Robert Newell said:
No matter how small the paging file maximum size is set,
including zero (No paging file), the Task Manager
Performance tab always shows the same behavior (PF Usage
adjusts to the application being run). Is there any way to
control (or disable) paging to virtual memory?
Restricting the page file is one very good way to effectively reduce
the overall performance of a computer.
Windows is designed to operate with a paging file and it must be
present and of sufficient size to suit its requirements.
The critical factor with Windows and the paging file is to have
sufficient RAM so as to eliminate or at least greatly reduce the need
to actually move memory pages from RAM to the paging file. However
there is no readily available reporting tool in Windows that shows
this specific information.
The picture is further muddied by two facts that are not well
understood:
1. In Windows the term Virtual Memory actually means the total of all
memory space available to Windows, which is the sum of the physical
RAM plus the paging file.
2. The memory manager must, by definition, provide sufficient address
space either in RAM or in the paging file to meet the accumulated
total of all memory allocation requests that have been issued by
loaded Windows components, active application programs, and open user
data files. These memory allocation requests are typically
overstated, sometimes by a significant amount. So Windows will
allocate RAM only to those portions of the requests that are actually
being used and will use space in the paging file for the unused
portion. Note that doing this involves no disk activity - just
entries in the internal paging table maintained by the CPU. And if
some of the unused request should subsequently be used then that
portion is remapped to an available location in RAM. The end result
of this is that there can be a fairly substantial requirement for
paging file space to meet these unused requests even though there may
also be physical RAM not yet allocated. This is healthy and
efficient.
As I said previously, the critical factor in memory management is the
actual moving of active memory pages from RAM to the paging file so
that RAM can be used for other currently more important purposes. You
can download a free utility for reporting this from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks
If that utility reports more than 50 mb of actual usage on a regular
basis then that is indicative of fairly heavy paging in and out of
active memory pages and therefore more RAM would result in improved
performance.
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."
