Why doesn't Vista tell me that disabling PageFile can be beneficial as well? ;p

This misunderstanding is the root of this debate. A pagefile is NOT simply used as an "overflow" bucket for when the system runs out of RAM. The pagefile is used ALL THE TIME, and has a much more complex relationship to the virtual memory system than the simplistic "overflow" model can describe. The OS will page out pages of RAM in anticipation of needed it, but also keeps those pages in RAM until the space actually is needed.

 

Ah, I see.

 

Windows does not use the Pagefile ONLY when it runs out of memory. You can see this by running DiskMon or FileMon and watching it actually read and write to the PageFile at other times as well. But still the amount and frequency of that IO are miniscule.

Gary

P.S. I see Orev beat me to this explanation with a much BETTER one too.

 

So what determines it then?

 

I don't understand your question.

Gary