Why use a Pagefile?

As for MCE2005 also in this PC which has 1024MB of physical memory, I have
set Virtual Memory Paging file to off for Vista Ultimate RC 1. There is no
pagefile.sys on harddisk. I was surprised that Vista worked at all since it
needs ~5 times as much physical memory as MCE. It seems to come up somewhat
faster with less disk I/O and even the Media Center works. The question is,
if a PC has >= 1024MB core, why does a pagefile get allocated at all?

"Will" <Will@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C9EE114E-69B5-456E-A975-E7B464B2696E@microsoft.com...
> As for MCE2005 also in this PC which has 1024MB of physical memory, I have
> set Virtual Memory Paging file to off for Vista Ultimate RC 1. There is no
> pagefile.sys on harddisk. I was surprised that Vista worked at all since
> it
> needs ~5 times as much physical memory as MCE. It seems to come up
> somewhat
> faster with less disk I/O and even the Media Center works. The question
> is,
> if a PC has >= 1024MB core, why does a pagefile get allocated at all?

I have 1Gb ram. When I turned off my page file I started to get program
crashes and memory errors.
--
Beck --> http://becs.wordpress.com

Will wrote:
> As for MCE2005 also in this PC which has 1024MB of physical memory, I
> have set Virtual Memory Paging file to off for Vista Ultimate RC 1.
> There is no pagefile.sys on harddisk. I was surprised that Vista
> worked at all since it needs ~5 times as much physical memory as MCE.
> It seems to come up somewhat faster with less disk I/O and even the
> Media Center works. The question is, if a PC has >= 1024MB core, why
> does a pagefile get allocated at all?

Why do you need a pagefile? Because each process running on your machine
thinks it has access to gigabytes of memory address space, and if it tries
to ask for all the space it's entitled to with no pagefile defined you'll
run into problems.

Brief discussion of pros and cons of pagefile use here (talking about XP,
not Vista, but still) :
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000422.html

1Gb of RAM is by no means a good limit to be turning off your pagefile on
any OS I would say. I would certainly say that it's far too low a number to
be thinking of this sort of thing in Vista. But it's your computer.


--
Robert Moir
Microsoft MVP
www.robertmoir.com

There are also some applications that specifically look for the existance
of virtual memory and crash with OutOfMemory exceptions if the page file
cannot be found. I have 2GB of memory and tried it a bit back with little
success and no noticable performance increase.

And the blog post from Jeff Atwood that Robert posted is pretty interesting;
the discussion, if nothing else.

-dl

--
David Longnecker
Web Developer
Wichita Public Schools, USD 259

> Will wrote:
>
>> As for MCE2005 also in this PC which has 1024MB of physical memory, I
>> have set Virtual Memory Paging file to off for Vista Ultimate RC 1.
>> There is no pagefile.sys on harddisk. I was surprised that Vista
>> worked at all since it needs ~5 times as much physical memory as MCE.
>> It seems to come up somewhat faster with less disk I/O and even the
>> Media Center works. The question is, if a PC has >= 1024MB core, why
>> does a pagefile get allocated at all?
>>
> Why do you need a pagefile? Because each process running on your
> machine thinks it has access to gigabytes of memory address space, and
> if it tries to ask for all the space it's entitled to with no pagefile
> defined you'll run into problems.
>
> Brief discussion of pros and cons of pagefile use here (talking about
> XP, not Vista, but still) :
> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000422.html
>
> 1Gb of RAM is by no means a good limit to be turning off your pagefile
> on any OS I would say. I would certainly say that it's far too low a
> number to be thinking of this sort of thing in Vista. But it's your
> computer.
>

David R. Longnecker wrote:
> There are also some applications that specifically look for the
> existance of virtual memory and crash with OutOfMemory exceptions if
> the page file cannot be found. I have 2GB of memory and tried it a
> bit back with little success and no noticable performance increase.

Good point, I'd forgot about apps actually testing for virtual memory. There
are also some that aren't testing for it as such but which will die without
it due to the way they're coded *sigh*.

Personally, I think running without a pagefile is far more trouble than it's
worth. It might be worth setting the intial pagefile value to a low value
and giving it room to grow, that seems a fair compromise.

I guess I've had better results. I've run XP without a Pagefile for months
on end and couldn't see any particular problem. Under the benchmarks I ran,
I didn't see any gains or losses, nor did I see memory faults. I will agree
that 1GB is a bit low to try and run Vista with no pagefile. When I did,
and ran the Half-Life 2 benchmark, I got a Low Virtual memory error. With
2GB, it ran fine with no pagefile.

