Disabling Page File In WinXP w/1GB RAM+

[fbrdphreak]

Been debating with several people a while about the pro's and cons of disabling the page file altogether in Windows with at least 1GB RAM. Obviously Windows "needs" virtual memory to run properly, but if the system is mainly used for gaming and regular usage (no Photoshop or crazy stuff like that), then there shouldn't be any issues, right? Any and all insight into this would be appreciated

 

[Ryoga]

It's never a good idea to disable the page file. Modern OSs require them (yes, even Linux). Turning it off would result in a performance hit as well as probable "insufficient resources" errors. There is only one pro: extra HDD space.

For a low-use system, you should be able to set it at a fixed 512MB and have no trouble.

 

[n0cmonkey]

You can't turn it off. Let Windows manage it, their engineers know the system better than most people.

 

[Bozo]

It is posible to turn it off. But some programs migt not load......Prime95 come to mind. Disabling the pagefile can also slow Defrag programs to a crawl.
Best bet is to set it for System managed.


Bozo

 

[oldman420]

leave it on as windows does need a page file and with a gig of ram it will be hardly used anyway

 

[Abzstrak]

Originally posted by: oldman420
leave it on as windows does need a page file and with a gig of ram it will be hardly used anyway

sure it'll be used, windows likes to swap to it regardless of how much free physical memory there is...

but yes, leave it enabled, you dont know better than the programmers of the OS.

 

[Spencer278]

Originally posted by: Abzstrak

Originally posted by: oldman420
leave it on as windows does need a page file and with a gig of ram it will be hardly used anyway

sure it'll be used, windows likes to swap to it regardless of how much free physical memory there is...

but yes, leave it enabled, you dont know better than the programmers of the OS.

Most of the time windows is doing anything so it copies any memory out to disk that windows think won't be need in the longest amount of time. Lets say for example that I have mozilla and internet explore open. I'm using mozilla right now so IE will be copied out to disk. Now if I change to IE then windows just uses the data in ram and will mark the data in the pagefile as junk. Now instead I open another program that need X amount of ram windows will then delete IE in ram because IE was all ready paged to disk so no copying is need and you get better preformance.

 

[Nothinman]

It's never a good idea to disable the page file. Modern OSs require them (yes, even Linux)

That's not true, you can even disable support for swap space when you compile the kernel. Yes it's dumb for normal use, but it's important for embedded systems.

sure it'll be used, windows likes to swap to it regardless of how much free physical memory there is...

In a system with lots of memory most of what's mislabled as "PF Usage" in task manager is really just reservations that Windows makes that aren't real pagefile usage.

 

[imported_smilingcrow]

I used to teak some registry settings under NT4, which changed how the system handled paging. I remember noticing an improvement in performance. I haven?t checked to see if the same settings are there in XP though.

I got the idea from an article in Windows NT magazine and the text of it can be found here:

Set Sail For Uncharted NT Performance

 

[Twista]

simple answer to your question: bad idea

 

[eelw]

I will go against everyone here and say disable your swap file. I have been doing this every since XP was available. The programs that I use don't require the presense of the swap file. I normally have 6 or 7 programs open and never receive any low memory errors. Since the swap file is disabled, none of the background programs get swapped out to the HD. So when I task switch between programs, the swap is almost instantaneous. Give it a try and you will see that your system will be more responsive.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: eelw
I will go against everyone here and say disable your swap file. I have been doing this every since XP was available. The programs that I use don't require the presense of the swap file. I normally have 6 or 7 programs open and never receive any low memory errors. Since the swap file is disabled, none of the background programs get swapped out to the HD. So when I task switch between programs, the swap is almost instantaneous. Give it a try and you will see that your system will be more responsive.

Benchmarks that prove there is any noticable difference?

And, what kind of education do you have. We need a comparison between you and the people at Microsoft working on the OS professionally to get an idea of whether it's worth listening to you or not.

 

[bsobel]

In a system with lots of memory most of what's mislabled as "PF Usage" in task manager is really just reservations that Windows makes that aren't real pagefile usage.

