page faults?

[Vic]

In Windows Task Manager one can view page faults. On my PC I notice some
processes have a LOT of page faults, which sounds terrible!
Is it?
What exactly are page FAULTS?
Is there a way to correct these faults?

Vic

 

[Rock]

In Windows Task Manager one can view page faults. On my PC I notice some
processes have a LOT of page faults, which sounds terrible!
Is it?
What exactly are page FAULTS?
Is there a way to correct these faults?

See the section "What are page faults" in this article. It does not mean
there are errors. It means that a program tried to access an address that
was not currently in physical RAM.

Virtual Memory in Windows XP
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

FYI, Google is a good resource in researching questions like this.
www.google.com

 

[Tim Slattery]

In Windows Task Manager one can view page faults. On my PC I notice some
processes have a LOT of page faults, which sounds terrible!
Is it?
What exactly are page FAULTS?

A page fault occurs when a process accesses a memory page that's not
currently in RAM. The OS must write a page currently in RAM to the
swap file, and read the requested page into the freed-up RAM space.
It's not an error, but it slows down memory access, obviously. If you
have less RAM then you really need it will happen constantly and your
computer will run more slowly than if you had more RAM and fewer page
faults.

 

[Jim]

In Windows Task Manager one can view page faults. On my PC I notice some
processes have a LOT of page faults, which sounds terrible!
Is it?
What exactly are page FAULTS?
Is there a way to correct these faults?

Vic

"Page faults" are a shortened version of "Translation not valid faults".
This occurs when an instruction points to a virtual address that does not
have a translation to a valid physical address. Therefore, the entire
virtual page must be loaded into physical RAM. Sources of page faults
include large programs which reference lots of different virtual address and
systems with inadequate physical RAM.

About the only way that you can do much about excessive page faults is to
install more memory.

Jim

 

[Vic]

Thanks guys! Got the idea that 384mb memory is just BARELY adequate!
Being I must rely on swaps to the HD page file, is there a way to find
which HD (there are three) would be fastest?

Thanks again
Vic
___

 

[Rock]

Thanks guys! Got the idea that 384mb memory is just BARELY adequate!
Being I must rely on swaps to the HD page file, is there a way to find
which HD (there are three) would be fastest?

Thanks again
Vic
___

It's not going to make much difference. Read that article I have you about
Virtual Memory. Place the main page file on the first partition of the
least used drive.

 

[Evander R. McCormick, III]

It's not going to make much difference. Read that article I have you
about Virtual Memory. Place the main page file on the first partition
of the least used drive.