Why use pagefile and not memory?

[John Smith]

Why does Windows 2000/XP use the pagefile when you have loads of free
memory? I have a pc with 1 gig of memory and task manager reports about 700
mb of memory free but I notice that I am often using between 200 and 250 mb
of my pagefile - why doesn't Windows use all the hardware memory first?

John.

 

[George Hester]

Because Windows 2000 Requires a pagefile.sys no matter how much phyusical RAM you have installed. The minimum is around 25MB for pagefile.sys.

This article implies pagefile.sys is necessary for a memory dump:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;197379&Product=win2000

But in fact it is necessary to use all Windows operating systems since Windows 3.0.

 

[John Smith]

Thanks.


Because Windows 2000 Requires a pagefile.sys no matter how much phyusical
RAM you have installed. The minimum is around 25MB for pagefile.sys.

This article implies pagefile.sys is necessary for a memory dump:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;197379&Product=win2000

But in fact it is necessary to use all Windows operating systems since
Windows 3.0.