Vista - page file help!!

Mine shows Like skunk's....

Yep, it appears to be a bug since in Blaydrnnnr's image Available Physical Memory shows higher than Total Physical Memory when Total Physical Memory is less than Installed Physical Memory.

As long as the correct RAM amount shows up everywhere else, I would not worry about it.

Looking at my specs here... I am concerned with my available physical memory only being 5.3GB.....is this due to 70 process's running? as you can see.. my page file space is huge.....not knowing the recommendations for page file..I took the advice of a HP technician who told me that my Page file was supposed to be 2-3 times the size of installed RAM. I do run very heavy memory intensive programs.. ( Maya, photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, ZBrush..etc..) Should I be concerned with the current settings?? Proper page file settings ( virtual memory settings ) to get every ounce of RAM when I'm doing some hardcore rendering and modeling is extremely important. Sorry for my noobness here.. page filing is a mystery to me.. by the way.. I thought I had set my page file on my third HD...( my two first drives are in RAID0..2-500GB HDD ) the third is a 1TB storage drive...but in system info.. it only shows my page file in C drive..( my RAID0 set up)
I am going to look in virtual memory settings...I will post back to see whats what.. but I am sure I set my page file to the storage drive..I was told it was better to have the page file on a disk that doesnt have the OS on it?? If I need to start a new topic.. I apologize and will ASAP

Blaydrnnnr,

The 5.3 GB available physical memory is just what is not currently being used yet. It is not the same as how much RAM you have installed. If you look in Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) under the Performance tab, you will notice that if you deduct the Cached size from the Total size it should equal close to the 5.3 GB available physical memory you see in System Information.

I would leave your Virtual Memory set at the default of being System Managed. Vista will expand and shrink it as needed automatically this way.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

OK.. looked into my virtual memory... attached are snips of my two drives set up for page filing...c drive and L drive...I am assuming that I need to check " no page file " for one of them...or is having them both set like this recommended? Seems to me that if C drive, the native drive for the OS is the one that Vista is going to write to, ignoring the L drive??? unless the C drive file gets full?
Question #1 for the pro's...is having one page file on my L drive better for performance as I was told by the so called techs?
Question #2.... I am adding a forth drive this week, ( or was planning to..) an identical one to my third storage drive.. ( 1TB Seagate 32MB 7200 ) and was thinking of running them in RAID to mirror each other. Can I have these two running in mirrored RAID and my first two in RAID0 like they were set up originally? ( they show as one drive in my computer ) Thanks again for everyones patience.

Thanks Brink.. I will go in and set them back to managed...I think it was recomended to these settings when Techs saw my initial and maximums at very low settings..( they explained that initial was fine at like 16MB.. but max needed to be 2 - 3 times installed RAM. ) With 8 GB installed...like system info is bugged, was wondering if system managed would only be managing less then full installed amount. Sorry again for the confusion..thanks for the help..

No problem Blaydrnnnr. You use to have to manually set the max to 2 to 3 times the amount of RAM you had installed, but with Vista this changed. By default, Vista will now adjust the size automatically as needed. It will not hurt anything to leave the custom settings as you have them now, but Vista would no longer be automatically adjusting the size as needed. This would only be a problem if Vista needed more than the custom max size that you set it.