Aegis Posted October 14, 2006 Share Posted October 14, 2006 System has 2GB of RAM and no page file. For those of you who have trouble interpreting the graph, as the program (Advanced Port Scanner) approached 2GB, it simply crashed and returned system memory usage to normal levels. Hope this disproves the theory that a page file is absolutely needed for system operations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allen2 Posted October 14, 2006 Share Posted October 14, 2006 Of course but some programs require a page file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aegis Posted October 14, 2006 Author Share Posted October 14, 2006 Have yet to encounter one that does. Can you please give some examples? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarun Posted October 14, 2006 Share Posted October 14, 2006 Photoshop and many graphic editing applications. Windows even performs better with the page file.You should also read about Windows Memory Management. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aegis Posted October 14, 2006 Author Share Posted October 14, 2006 (edited) Photoshop relies on its own swap file, not the Windows one. I have used it for more than a year without a page file with no problems.Performance also degrades with a page file. Don't remember how to get it back again, but there's a status indicator in Photoshop that shows your performance level. Ideally it should stay at 100%, but once the Photoshop swap file is in use, the performance level drops. The more swapped memory you use, the lower the performance level. I'm not saying a page file is bad though. Windows is usually intelligent enough to page out only when necessary. But sometimes it pages out memory even when you have plenty left. I'm sure we've all had those moments where we minimize an application, and when we open it again, the disk starts rattling a bit before the application finally reappears. Even if that's not a problem, if you have enough RAM to not need a page file, then why waste the disk space? Edited October 14, 2006 by Aegis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarun Posted October 14, 2006 Share Posted October 14, 2006 In the days where we have 100GB+ hard drives, what does wasting disk space matter? It doesn't. :\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted October 14, 2006 Share Posted October 14, 2006 Aegis, that's not a good example of an application requiring a paging file - 2GB is the process limit, and if a process leaks or does a "land grab" and reaches the utilization of it's 2GB allocation, it will likely crash. This is not an indication of the need for a paging file, but an indication that the application will crash if it requests address space beyond it's 2GB limit (and why does it need 2GB in the first place? That's either a VERY hungry application, or it's poorly written and leaks all over the place). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LLXX Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 If there's no page file then why does it show 276MB under "PF usage"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarun Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 If there's no page file then why does it show 276MB under "PF usage"?Read about Windows Memory Management and find out why. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bledd Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 you cannot fully turn off pagefile in xp, as you americans say "period" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda43 Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 One of the biggest selling points of Windows, years ago, was the Virtual Memory feature, where windows would create virtual RAM out of hard drive space when it was needed.We all thought that was really cool at the time.Many software vendors over the years have taken advantage of that ol' Swapfile to write programs that they knew were bigger than most peoples RAM. That works pretty well till someone who thinks they are smarter than the engineers at MS decides to shut off the Pagefile.Even so, programs run much slower from the HD than they do from real RAM.I'm a darn'd good tech and have been for over 40 years.I've even written a few programs over the years, but,I'm not a windows programmer, so......I just leave the ol' Swapfile/Pagefile alone and windowshandles it perfectly, always giving me all the virtual memorythat my programs want. As long as I've got space left on myhard drive, I've got virtual memory left.And, I've got a really big SATA hard drive, so.......Ain't that cool? But, there's always an exception to every rule. Right?When I'm doing a Ghost backup of C:, I do delete the pagefile to save space in my Ghost backup file.Currently, that's running about 1.5gigs.(the size of my pagefile).No big deal though, as soon as I boot up in Windows XP, the OS sees that the pagefile is missing and just creates a new one. NO Foul! And, once again, there's joy in mudville. As old Hannibal Hayes used to say, "I love it when a plan comes together" Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?Andromeda43 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MGadAllah Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 If a one used any tool to defrage the page file, will it help a little bit!?Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarun Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 PageDefrag by SysInternals will help greatly. Also use Power Defragmenter GUI paired with Contig.exe and make use of the PowerMode Defrag. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MGadAllah Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 PageDefrag by SysInternals will help greatly. Also use Power Defragmenter GUI paired with Contig.exe and make use of the PowerMode Defrag. I'm currently using disk keeper 10, Thanks for the tool name, any special setting!? and does disk keeper is an example of what you are talking about saying: use Power Defragmenter GUI paired with Contig.exe and make use of the PowerMode Defrag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarun Posted October 15, 2006 Share Posted October 15, 2006 PageDefrag: Just tell it to defrag all the files on reboot.PowerDefrag with Contig. Simply select PowerMode File Defragmentation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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