Virtual Memory Concern

Hey all,

Just out of curiosity, I opened the System Information. I found out that I had 3 GB of virtual memory on my laptop. I find that hard to believed, since I only put 1 GB maximum virtual memory. So I just put "No Paging File" but when it done reboot, I still have 2 GB of virtual memory.

Ok, to get the picture, litterly.

Before:



After:



My only concern is why does the System Information still showing that I have 2 GB of virtual memory since I have disabled the paging file???

TIA.

JC

 

Because virtual memory is the combination of pagefile and physical RAM...

If you have 2GB RAM, you have 2GB virtual memory right there. The pagefile might then add more still.

 

Hmm interesting. I didn't know that. So the OS does it automatically, right? But I have 1 GB of physical ram, doesnt that mean I suppose to have 1 GB of virtual ram, or the system automatically do it for you?

Is it safe to disabled the paging file?

Thanks Jalf.

JC

 

Oh right, Windows XP also has a fun little bug where if you don't put a pagefile on the C drive... it will create one there anyway.

And no, on a 1GB system, it is defnitely a bad idea to disable the pagefile. You'll get crashes once your running applications (including Windows) need more than 1GB of memory. Bad idea.

In fact, you should never disable the pagefile (except possibly when troubleshooting problems on your system). No matter how much RAM you have. There's just nothing to be gained by disabling it, and quite a lot to be lost. If that's not the answer, then I suspect your system information thingy might be bugged.

(You could just check your drives to see where you can find a pagefile.sys and check the size of that. Should tell you how many pagefiles you have, and how big they are.)

Why don't you just give it a nice big pagefile though? Are you short on harddisk space?

 

Ahhh I see...alright I will put a bigger page file. Thanks for all your help, Jalf, greatly appreciated.

Capt. JC

 

I don’t agree (to the "nothing to be gained" part ); from my personal experience there is a noticeable difference when running without a page file. Especially when switching between minimized applications, or loading up recently used applications, menus etc.. noticeably quicker without a page file.

However, there is a risk of crashing Windows or loosing unsaved data due to out of memory errors, but I used to run XP on my notebook with 2GB RAM without a page file for general office, web and multimedia stuff (videos and music) safely. Occasionally I turn it ON when I needed to do something heavy, but most of the time I had it off. But you need at least 2GB or more to safely disable page file under XP; maybe 3GB or more under Vista.

 

I question your anecdotal evidence.

 

i 2nd (3rd, 4th ...) leaving the poor "so" misunderstood pagefile alone. decent developers and apps already pay attention to the usage (taking advantage) of available ram in order to turbo.boost apps performances. But there is always time the pagefile serves as a release pressure valve in case of ram starvation. And man, without this release pressure valve, u better watch it when some traffic jam occurs in ur ram traffic.

One can always argue that "me only using small apps.." but what happen to the background services/processes? these gals/guys can suddenly decide to suck the resource to perform some "optimisation/update" - & then suddenly one is sol with a bsod or simply a dead stare

my "little" 2 cents

cheers ...

 

If you are running Windows XP and have more than 2GB RAM then turn it off and use your computer for a while; open up several office applications like Word, PowerPoint, several tabs in Firefox or IE, play a MP3 and after a while switch between them. Then decide yourself. I’m just talking from my personal experience. All are welcome to disagree.

I've used it like that for several years before I switch to Vista; maybe it was pure luck ... who knows. But during those years I never came across a single Blue screen, just a very rare out of memory exception when a loading new application or trying to do a large operation; however only the application crashed.

Ok guys.... I'm not telling this is a guaranteed tweak or that you should turn your page file off or anything.. just sharing my personal experience.

 

Yeah, you shouldn't usually get blue screens when running out of memory.
But I'd say application crashes are bad enough. I don't want that to happen. I prefer not losing data, and applications crashing with no warning makes that hard to achieve.

 

OMG! Turning off page file causes Internet to crash!

 

lol, brilliant

 

Very good. Now if someone would of taken away that guys page file the internet would of never crashed. Isn't boradband great.

 

Paging file is there for a reason. I have 4gb RAM with a set 5gb paging file on a Vista x64 OS. When I opened Roxio EMC9 without a paging file and tried to do video it told me not enough memory. Yes, even with a 4gb RAM there wasn't enough memory!

 

I'd always stick in 1 gig of virtual memory no matter what. Just to be safe.