WTF Windows pagefile? Why do you not go where I tell you?

manveruppd

manveruppd

manveruppd

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I'm on XP32 SP3 and I've set up a pagefile on a different physical drive to where I keep my OS installation, yet Windows still insists on keeping a copy of pagefile.sys 3.5GB in size on the same partition that it's sitting on!

I double- and triple-checked that that partition is set to "no paging file" in the System applet, and I experimented with both fixed-sized pagefiles and system-managed ones on the other drive, yet the other-drive pagefile.sys never exceeds 1.8GB, which suggests to me that the OS-partition copy is getting used more.

I tried to unlock and delete pagefile.sys from my OS partition, and the computer predictably BSOD'ed. I can't figure out why this is happening and how I can stop it!
 
From memory, XP needs a pagefile on the system drive, a lot of programs will not function without it (and Windows throws a hissy fit and creates one anyway!)

Set it at a minimum fixed size of 128Mb and all should be fine
 
You have to first click no page file on the c: drive and click set, then set the page file on the other drive, each drive page file is set individually, i think.

Just set system managed on a secondary drive should be fine.
 
That didn't work quite as I expected, I set the pagefile on the other drive as 10GB (which you'd think would be ample!), dropped the pagefile on the system partition to 128MB, but on reboot I got the "virtual memory too low" error message! In fact, the system applet reports total paging file for all drives as 128MB, even though when I open the Virtual Memory applet I still see the 10GB allocated on my E:\ drive!

Very bizarre! I'm starting to wonder if XP has an issue with SATA drives, or if there's some kind of problem with my other drive...
 
Why do people keep messing around with the Pagefile? Do you not think Microsoft know where it should be and keep it there for a reason?
 
Well I read from several authoritative sources that to optimize your system's performance it's best for the pagefile to be on a different physical drive than the OS.
 
manveruppd said:
Well I read from several authoritative sources that to optimize your system's performance it's best for the pagefile to be on a different physical drive than the OS.
Click to expand...
If you have more than one physical drive, it's theoretically best to have a pagefile on each one, as Windows is smart enough to prioritise the drive which is least busy with competing I/O requests.

I doubt if it's anything you'd ever notice in normal use though, unless your system is seriously undernourished with RAM, which is unlikely these days.
 
philtorrens said:
Why do people keep messing around with the Pagefile? Do you not think Microsoft know where it should be and keep it there for a reason?
Click to expand...

Microsoft also set your computer to automatically restart after installing updates which they also default to automatic install which can cripple the system, so it's not saying much.
 
If you want to gain a very slight improvement in pagefile performance, just set you pagefile to a FIXED size that is double your ram, rather than let Windows dynamically constantly change the size of it.
Remember the pagefile is only used when you fill up your ram. In the olden days it was more of an issue but not so much now with 4, 8 and 12Gb systems. Unless you are dealing with 10Gb PSD or 3D files?
 
manveruppd said:
Very bizarre! I'm starting to wonder if XP has an issue with SATA drives, or if there's some kind of problem with my other drive...
Click to expand...
well, depending on the configuration of your system this may well be a problem. are your SATA drives attached to a software RAID controller (even if they aren't RAIDed)? or is your motherboard quite old? when windows starts to boot it needs the page file immediately, and if the "assigned" drive hasn't been initialised yet, which it wouldn't if it needs software-drivers or software initialisation, then windows has no choice but to put the page file in the boot drive.
for example, windows will happily let you set a USB HDD to have the page file but it will never actually be used because USB devices are only initialised after windows has booted.

TheJackal said:
If you want to gain a very slight improvement in pagefile performance, just set you pagefile to a FIXED size that is double your ram, rather than let Windows dynamically constantly change the size of it.
Click to expand...
This only reduces fragmentation, which is hardly a colossal performance issue these days. :p

TheJackal said:
Remember the pagefile is only used when you fill up your ram. In the olden days it was more of an issue but not so much now with 4, 8 and 12Gb systems. Unless you are dealing with 10Gb PSD or 3D files?
Click to expand...
Rubbish. the Page file is used all the time to store things "in memory" that are not actively being processed. when you alt tab out of an application which then stops running, some of hat applications data will be "paged" out of main memory and into the pagefile.
 
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i'm sorry if i come across as blunt matey, i had actually just woken up :)
I hear a lot of misinformation about the Pagefile and the misinformation spreads quite a lot. :(
 
Aod said:
well, depending on the configuration of your system this may well be a problem. are your SATA drives attached to a software RAID controller (even if they aren't RAIDed)? or is your motherboard quite old? when windows starts to boot it needs the page file immediately, and if the "assigned" drive hasn't been initialised yet, which it wouldn't if it needs software-drivers or software initialisation, then windows has no choice but to put the page file in the boot drive.
for example, windows will happily let you set a USB HDD to have the page file but it will never actually be used because USB devices are only initialised after windows has booted.
Click to expand...
Right ok, that's some interesting info. The answer is, erm, probably!
I'm on a Gigabyte P35-DS3R. It's got 6 yellow SATA ports, which I understand are natively supported by the chipset, and 2 purple ports, which are apparently controlled by the Intel ICH8 chip next to them. I've got both HDDs hooked up to the yellow ones, since the purple ones weren't working at all until I installed the motherboard drivers and I needed a hard disk to install windows on. I'm sure they'd work fine now if I switched the HDDs to the purple ones, so I'll try that and see if it fixes the issue. And yes, I've got the onboard IDE/SATA controller set to IDE in the BIOS. If the issue is that Windows can't see the other drive's swapfile on bootup though then it won't be fixed by switching ports because the yellow ones that I've got them hooked into are initialised during POST, so Windows can certainly see them. I'll try anyway though.

I should note that the other drive's pagefile is STILL 1.8GBs, even though I've got it set to a fixed size of 10GB in System! (I also tried setting it to system managed, made no difference) So apparently Windows isn't using it AT ALL, not even after bootup!

And for everyone wondering why I bother, Vista and 7 use RAM much more aggressively, XP prefers putting things on the pagefile so there's a lot more disk-thrashing whenever I task-switch etc. :) Plus I'm still on the 32-bit version so I only have 3.5GBs of RAM effectively... :p I do plan to upgrade to something less ancient, I just won't have the time to reinstall Windows until September and I need to make it fast enough to be tolerable until then!
 
Having just been playing with this program eBoostr - adds something similar to Readyboost for Vista/Win7, seems to speed things up nicely on the Mrs' netbook (30 seconds to load OneNote, down to 3 ain't bad)

They do a 15-day trial, so maybe worth a punt for you?
 
That's a clever little program that, thanks! But I'm more concerned about fixing my current problem cause it seems to indicate some kind of a serious problem, either with my drives or with my Windows installation. Deleted the USN journal and it had no effect, haven't gotten round to swapping round SATA ports yet though. Will report back when I do.
 
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