So I removed the page file, and holy performance increase batman :)

yep, even I couldn't believe it. I have 2GB ram and run XP Pro.

so I was playing C&C Tiberium Wars Kane Edition on my laptop yesterday, at 1400x1050 resolution in full detail (may have had some shadows in midium, but I don't think so), and I was noticing some delays when I move over the map with a bunch of units fighting. That's a 3D map for those who don't know.

At first I thought that it was due to my video card, but then I went and saw in task manager that the game loads in about 650MB in the memory, and my windows uses about 350MB with all my stuff loaded (used to be about 300 before Adobe CS3, lol). In other words, just over 1GB total. So I saved the game, and restarted windows without the page file (used to be 1024MB).

And WOW, now I can move over the map waaay easier. Windows loaded slightly faster too. Now it's strange cause the HDD light did not blink like Windows was using it during the game for memory purposes ... so I don't know, strange ...

the other reason that I can think of is that maybe my video driver uses some RAM to increase the memory of the video card, cause I see 512MB reported video memory all the time, so part of this could have been in the page file.

anyways, I'll see if it gives problems with loading pictures when I get back home today.

 

ya. i have 3 gigs and XP pro runs like the wind with no pagefile. it rocks. no indexing as well. don't be scared to turn off the pagefile, people- the microsoft police won't come get you. hehe. in XP with 2 gigs or more ram, it may increase your performance... (insert comment below ranting about how necessary the pagefile is and how absurd it is to turn it off).

 

Don't you need pagefile to create a dump file?

And also, with no pagefile, what happens when you run out of RAM?

 

Same thing that happens when you run out of page file. Apps just crash or fail to open, usually tossing out an error about low resources.

 

But if that happens, you probably have low RAM anyways.

RAM is always used first until it runs out, then it relies on virtual memory. Am I wrong here?

I guess a good way to determine if you can disable the paging file or not is to open up task manager and see if the peak commit charge is lower than the available physical memory then you should be OK to disable the paging file?

 

XP puts a bunch of pages into virtual memory BEFORE ram is used up. can't change that, that i know of. guess it was a good idea then computers averaged like 256 Mb of ram. if i could get the pagefile to be used only when ram is maxed out, i would enable it. i don't see why i should i be paging a bunch of info on the hard drive when i have 1.5+ Gigs of ram free... so off it goes.

 

I might disable it too. I was thinking of doing another clean install anyways.

So you just do this through Control Panel > System? No registry work, right?

 

Thats the plan, however stuff still seems to end up in the page file anyway. And for people that run Vista, it just fills up both places...

Really depends on what the system is for. On my work PCs doing mundane tasks I can easily go past 2GB of memory usage without even trying. I have a PC at home that I only use for playing WoW and web surfing, it always has over 1GB RAM freem and probably always will since I do not do a lot with it. I still have the swap file enabled on that PC though.

Many people consider the virtual memory just a buffer for problems. If you kill the buffer then have a problem, the system goes down.

Also its good to use a degfragger than can defrag the swap file.

 

What kind of mundane tasks? Just regular browsing and word processing? How much RAM does your work PC and your Home PC have?

That's what I'm thinking, but the only example risk I keep seeing is that Photoshop needs virtual memory or else it will crash and you'll lose your work.

Well...I don't use PS so I don't think I'd have a problem with disabling the paging file. I guess I just have to disable and see if my computer is stable with the way I use it.

 

Well at work I do some software development, so I can have a fairly boring day and end up with multiple dev apps running at the same time along with the application I am working on. At some point, my PC starts to slow down and rely on the swap file, then I gotta close old stuff. I have 2GB of RAM on it.

The WoW+surfing PC at home has 2GB of RAM as well.

 

what's really funny about the pagefile for me, is that if i decrease it to, say 50 Mb, my computer will complain about it. it will say something like "virtual memory to small"... but if i eliminate the pagefile completely, no error. funny stuff.

and ark- disable it through-
my computer (right click)/properties/advanced/performance settings/advanced/change/no paging file/set

if i remember correctly this will NOT delete the actual pagefile.sys file from your c: drive. you can go ahead and do that once you have disabled it and rebooted (of course, you will need to uncheck 'hide protected operating system files' in folder options to see it). woot!

