Paging File, can this be moved from the C:\ partition ??

[Art Farmer]

I have set my C:\ drive to a 3.9gb partition which is slowly filling up.
Where possible I have arranged for files and programs to be
installed/stored in other partitions.

Can I move the Pagefile.sys to a partition other than C:\ ??

TIA

Art

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

Have a look at the following article by MVP Alex Nichol:

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

--

Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User


| I have set my C:\ drive to a 3.9gb partition which is slowly filling up.
| Where possible I have arranged for files and programs to be
| installed/stored in other partitions.
|
| Can I move the Pagefile.sys to a partition other than C:\ ??
|
| TIA
|
| Art
|
|

 

[Guest]

ControlPanel>System>Performance>VirtualMem>Chang

Insert the keywords of your problem in Google Search and you might solve the issue yourself ...

 

[zag]

Yes you can. Mine is now on D.
There should be adequate info in your Windows Help section
to show you the procedure. Also, you can, and I advise
that you make it a fixed, rather than variable size. I've
set mine at 1.5 x RAM size, i.e. 1.5gb.
z --------------------------------------------------------

 

[Art Farmer]

Thanks for the advice.

I was a bit puzzled by your comments about using Google.

I thought the whole point about newsgroups like this one was for people to
help each other out in a quick and easy way..

Why look through the messages and go to the trouble of answering them if you
feel people should do it themselves. ??

Art

ControlPanel>System>Performance>VirtualMem>Change

Insert the keywords of your problem in Google Search and you might solve

the issue yourself ...

 

[R. McCarty]

Posters sometimes don't realize the repetition of many of
the questions. When a "Top-10" gets asked again, most times
an answer will be posted.

It's like the old adage about "Give someone a fish, or teach
them how to fish". Google is an invaluable resource. Many
times problems are documented in Microsoft Knowledge Base
articles or directly from manufacturers support sites. In those
cases there is usually a detailed set of steps or instructions to
resolve the issue. Using those, helps us "Senior Citizens" from
having to retype answers again and again.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Some people have nothing better to do than complain about people using
forums for what they are supposed to use them for. After all, this is a
general discussion group, and pretty much anything WinXP-related is fair
game here. Takes about the same amount of effort to correctly answer the
question as it does to complain about it, to do both seems like a waste of
time, but then again some people have time to waste.......or is it that some
people are a waste of time?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Art Farmer]

Rick

As you seem to be a friendly soul I will turn to you for further help.

I have followed the instructions at http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php, but I
am not able to either reduce or alter the C: drive setting or delete the
existing pagefile.sys.

The file has now grown to 1.2gb leaving me with 27mb free on C:

Any suggestions please.

Many thanks

Art

 

[Art Farmer]

I can appreciate your points, but I did a search of messages and could not
find an instance of pagefile.sys, paging file or virtual memory anywhere.

As regards fish, if a man was starving a fish would be more help than a rod
and textbook. )

art

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

So I guess posting a link to where you can read about it is incorrect also?
To write "all" of the information is quite time consuming, and can cover
many printed pages. I wouldn't try to cover everything in a response
(especially since it has been covered thusly countless times before)!
Frankly, no one has the time to cover it all for each and every post. Nor
should they have to!

Go to a linked page and read what has already been posted
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php. Or, as a previous responder has stated -
use Google to find said answers!

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

 

[R. McCarty]

O.K. Here's a fish -

Pagefile.Sys can be moved anywhere you like. However, doing it
may help or hurt your situation. If you have adequate memory, then
the Pagefile is not going to be used very much - Unless you have a
large number of applications running simultaneously.

Putting it on a secondary partition on the same drive as the System
partition isn't going to help. The heads will have to seek further into
the drive to write/retrieve any pages. If you have a second physical
disk drive then placing it there helps if the drive isn't on the same IDE
controller.This assumes the overall DMA speed is equal to the
primary disk.

You can use Perfmon.msc to actually view the Pagefile usage.
The usage count is shown as a % of the total pagefile size.

You should read Alex's article on this at
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

You can only delete the existing pagefile if it's not in use. For this, you
must first disable the pagefile on all system drives, then reboot. On most
systems, this is sufficient and no pagefile will exist. If there still is
one at this point, you should be able to delete it. If you cannot delete it,
please post back with a description of what happens when you try and be sure
to include the exact text of any error messages. Once removed, you can
safely reenable the pagefile and reboot once more.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Art Farmer]

Thanks

I follow your points but at the moment I cannot reduce the size of the file.

I have altered the Registry setting in memory management/REG_MULT_SZ to 5
50 but the file is still 1.2gb.

I am unable to move or delete it in Windows Explorer and run/command does
not show it.

When I have reduced the size, free up space on my C: drive, I can then put
it into the root of another hard disk. I have a raid board so thats not a
problem

Art

 

[Steve N.]

I have set my C:\ drive to a 3.9gb partition which is slowly filling up.
Where possible I have arranged for files and programs to be
installed/stored in other partitions.

Can I move the Pagefile.sys to a partition other than C:\ ??

TIA

Art

3.9 GB is not really a sufficient system partition. Why did you make it
so small? Moving the pagefile to another partition on the same hard
drive will decrease performance. Moving it to a seperate hard drive
*may* increase performance but there are a lot of variables involved.

I think you'd be better off tackling the real problem which is having
too small of a system partition in the 1st place. Back up all your data
and either use a partition resize utility (such as NTFSResize - free, do
a search for it if you're interested) or nuke and re-install using a
larger partition.

Steve

 

[R. McCarty]

To "Temporarily" get free space,

Power Options - Disable Hibernate
Reduce System Restores Reserve, or Turn off ( and loose all
existing Restore Points)
Command Prompt - SFC /Purgecache ( You will have to do a
SFC /Scannow later to re-populate the cache.
Move ServicePackFiles to an alternate partition or backup to a
CD-R.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I can appreciate your points, but I did a search of messages and
could not find an instance of pagefile.sys, paging file or virtual
memory anywhere.

I'm not one of those who has a problem with someone asking a
question here that's been asked before. But I'm puzzled by your
comment above. Where and how did you look? I just went to Google
groups and searched the Microsoft XP newsgroups for
"pagefile.sys," "paging file," and "virtual memory" in turn. I
got *thousands* of hits for each.

 

[John R Weiss]

Can I move the Pagefile.sys to a partition other than C:\ ??

Yes.

Control Panel | System | Advanced | Performance | Advanced | Virtual Memory

Add a paging file to another drive, set the one on C: to "No Paging File,"
and restart.

 

[Art Farmer]

I did a search in messages in this newsgroup.

I have since searched Google and found as you say masses of hits

Art

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I did a search in messages in this newsgroup.

I have since searched Google and found as you say masses of

hits


OK, thanks for the clarification. If you did a search in Outlook
Express, you were only searching whaever messages you had locally
stored on your computer. It's not surprising that you didn't find
anything there. In general, that's not a good place to search.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Go to a linked page and read what has already been posted
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php. Or, as a previous responder has stated -
use Google to find said answers!

Thank you.

A main reason for writing that page was to avoid having to copy material
into answers all the time. And the result is it is getting around 1000
accesses a day. I'm against referring people off to a site to get an
answer that could have been given directly as a 3 line comment, but
extensive discussion does call for outside references. And answers that
direct people to such pages (there are quite a lot available by various
authors) are more useful than 'Google'

BTW I notice that searching Google on the subject is bringing up yet
another of those programs that purport to 'manage memory'. The best
single piece of advice I can give is to avoid such things totally. As
Dorothy Parker once wrote in a review: "This book cannot be put down;
it must be thrown with all possible force"