Exactly. All of my systems are 1gig or more (my primary desktop is 2), and I have the swap file enabled on all of them. If nothing else, you need the swap file available to generate memory dumps in case of system problems.

Bill

 

[eelw]

Benchmarks that prove there is any noticable difference?

The speed difference with having the swap disabled is not something that can be benchmarked. When running multiple programs and you task switch, you won't get any HD thrashing. When you Alt+Tab, the background task opens up immediately. Why wait 3/4 seconds for the computer to retrieve swapped out data. Since none of the programs (Doom 3 included) that I use require the presence of a swap file, why even use it at all.

And for everyone one saying the swap file is required, name me a few programs that won't run when it's disabled?

 

[bsobel]

The speed difference with having the swap disabled is not something that can be benchmarked. When running multiple programs and you task switch, you won't get any HD thrashing. When you Alt+Tab, the background task opens up immediately. Why wait 3/4 seconds for the computer to retrieve swapped out data. Since none of the programs (Doom 3 included) that I use require the presence of a swap file, why even use it at all.

This is not true. While the system may prepare some memory for swapping (e.g. background cache manager moving data out), it's not going to actually free the physical image unless it needs to free up physical memory. E.g., just because something is running in the background does NOT mean it has been swapped out. I think you are confusing PF reservations with actual PF usage, they are not the same thing.

And for everyone one saying the swap file is required, name me a few programs that won't run when it's disabled?

Any applications which require NULL memory mapped files (photoshop, I believe, requires this), and the kernel panic handler (if you want memory dumps)

Bill

 

[eelw]

Originally posted by: bsobel

The speed difference with having the swap disabled is not something that can be benchmarked. When running multiple programs and you task switch, you won't get any HD thrashing. When you Alt+Tab, the background task opens up immediately. Why wait 3/4 seconds for the computer to retrieve swapped out data. Since none of the programs (Doom 3 included) that I use require the presence of a swap file, why even use it at all.

This is not true. While the system may prepare some memory for swapping (e.g. background cache manager moving data out), it's not going to actually free the physical image unless it needs to free up physical memory. E.g., just because something is running in the background does NOT mean it has been swapped out. I think you are confusing PF reservations with actual PF usage, they are not the same thing.

Not quite true either. Windows XP has improved the conservative swap file usage, but it will still swap out memory even when physical RAM is still available.

And for everyone one saying the swap file is required, name me a few programs that won't run when it's disabled?

Any applications which require NULL memory mapped files (photoshop, I believe, requires this), and the kernel panic handler (if you want memory dumps)

Bill

Nope, Photoshop works fine on my system. Well at least 6 and prior, have yet to try the most recent version yet.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: eelw

Benchmarks that prove there is any noticable difference?

The speed difference with having the swap disabled is not something that can be benchmarked. When running multiple programs and you task switch, you won't get any HD thrashing. When you Alt+Tab, the background task opens up immediately. Why wait 3/4 seconds for the computer to retrieve swapped out data. Since none of the programs (Doom 3 included) that I use require the presence of a swap file, why even use it at all.

As someone that manages to eat a gig of ram every night at work (win2k), I can say with no reservation that when there is free memory I do not notice any lag switching between processes unless one processes has been ignored for a long period of time.

 

[Nothinman]

Not quite true either. Windows XP has improved the conservative swap file usage, but it will still swap out memory even when physical RAM is still available.

And how are you gauging this?

Nope, Photoshop works fine on my system. Well at least 6 and prior, have yet to try the most recent version yet.

Well PS 6 was also designed to run on Win9X and OS 9 neither of which have a memory manager worth anything.

 

[eelw]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Not quite true either. Windows XP has improved the conservative swap file usage, but it will still swap out memory even when physical RAM is still available.

And how are you gauging this?

When at work and I'm troubleshooting an end-users system, I will notice HD activity when idle. And when I attempt to swap to a background task, low and behold, HD trashing. But yet, on my workstation (of course, same HW config) with the same apps open (plus 3 additional programs), no unnecessary HD trashing and instantaneous task switching.

 

[Nothinman]

Apps don't get paged out to disk, application data does. Apps get evicted from memory and are paged in from the original image on disk.