Prevent Paging Use

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark Randall
  • Start date Start date
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Mark Randall

Hi,

After a few hours of research, I am unable to find a decent solution for the
following situation I have:

I have 768 MB of 400Mhz RAM, but a reasonably slow HDD, I would like to make
sure Windows uses the majority of this RAM before it decides to go
destroying my hard disk using the paging file.

I however do not want to be left without virtual memory in extreeme cases,
as I have a 1GB paging file at the moment 'just in case'. Would there be any
settings that would ensure windows uses the physical RAM foremost, paging
file second as I appear to have 3 or 4 hundred MB of physical RAM left and
400MB of paging used.

Any ideas or configs would be appreciated.
 
Read the following:

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

[Courtesy of Alex Nichol, MS-MVP]

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxp/choose.mspx

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| Hi,
|
| After a few hours of research, I am unable to find a decent solution for the
| following situation I have:
|
| I have 768 MB of 400Mhz RAM, but a reasonably slow HDD, I would like to make
| sure Windows uses the majority of this RAM before it decides to go
| destroying my hard disk using the paging file.
|
| I however do not want to be left without virtual memory in extreeme cases,
| as I have a 1GB paging file at the moment 'just in case'. Would there be any
| settings that would ensure windows uses the physical RAM foremost, paging
| file second as I appear to have 3 or 4 hundred MB of physical RAM left and
| 400MB of paging used.
|
| Any ideas or configs would be appreciated.
|
| --
| - Mark Randall
 
You don't need to do anything. You can't turn off paging. You can only make it slower.
 
So I see,

Which is unfortunate as I have had a few hundred thosuand page faults since
I booted 24 minutes ago, and I have 406MB of physical memory left... It
would seem that Windows isnt making best use of its virtual memory
allocation with that # of faults.

Also, for some reason, TaskMan is showing 303 MB of paging file used. I
presume I may have to do something to walk each threads heap to find out
why.

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

"David Candy" <.> wrote in message
You don't need to do anything. You can't turn off paging. You can only make
it slower.
 
It's not so don't worry about it. That 406Mb is being used - windows will just stop using it if needed.
Each process opened will add to the page file used. Turn off your pagefile and watch page file used increase. Systeminfo will tell you the amount of your paging file used. Task Man doesn't - it tells you reserved memory in the PF and EXE and DLL.
 
Tis indeed strange how the CRT decides to allocate it.

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

"David Candy" <.> wrote in message
It's not so don't worry about it. That 406Mb is being used - windows will
just stop using it if needed.
Each process opened will add to the page file used. Turn off your pagefile
and watch page file used increase. Systeminfo will tell you the amount of
your paging file used. Task Man doesn't - it tells you reserved memory in
the PF and EXE and DLL.
 
If you add your system cache and available memory it normally exceeds physical memory. That should give you the hint. Most of your available memory is system cache. And as you have a slow hard drive that is important to you. Windows constantly takes memory away from programs to see if a PF is generated. If it is it gives it back. If it isn't then it gives it to somethinfg that does need it.

Even the MS programmers don't understand the fine detail of memory management (except for the memory management team).
 
Cheers David,

Much appreciated, likewise for Carey.

*dissapears back off into vc.language*

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

"David Candy" <.> wrote in message
If you add your system cache and available memory it normally exceeds
physical memory. That should give you the hint. Most of your available
memory is system cache. And as you have a slow hard drive that is important
to you. Windows constantly takes memory away from programs to see if a PF is
generated. If it is it gives it back. If it isn't then it gives it to
somethinfg that does need it.

Even the MS programmers don't understand the fine detail of memory
management (except for the memory management team).
 
So I see,

Which is unfortunate as I have had a few hundred thosuand page faults since
I booted 24 minutes ago, and I have 406MB of physical memory left... It
would seem that Windows isnt making best use of its virtual memory
allocation with that # of faults.

Also, for some reason, TaskMan is showing 303 MB of paging file used. I
presume I may have to do something to walk each threads heap to find out
why.
Click to expand...


There are hard page faults and soft page faults. A hard fault means
the page needs to be read from disk, a soft fault takes a few
microseconds but does no I/O. d

Page faults are normal. The "hundreds of thousands" of page faults you
see may be normal for system startup. Start counting after the system
is up and stable.

Page faults generally happen when you switch between applications.

Look at the perfmon tool instead of taskman. It can give you lots more
detail. I suggest you monitor counters for pagefile reads/writes.
 
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