WinPE, memory and pagefile

[komplikator]

Hi, all!

I have a question regarding paging file in WinPE, and I cannot find anything relevant about it on the net.

Does a paging file exist in WinPE? Where is it located? Where is it located if WinPE is on a CD-ROM?

If it doesn't exist, does that mean that apps only have the physical ram available for use?

This is urgent, please advise asap.

regards!

[Tripredacus]

WinPE does not run like a regular operating system. By default it runs from a ramdisk. You can set it to not use a ramdisk if you want, but specific answers won't come to you until you tell us what WinPE you are using.

[jaclaz]

Disambiguation (if needed)

1. PE 1,x XP based
   
2. PE 2.x Vista based
   
3. PE 3.x Windows 7 based
   

For #1, besides original MS WinPE, there are two available builder, Bart's PE Builder and Winbuilder.

For #2 and #3 besides original MS WinPE, there is only one available builder, Winbuilder.

jaclaz

[komplikator]

Disambiguation (if needed)

1. PE 1,x XP based
   
2. PE 2.x Vista based
   
3. PE 3.x Windows 7 based
   

For #1, besides original MS WinPE, there are two available builder, Bart's PE Builder and Winbuilder.

For #2 and #3 besides original MS WinPE, there is only one available builder, Winbuilder.

jaclaz

Well, I would use WinPE 3.0.

Ok, so we got that figured out - WinPE loads into a ramdisk.

Therefore, does it have a pagefile? Where's the logic after that?

Why would it have a pagefile on ramdisk - using up ram for purposes of ram?

EDIT: Besides, recommended size of the pagefile is 1.5 times the amount of physical ram.

That's kinda impossible.

So my question remains - does WinPE create and use a pagefile?

Edited April 7, 2010 by komplikator

[cluberti]

No, it does not. It has scratch space for writing "to disk", but it's not intended as a paging file. Windows PE runs from a RAMdisk (unless you configure it otherwise), and is meant for deployment and recovery only, not a whole OS - hence, no paging file.

[komplikator]

Ok, great!

Thanx a lot!

Just to elaborate - if I was to create an app that would run in WinPE and which would malloc approx. all of the available memory, all of the data would actually be in memory - it wouldn't be paged onto any kind of a disk.

[Tripredacus]

While the host requirements for WinPE 3.0 x64 is 512MB RAM, running applications in it may not function unless you have 1GB RAM. WinPE 3.0 x86 works fine with a minimum of 512MB.