Paging File

[cluberti]

To all - this has been discussed to death, and there's no "right" answer unless you want to do a memory dump. However, Windows does have a portion of kernel memory that, if needed, can be paged out to disk in the pagefile. If the pagefile doesn't exist, it'll either a. create it and page out the kernel, or b. fail to create it (timing issue) and you'll bugcheck.

If you've got 1GB of RAM or larger, you won't hurt Windows by not running a paging file - it won't help much, but it certainly won't hurt in most situations. I suggest all purchase and read "Windows Internals 4th Edition" (http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/6710.asp), then make informed determinations for yourself.

[Zxian]

cluberti's post is what I was talking about. And like he said - you probably won't notice the difference. If you come across the situation where you do need a pagefile, then you will notice the performance hit a lot.

RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile, and all that stuff is also a good read for some underlying information about the virtual memory system in XP.