Paging file in Win2k WTF?

[amishman]

What the hell is going on in Win2k? I have a few questions for you guys:

I have 512MB RAM, initial paging file size of 10 MB, max paging file size of 160MB.
Now I keep getting messages saying "You are running low in virtual memory...windows is increasing your paging file...some apps' requests may not be fulfilled...blah blah blah"

160 is the minimum recommended paging file size. Why?
Using the task manager I rarely even get over 200MB total memory usage.
Is there a need to use the hard drive as memory that I dont know about under normal circumstances?
Is this some sort of safegaurd where important info is kept in case of a crash?

 

[AndyHui]

Normally in the case of a crash, Win2K will dump the contents of RAM into the Pagefile to allow for debugging and error tracing. I've never found those dumps to be useful.

Perhaps if Windows is complaining of too small a pagefile, simply set the Minimum to 200MB and no maximum. I have 512MB of RAM as well, and it never complains. There is no need to set the swapfile to 768MB or whatever the default setting Microsoft comes up with, since as you say, RAM usage never gets that high.

 

[Saltin]

That is correct technically. But in my experience Windows will never be happy untill you set it to what it asks for (generally 1.5x RAM)

 

[AndyHui]

With 512MB of RAM in my system, I have my pagefile set to 200MB minimum with no maximum and I have never had any problems.

In real terms if you want to comply with the requirements of RAM dump to pagefile, the minimum size of the pagefile must be System RAM + 12MB. There is no need to go to 1.5x the amount of RAM. It would be silly to have 1GB of RAM and a 1.5GB pagefile.

 

[igiveup]

Well, technically right, but when Microsoft recommends 1.5x the amount of ram for a pagefile they are assuming you actually need the amount of ram you have. 1gig would mean you were doing some pretty heavy computer use and a 1.5gb page file wouldn't be that much of a stretch. For the average joe, 512mb is the right amount of ram. Do whatever you want to with your page file, but there are reasons why 1.5x is the right amount.

Check this link for an interesting article from MS....

It doesn't directly address some reasons, but it might give you some insight.

Windows 2000 doesn't keep everything in memory even though it has more available.

 

[khtm]

<< In real terms if you want to comply with the requirements of RAM dump to pagefile, the minimum size of the pagefile must be System RAM + 12MB. >>


That was true for Windows NT, but for Win2k Microsoft suggests RAM x 1.5.

-khtm-

 

[amishman]

Well, what I basically want to do is minimize my paging file size, because I thought it degrades performance. I mean doesnt using the hard drive instead of RAM waste time. If not there is no reason (for me) to have more than 256MB RAM. I really want to know why Win2k is using the paging file at all when there is sooo much unused RAM. From reading the posts, it looks like if I needed 5 MB of ram for a new app, win2k will allocate 2 MB of RAM and 3 from the paging file. I guess I just have to live with this "feature". Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Auric]

For best performance fix the size (same min & max). I use 400MB because a couple of games and demos have required it but generally the system does not use most of it with 512MB RAM.

 

[bignick]

Use this at your risk-

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Edit the value: DisablePagingExecutive - change to "1"
Data type is REG_DWORD

This reduces the amount of info written to the pagefile. Basically the kernel, and other services are kept in RAM instead of being written to the pagefile. I have seen an increase in responsiveness on my PII 450.

 

[Auric]

Hey I just checked and it already is disabled. I guess I got to it following one of those tweak guides way back 🙂