their call. However, if they're on a forum stating that they did it they want attention. Wether it's people to agree or disagree with them, it doesn't matter. All I can do as a member of this forum is talk to people from my experiences.
 
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