WinXP pagefile issues...

Propofol

Junior Member
Mar 26, 2002
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I just installed WinXP Professional on my P4 and I keep having this 1 minor issue:

When I was using the welcome screen logon, it would hang right at the blue welcome screen and would never show the users. When I switched to the NT-style login, it worked better, but after logging in I get a critical stop with this message:

Limited Virtual Memory

Your system has no paging file, or the paging file is too small. To correct this....

I go into the control panel and adjust the settings for the virtual memory and restart, but each time WinXP starts, the message pops up. It never creates pagefile.sys.... the registry entries are made though. I read something on Technet about a similar issue with NT having to do with permissions. Has anyone seen this before? I need to get my pagefile to work.. it's causing problems in applications.

Thanks,

-P
 

Saltin

Platinum Member
Jul 21, 2001
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Nine times out of ten the symptoms you are describing are a result of the system account not having full control NTFS permissions to the root of your C: drive (or wherever).

Generally it happens when a user removes the everyone group from the root of thier C:. The everyone group includes the system account.
If you take out the Everyone group, or it is not there to begin with;) you should put the system account in for full control at the root of C: and allow that to propogate down.

I'm almost positive this will fix your problem.
 

Propofol

Junior Member
Mar 26, 2002
13
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Can't I just disable the page file? (swapfile) ? I have 256mb ram.. do I really need to use my HDD?

Also, is there a way to not have to login on XP? I hate the NT-style login. I'm the only one who uses this machine. =)


-P
 

Iron Woode

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 10, 1999
31,252
12,777
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<<Can't I just disable the page file? (swapfile) ? I have 256mb ram.. do I really need to use my HDD?>>


Your kidding right? If you had 1 gig of ram then maybe.....

Just set the pagefile to: Let Windows Manage My Pagefile

And all will be fine.
 

btvillarin

Senior member
Nov 3, 2001
469
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<< Can't I just disable the page file? (swapfile) ? I have 256mb ram.. do I really need to use my HDD? Also, is there a way to not have to login on XP? I hate the NT-style login. I'm the only one who uses this machine. >>



Since Windows isn't operating correctly, if you want to save the time you're wasting, just set the swap file to a super small amount, like 5MB. Personally, I don't use any memory-intensive applications, but I still have a partition dedicated to my paging file on my second HD for 500MB, and a small paging file in my primary HD's root partition with a set size of 10MB. IMO, I don't think it's worth wasting your time...