page file

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Hi

I have just reassigned the page file of my XP Home SP2 installation to a
second hard drive in order to improve speed. However, I have noticed, when
defragmenting my C drive, I find that the space allocated to the page file is
still there. Is there any way of freeing this?

By the way, the new IE pop-up blocker blocked this window!!!! It took a
while to discover why I was not getting a form to fill in when I clicked on
the "New Question" tab!!
 
Geoff,
Search for pagefile.sys in your C:\ drive and if you have correctly set the
virtual memory to use another drive you will be able to delete it fro C:\.
 
Hi John

Thanks for the hint - it set me on my way. I looked for the file, and found
it, eventually, when I got Windows Explorer to display hidden system files.
When I tried to delete it it told me that it was in use, which I thought was
a bit odd.

On further checking, I found that not only did I have to create a page file
in the desired partition on my second drive, but I also had to remove it from
the C drive - all this in Control Panel/System etc.

After making this kind of change, it always asks you to reboot. On
rebooting I found that Windows itself had removed the pagefile.sys for me.

Thanks for the help.

Yours

Geoff
 
Geoff said:
Hi John

Thanks for the hint - it set me on my way. I looked for the file, and found
it, eventually, when I got Windows Explorer to display hidden system files.
When I tried to delete it it told me that it was in use, which I thought was
a bit odd.

On further checking, I found that not only did I have to create a page file
in the desired partition on my second drive, but I also had to remove it from
the C drive - all this in Control Panel/System etc.

After making this kind of change, it always asks you to reboot. On
rebooting I found that Windows itself had removed the pagefile.sys for me.

Thanks for the help.

Yours
Click to expand...

Actually for best results you should have a pagefile defined on *both*
of your hard drives, provided they are 2 separate physical hard drives
and not just 2 partitions on the same physical drive.

Set the pagefile on the boot (C:) drive to something quite small, such
as 10 mb minimum 50 mb maximum, and have the one on the second hard
drive substantially larger or as "system managed size".

There are at least a couple of reasons for this:
1. If you have any of the "system failure memory dump" options
selected then Windows will use the pagefile on the boot drive to hold
the memory dump, as this is faster than creating a new file.
2. With a pagefile on both drives, Windows can choose whichever of
the files is the most efficient for any given paging operation.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
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