Pagefile question

[Tcs]

When I first installed w2k, I only had 256mb of RAM, as best I can
remember. Now I have 768mb, which I've had for a while. The initial
size of the file is still 384mb. It *was* something like 720, and the
other day I bumped it to the recommended 1342. But it hasn't grown in
size, although I continue to get the occasional "Your system is low on
virtual memory..." message.

Tonight I tried forcing it to increase, and I did get it to do so. It
grew from 336 to 448mb. According to Diskeeper (v10), it appears that
the pagefile is slightly fragmented, which I believe happened tonight
as it grew. I have 1.2gb free on my 10gb partition, and I'm trying to
see what I can delete to free up some space. But as it stands right
now, Diskeeper can't seem to come up with enough space to unfragment
the pagefile.

I've read some posts elsewhere about making the init and max sizes the
same, so the OS isn't trying to resize the pagefile. This was the
first time that I read such a thing about the pagefile. (I assume
this could/should only be done when the disk is new (empty) so it can
*find* this big chunk of contiguous disk space.)

Does anyone here have any guidance/suggestions/thoughts? Thanks in
advance,

Tom

 

[John John]

I might be wrong but I don't believe that Diskeeper can defrag the
pagefile anyway, I would suggest that you try pageDefrag by Sysinternals
instead. http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html
Although, as you stated, if there is not enough free space on the disk
PageDefrag will not be able to defragment the file.

Run a disk cleanup on your drive to see if you can reclaim additional
space. I think you should seriously consider investing in a second hard
drive for additional storage, you will run into other serious problems
if you let the drive run low on space. Plus with a bit of planing you
might be able to move the pagefile to a new less active location. You
might find this information to be useful:

Configuring page files for optimization and recovery in Windows Server
2003, in Windows 2000, and in Windows NT
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/197379

John

 

[Greg Hayes/Raxco Software]

Tom,

In order to defragment the pagefile, Diskeeper needs contiguous free space
the size of the pagefile or larger (See Diskeeper online help - Boot-Time
Defragmentation Overview). Even though you have 1.2GB free, it may not all
be in 1 contiguous piece. If you want to use Diskeeper, here's what you
need to try. Diskeeper has an Comphrehensive defrag method that is supposed
to consolidate free space. However, you can't run this manually. You can
only run it on a scheduled basis. Change the Diskeeper primary schedule
properties from Recommended to Comprehensive Defrag. Schedule this to run
repeated times. Unfortunately, Diskeeper doesn't provide information on
free space fragmentation/consolidation so you'll need to guess at the number
of times that you need to run. After you have run a number of times, retry
the boot time defrag and see if it works. If not, reschedule Diskeeper to
run some more Comprehensive Defrag passes and try again.

If the above doesn't work, get a better defragmenter. I can certainly
recommend one

- Greg/Raxco Software
Microsoft MVP - Windows File System

Disclaimer: I work for Raxco Software, the maker of PerfectDisk - a
commercial defrag utility, as a systems engineer in the support department.

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