How to clean pagefile.sys

D

Daniel Kaplan

For many reasons I believe my pagefile.sys might be corrupt. So I wanted to
delete it, so that XP would just make a new one.

I:

changed the VM settings from drive C to D,
restarted XP,
searched for pagefile.sys on C (with the intention of deleting it),
never found it so I went and changed VM back to C from D,
restarted XP.

Did I still end uo deleting the old pagefile.sys by doing the above? Or did
XP find the old one and just reuse it?

Thanks ahead,

Daniel
 
P

Pegasus \(MVP\)

Daniel Kaplan said:
For many reasons I believe my pagefile.sys might be corrupt. So I wanted to
delete it, so that XP would just make a new one.

I:

changed the VM settings from drive C to D,
restarted XP,
searched for pagefile.sys on C (with the intention of deleting it),
never found it so I went and changed VM back to C from D,
restarted XP.

Did I still end uo deleting the old pagefile.sys by doing the above? Or did
XP find the old one and just reuse it?

Thanks ahead,

Daniel
Click to expand...

Deleting the paging file is pretty pointless because Windows
discards its contents when you boot up. Attempting to delete
it in a VM session is equally pointless because the VM
session runs on top of an existing Windows session whose
paging file is hidden and untouchable. For your information:
it is usually c:\pagefile.sys.

If you really want to delete it then you have to get access
to the disk while Windows is inactive. You can do this by
running the disk as a slave disk in some other Windows
PC or by booting the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.
But as I said, why bother?
 
R

Rick Rogers

Hi,

What you did would have resulted in the deletion of the C:\ pagefile, so
that should be sufficient.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
J

jmatt

Daniel said:
For many reasons I believe my pagefile.sys might be corrupt. So I wanted to
delete it, so that XP would just make a new one.
Click to expand...

Clear virtual memory on shutdown
http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-02-27.htm
Windows does not normally clear or recreate the page file. On a heavily
used system this can be both a security threat and performance drop.
Enabling this setting will cause Windows to clear the page file
whenever the system is shutdown. This also means shutdown will be
slower.
Classic View
Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy >
Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options.
Category View
Start > Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative
Tools > Local Security Policy > Security Settings > Local Policies >
Security Options.
Scroll down to "Shutdown:
Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile". Right click and select properties then
click "Enabled".
Note: Please note on systems with large amounts of memory, and
therefore large swap-file, this tweak could cause a delay at shutdown
due to the additional time taken to clear the data from the file.
 
D

Daniel Kaplan

Classic View
Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy >
Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options.
Click to expand...

I never see "Local Security Policy"
 
D

deango

Hi Daniel.
Check Google for a site called SystemInternals.
They have a free utility that cleans your pagefiles and other nice
utilities all free..........regards. deango
 

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