XP SP3 Paging File problem 3GB switch!!!

Hello Everyone,

I would really love some help with this problem, its driving me insane!

I have a Dell XPS M1530, 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 Gig Ram, 160 Gig 7200 rpm HDD and Geforce 8600GT

Recently i've just completed a Dual boot install of Vista sp1 and XP sp3, with Vista being installed first. I've partitioned the 160 gig Harddrive into 3 Partitions, C:\ For Vista (45 Gig), E:\ for XP (50 GIG) and the rest (70 GIG) for a General drive H:\. Vista and XP installed just fine, and all the drivers are installed perfectly on both OS.

Now in XP i added the /3GB boot switch so XP could see the 4 GIG ram, (or 3.5 etc..) I also updated the paging file to a custon 8196 min and 8196 max size on the E:\ (XP) drive. And this seemed to work fine for the first couple of days before i noticed Paging file errors in my system log, which read:

An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation. (EVENT ID 51)

Ater this occured, i restarted the system and all of a sudden ive lost my Nvidia control panel and my display settings!

So i did a fresh install of XP and after a couple of days of smooth sailing, the same thing happened again. However this time when the problem occured and i lost my display settings and the Nvidia control panel, i went through and deleted the /3GB switch from the boot file, restarted, and my system is fine. The Nvidia control panel returns and my display works fine.

So i started to play with the paging file, changing it to C:\ (Vista), changing the settings from Custom, to system managed etc... and these all work for a short period of time bfore the error returns and the Nvidia display goes all bannanas, However the fix of taking out the 3GB boot switch always returns the system to normal, nevertheless i am doing 3D work, Video editing, graphic design and really need XP to see my extra Ram. Previously (Before a dual boot install with vista and XP) this system ran prefectly for 6 months with the 3GB switch installed on XP SP3.

I'm really not sure where to go from here? Does anyone have any suggestions? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Would i be right in saying windows is having difficulty erasing the paging file? purging the paging file?

I've also tried various Nvidia drivers all with the same result, ive noticed that other programs are also affected such as Antivirus.

Thankyou so much to anyone who can help!

Peace!

 

Your pagefile size (8196) is too big, is this a single pagefile size or combined? If it's single, how did you manage to set it that big anyway? Normally Windows will give you an error and you cannot set it like that. In XP 32-bit, the maximum size of a single pagefile is 4096 MB. If you need 8 GB pagefile in total, then you will have to set 2 separate pagefiles.

Also, without the /3GB boot switch, how much RAM are you seeing? For my XP SP3, I didn't add the /3G switch, but Windows automatically enabled PAE. My system has 3 GB of RAM, not 4 GB though.

 

Yea, the paging file should be set to 1.5 X (amount of RAM). So if you have 4GB of RAM the page file size should be 1.5 X 4096 = 6,144

 

the /3G switch does not affect how much ram your 32bit O/S will use. It does however allow programs to use up to 3GB of ram for the application (normally there is a 2GB limit) but only when they are specifically written to use it, most are not.

Page file size under 32bit O/S's is limited to 4096MB (4GB) in the same way that you can only use 4GB of ram minus the amount needed for I/O usage (3-3.5GB real world with a single graphics card). If you want all 4GB you need to bite the bullet and go 64bit.

 

the /3GB switch means that it changes the way memory is allocated within programs. It switches from 2GB OS/2GB App to 1GB OS/3GB App boundaries, which is why you are seeing paging (OS) errors with the switch. Just keep the switch off, as it's obviously having a detrimental effect on your system. The /3GB switch is really just a hack anyway.