 

yeah, kinda stupid aint it, lol.

 

haha... i love it that someone with a batman pic in their config is part of this post. coincidence???

 

Heh...that is kinda funny.

 

photoshop works fine, just checked it

 

I removed the swap file on my T61 with 3 Gb of RAM (Windows Vista Business) and saw a significant improvement in speed. And I mean significant.

Unfortunately if I have a lot of programs and firefox tabs (100-150+) open I would start to get messages from Windows about being low on memory.

But like I said, I experienced a significant increase in responsiveness with Windows Vista Business.

I'm now running with a 6 GB swap file and will try out a 512-1GB swap file to see what comes closer to the "no swap file" speed.

 

100-150+ tabs open?! WTF. That is all.

 

i just tried to lower the page file to 1000mb (min) 1000mb (max) and i get error from event viewer saying

'Configuring the Page file for crash dump failed. Make sure there is a page file on the boot partition and that is large enough to contain all physical memory.'

any idea why ?

 

Ye, I tried this the other day, and it's really fast, I am running vista btw.

But after a while the PC complain low memory then I got scared, so turned it back on, but it was fast, launch photoshop less than a second.

 

Eh I have no PageFile running at the minute and to me I am noticing a slightly better battery life. Programs launch quick, but that's probably due to my set-up configuration.

 

If I am not wrong,

If you have sufficient memory like 2GB, Xp is smart enough not to use the pagefile at all. I set it to 2MB (initial) and 2MB (Maximum). What this does is that your 4GB page file would be reduce to 2MB on the harddisk next time you reboot.

However, if you open a lot of programs (like that guy with the 100+ firefox tabs), then Xp will complain that the pagefile size is too low at some point in time when you run out of memoery.

An alternative that I had tried to speed out certain programs is to run the program from a Ramdrive....the best I have success with is the RamDisk Plus from SuperSpeed (now version 9). With this softwrae, lets say you have 3GB of memory, you can set 1GB as a ramdrive, move the pagefile from C drive to it, move the explorer temp file, other temp file, move your game to run there and it will be as fast as it can gets.

 

^ sorry, you're wrong, XP ain't smart.

and to move the page file in a ram drive would be kinda dumb idea.

oh, and for that guy with the 100+ open taps - OMG dude, wake up

 

I've never in my life encountered the kind of slow down you've described simply for having an unused page file sitting on my disk. I suspect you have something else wrong. Have you checked all your IDE controller tabs to make sure your DMA stuff is working correctly? Windows XP can and will disable DMA under certain circumstances.

 

Hmm, let me clarify before I'm misunderstood.... when I say the performance you describe I'm talking the stuttering performance in a game. I can believe that responsivness may be slightly faster or something along those lines, but to go from stuttering to no slow downs at all is a major performance change. And I realize that windows will page before ram is full but said pages should NOT be active memory handles, rather idle background items that are not in use.

 

Wake up? If I need to do some research or have several things pending on FireFox it's not hard to hit 100 tabs open (spread over several firefox windows on virtual desktops).

I use my laptop for work only and can have a programming IDE open, outlook, firefox and a bunch of other needed stuff. I simply demonstrated that is possible to hit a low memory state even with 3GB of RAM on a workhorse machine.

 

Try this other software http://www.eboostr.com/ and see if the results is better if you move the internet cache there would be faster. eboostr is like Readyboost for Vista (only this is for XP), and speed should depends on the USB drives you plug in

 

So you have to DELETE the pagefile.sys AFTER you disable it?

 

you don't have to delete it. but it will free up all of that space that is no longer being used for anything at all. kind of like deleting the hiberfile after disabling hibernation.

 

I think once you disable the paging file or hibernation, it will automatically delete the corresponding *.sys files. I can't seem to find either on my computer to delete.

 

You have the option to disable the writing of the crash dump file entirely under Startup and Recovery in System Properties.