I currently have my XP running with a 512MB pagefile, and with 2GB of ram, I
have Vista running with a 1.5 GB pagefile. I've played with cranking it up
an down and so far, I don't seee much either way

"Robert Moir" <robspamtrap+msnews@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23CpnT3Z4GHA.292@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> David R. Longnecker wrote:
>> There are also some applications that specifically look for the
>> existance of virtual memory and crash with OutOfMemory exceptions if
>> the page file cannot be found. I have 2GB of memory and tried it a
>> bit back with little success and no noticable performance increase.
>
> Good point, I'd forgot about apps actually testing for virtual memory.
> There are also some that aren't testing for it as such but which will die
> without it due to the way they're coded *sigh*.
>
> Personally, I think running without a pagefile is far more trouble than
> it's worth. It might be worth setting the intial pagefile value to a low
> value and giving it room to grow, that seems a fair compromise.
>
>

Dale "Mad_Murdock" White wrote:
> I guess I've had better results. I've run XP without a Pagefile for
> months on end and couldn't see any particular problem. Under the
> benchmarks I ran, I didn't see any gains or losses, nor did I see
> memory faults. I will agree that 1GB is a bit low to try and run
> Vista with no pagefile. When I did, and ran the Half-Life 2
> benchmark, I got a Low Virtual memory error. With 2GB, it ran fine
> with no pagefile.
> I currently have my XP running with a 512MB pagefile, and with 2GB of
> ram, I have Vista running with a 1.5 GB pagefile. I've played with
> cranking it up an down and so far, I don't seee much either way

It depends on the use you put your machine to. I'm just sitting hre reading
email and newsgroups and with 2Gb in my machine it can handle that just fine
if I turn off the pagefile. Many games will work just fine in that memory
space like you say. But I can cause myself no end of trouble if I leave the
system in that state and start working on a big website article which for me
typically involves many browser instances, email, image editing programs,
virtual PC, and maybe visual studio.

On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:01:39 +0100, "Robert Moir"
<robspamtrap+msnews@gmail.com> wrote:

>Dale "Mad_Murdock" White wrote:
>> I guess I've had better results. I've run XP without a Pagefile for
>> months on end and couldn't see any particular problem. Under the
>> benchmarks I ran, I didn't see any gains or losses, nor did I see
>> memory faults. I will agree that 1GB is a bit low to try and run
>> Vista with no pagefile. When I did, and ran the Half-Life 2
>> benchmark, I got a Low Virtual memory error. With 2GB, it ran fine
>> with no pagefile.
>> I currently have my XP running with a 512MB pagefile, and with 2GB of
>> ram, I have Vista running with a 1.5 GB pagefile. I've played with
>> cranking it up an down and so far, I don't seee much either way
>
>It depends on the use you put your machine to. I'm just sitting hre reading
>email and newsgroups and with 2Gb in my machine it can handle that just fine
>if I turn off the pagefile. Many games will work just fine in that memory
>space like you say. But I can cause myself no end of trouble if I leave the
>system in that state and start working on a big website article which for me
>typically involves many browser instances, email, image editing programs,
>virtual PC, and maybe visual studio.
>


Unless they changed it in later editions...MS Word is one of those
apps that will complain if you have no virtual memory set.

What about running the pagefile off on a separate hard drive? Back in the old
days of Win95\98 it sure sped up the computer.

"Beaker" wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:01:39 +0100, "Robert Moir"
> <robspamtrap+msnews@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Dale "Mad_Murdock" White wrote:
> >> I guess I've had better results. I've run XP without a Pagefile for
> >> months on end and couldn't see any particular problem. Under the
> >> benchmarks I ran, I didn't see any gains or losses, nor did I see
> >> memory faults. I will agree that 1GB is a bit low to try and run
> >> Vista with no pagefile. When I did, and ran the Half-Life 2
> >> benchmark, I got a Low Virtual memory error. With 2GB, it ran fine
> >> with no pagefile.
> >> I currently have my XP running with a 512MB pagefile, and with 2GB of
> >> ram, I have Vista running with a 1.5 GB pagefile. I've played with
> >> cranking it up an down and so far, I don't seee much either way
> >
> >It depends on the use you put your machine to. I'm just sitting hre reading
> >email and newsgroups and with 2Gb in my machine it can handle that just fine
> >if I turn off the pagefile. Many games will work just fine in that memory
> >space like you say. But I can cause myself no end of trouble if I leave the
> >system in that state and start working on a big website article which for me
> >typically involves many browser instances, email, image editing programs,
> >virtual PC, and maybe visual studio.
> >
>
>
> Unless they changed it in later editions...MS Word is one of those
> apps that will complain if you have no virtual memory set.
>

Rich wrote:
> What about running the pagefile off on a separate hard drive? Back in
> the old days of Win95\98 it sure sped up the computer.

I often tend to do this on a server, but on most desktop machines with
modern hard drives, the difference will be so slight for most people that it
won't make much of a difference. Back in the day it used to make a big
difference to a desktop computer, but that was when no one had much memory
at all, disks were slower, and caching (quite aside from the whole 'less ram
to setup a cache' thing, was considerably less efficient than it is now.

I've got to admit, I'm rather amazed at how many people seem to want to
fiddle with their pagefile. I've seen some tweaks that help servers and
specialised workstation tasks, but on a Win 2000 / XP vintage home machine I
can safely say I've setup machines with tweaked pagefile settings and setup
machines with defaults and not seen much difference one way or another.
Well apart from errors when I turned it all off...

I'd love to know how many people who claim that 'configuring it to value Y
while standing on one leg and whistling 'Start Me Up' by the Rolling Stones
made my machine much faster' have actually conducted real, verifiable and
repeatable benchmarks to prove this (and no, 'd00d, ph33r, I once scored 5
points higher on 3D Mark 2006, it like totally pwn3d' doesn't count).

--
Robert Moir
Microsoft MVP
www.robertmoir.com