Networking and OS Paging file question

[brentkiosk]

This may be an Operating sys question - I'm posting there too. I have a 3 computer network through a D-Link DI 604 router. A week or two after setting the network up, the two W2K machines started giving a no paging file error on boot up (on macihine in a week and the other a week or so later). Windows sets a paging file up, and the error message tells how to set one up. I've done this many times, but still get the error message.

Anyone think this might have to do with the network installation? One machine was in operation for about 18 mos before and no paging file errors.

Any ideas would be appreciated (including that I'm asking in the wrong place).

 

[Mucman]

What does your page file setup look like?

 

[brentkiosk]

It's got total paging file size for all drives set at 20 MB. Then the change button shows an initial size of 550 MB and a Max size of 850 MB. I have 768 MB of installed RAM.

 

[Mucman]

20MB page files? bump that up and see if the problem goes away.

 

[brentkiosk]

Thanks - I bumped it to 1150 MB. I will see if I get rid of the problem next time I re-boot .

 

[Mucman]

You probably don't need it that high... I believe you want it 24MB above your RAM usage in the case of having to do a MEM/KERNEL dump.
Even though you have lots of RAM, Windows will always do some paging. Whenever Windows starts I believe it will load a bunch of stuff into memory and then will dump it to the page file for future access. It does this to maximize the available physical memory for whatever
applications you are going to run. At least that's what I think happens

 

[brentkiosk]

The 1150 number was shown as a recommendation when I checked the page setup - that's where that number came from. It sounds big to me too. I have tried changing to the recommendation before, and for some reason, it keeps coming back with a "no paging file" message at startup, and sets one up with the parameters I quoted earlier. The systems both seem to run OK after that message, so maybe I'll just continue to live with it!!

I think I'll shut down now and restart - I'll be back with a post about what happened.

 

[brentkiosk]

Well, I shut down, restarted, and it did it again. It said there was no paging file, made one with 20 MB, but it did keep my changes for Initial and Maximum sizes from a while ago (before shutdown).
Hmmmm.

 

[WarmAndSCSI]

Reinstall Windows - this problem definitely has nothing to do with your network setup.

 

[Nothinman]

Make sure SYSTEM has full access to the root of the system drive, no need to reinstall over a simple problem like this.

 

[brentkiosk]

Thanks. It seems a little strange that it happened on two different computers a week or two apart, but it sure does seem like a windows problem. I tried reinstalling, but the CD didn't like the idea of upgrading 2000 with SP2 over SP3. This isn't a big enough problem to make me back up everything and start over. Actually, it might be the push that makes me get XP.

 

[Nothinman]

It's just a rights problem, there is no reason to reload.

 

[WarmAndSCSI]

Hmmm.... that seems strange. Why the hell did you revoke SYSTEM's ACE in NTFS permissions? I'd never even think that'd be the problem.

 

[Nothinman]

It happens to people quite frequently it seems, I doubt they're doing it themselves either since most of the people don't realize it happened until the pagefile error.

 

[brentkiosk]

Thanks notninman and camper - I did revoke system permission. Happened because I didn't know what I was doing when I set up the network. But all's OK now.