Page fault Query

[Kyo]

Hi

I have slight concern my system is not performing as well as it should be. I have recently overclocked my rig and doing benchmarking and stability everything seems ok.

However i am finding sometimes sluggish response from opening programs which sometimes results in shutting down others already open (ie Teamspeak) or freezing other programs for small durations. Eventually it does correct itself but it almost like something bottlenecking.

Just checked my pagefaults on task manager but i don't really know what i am looking for. Here a screen of it in order with the highest page fault at the top

You can see explorer.exe is hitting 1.2 million page faults. This seems Windows has exceptionally high number of pagefaults? Does anyone think this is the root of the problem? I haven't done a fresh install of windows for a while so now perhaps it time to reformat?

My current page files with 2 gig memory is (C drive just holds OS) D is programs/games etc) Rest of the drives is pure storage

C---------\
+ Physical HDD1 (no pagefile)
D---------/


F---------\
+ Physical HD 2 (4096 static pagefile)
----------/

H--------\
+ Physical HD 3 (2048 static pagefile)
---------/

Any help would be appreicated.

Thanks

Kyo

 

[NathanE]

A page fault is not really a fault. It simply refers to how many times that process has caused the memory manager to fetch a page of memory from the page file.

It is called a "fault" because it is negative condition for the memory manager to handle. But even still, in any virtual memory based operating system (like Windows) page faults are completely normal and the system could not work with out them.

Explorer is always very heavy on page faults - just because it does so many different things that aren't always needed in memory all at once.

 

[Kyo]

Thanks - that a relief to know. Hmmm not sure why my systems locking up then

 

[Kyo]

Managed to figure it out myself. It seems particular firewall i was using has as security suite that does on access malware check which slowed the programs from responding and hogging system resources. One of the few bad traits that hinders the speed of zonealarm. Turned this off and everything is fine. WIll do manual checks when required.

Was relieved to know it hadn't had anything to do with the overclock Thanks for clearing my query up Nathane

Cheers