XP Tweak Disable Page File
If your computer has 1 GB of RAM or more, disabling the page file can speed up XP by allowing for faster memory management and access. The page file acts as virtual memory on your computer. Basically once the physical RAM is used up, Windows uses the hard drive for additional memory. Systems with under 1GB should not use this tweak … I am using 1 GB as a base guideline depending on your system and applications running results will vary.
Right click on My Computer \ Properties and click on the Advanced tab. Under performance click the settings button.
Now in the Performance Options window click the Advanced tab and under Virtual Memory click on the Change button.
Now in the Virtual Memory window click on No paging file then hit the Set button. You will then be prompted to reboot your computer for this tweak to take effect.
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The method here is a fairly simple one. However, like many MS programs, the result is not always what you would expect when simply asking the system to do something.
See the link below (png screenshot, hosted courtesy of ImageShack):
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/2964/pagefilebitcheznu3.png
You'll notice that my (Windows XP skinned to look like Vista. . .) screen looks just like yours—but Task Manager is still reporting that it's using some ~500mb of pagefile space. What is this?
Contrary to popular opinion, virtual memory is not simply a slow extention to physical memory, and best disabled if at all possible. Virtual memory is a system that combines physical RAM and disk storage in such a way that gives the advantages of both and minimizes their disadvantages. This is done is such a way as to be completely transparent to applications.
Some popular misconceptions.
1. The pagefile is virtual memory. Not only is this incorrect but it leads to further misconceptions. The pagefile is only a part of virtual memory.
2. Disabling the pagefile disables virtual memory. Virtual memory can not be disabled in any modern operating system. In Windows, applications use it exclusively, always, no exceptions.
3. Virtual memory is slow. When an application accesses memory it is accessing physical RAM, only not directly. Memory is accessed through the memory management hardware in the CPU. The data and code an application uses may be stored in program files, the pagefile, or RAM. When accessed the data is brought into RAM, where is is retained for as long as possible. Only when RAM is needed for other purposes the data be removed from physical memory.
The pagefile actually enhances performance. It is used to store rarely used data, thus leaving more RAM available for more important uses. Without a pagfile this data must remain in RAM, no matter how rarely used it might be. This will not disable paging as program code, DLL's etc., do not go to the pagefile. They are simply reloaded from the original file. Disabling the pagefile unbalances the memory management system and impaires performance. There may be cases when disabling the pagefile will give the perception of improved performance but they are relatively rare.
My best recommendations for managing the pagefile: Keep it on system managed. This applies to both beginners and very advanced users. Windows designers understand virtual memory better than you do. Let the sytem work the way it was designed.
Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA
Well, I guess that tells us where the bear crapped in the buckwheat. Nice to know that Big Brother is watching us.
"Windows designers understand virtual memory better than you do. Let the sytem work the way it was designed."
The Gates credo in a nutshell. The problem is that we are all trying to make our systems work better than the mediocrity with which Windows was designed.
That said, I would like to offer my compliments to Windows XP development. It finally brought to fruition the promise originally offered by Windows 95. To follow such a paragon of success with a bloated, inefficient, and unecessarily complex product like Vista is a disgraceful mistake of colossal proportions. Two windows just to dial up my ISP. Sheesh! Maximum key repeat slower than I can do it manually. Sheesh! Quicksand around every corner drowning me in warm molasses. Finally got the dll's I needed to use my legacy microsoft games instead of the flashy, slower versions in Vista. Vista is somewhat better after the recent updates, but it is still a pig.
@Spacegold: If by "Big Brother" you mean the person in the above post then you should know that person is just a "Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer" not a Microsoft employee so your comment doesn't make sense.
> "Two windows just to dial up my ISP."
I'm not sure what you mean by that. It still seems to be one Window to me, I can just click Connect To on the Start Menu, click Connect and it's done.
No he's a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA)
Stumbled here trying to find info on 64 bit vista/win7systems with 4GB of ram or more, and if DisablePagingExecutive should or shouldn't be used if you do. It seems somewhat backward that system managed always simply sets the currently allocated page file to greater than your system ram, that's a huge chunk on a 4 or 8GB system where you're not going to want to page out for example a 5GB data set.
"but Task Manager is still reporting that it's using some ~500mb of pagefile space. What is this?"
That's Windows creating a dynamic pagefile. It will ignore your manual settings if those settings are 0 or anything less than what Windows needs.
For example, about 10 years ago someone posted at Anand's that some game (I believe it was the original UT) was crashing within minutes of playing. Once he re-enabled his swap file, the crashing disappeared.
Far too many people thought that they could increase performance by disabling the swap file. In theory, this should work. But in actual practice, this "tweak" led to massive system instability: both Win9x and apps/games relied on the existence of the swap file.
Microsoft learned from this mistake. So the pagefile was designed to always exist, and at the amount needed, regardless of manual settings. If you think you see a perf increase after "disabling" the page file, rest assured that it's only an illusion…because the pagefile is still there. And don't believe that forcing a small pagefile will work and place more of the load on the RAM: if the pagefile is too small, Windows will dynamically make it larger.
For the majority, allowing Windows to control the pagefile is best practice.
For power users looking for another 5% bump, a superior tweak is to make the pagefile permanent and at twice the amount of system memory installed (the old 1.5x recommendation is only best for 3.1 and Win9x…on NT systems, 2x is optimal).
For another boost, if you have a second hard drive that is on its own channel (i.e. the two drives do not share a single cable, such as both are SATA drives), you can move your permanent pagefile to that second hard drive, and set the primary drive to 0. This reduces the workload of the heads on the primary drive, because it's no longer reading/writing to the pagefile, which gives another couple of percentage points boost in perf. Note that the second drive should be as fast (or faster) than the primary drive to see optimal perf increase.
A flavor of Linux called Damn Small Linux can run FULLY in RAM (requires a minimum of 128MB of RAM). It doesn't even have to be installed onto the hard-drive, it can load it's self into RAM from a liveCD. It's a poor man's version of having an OS installed on a solid-state drive. Just FYI.
Also, there are ways to "slim down" XP to run on much less RAM. This requires a fresh re-installation of XP though.
Really, if you want more speed, you're going to have to upgrade to a faster hard-drive (or newer computer). If money is no option, go for an Intel solid-state drive.
> If money is no option, go for an Intel solid-state drive.
Ah, but the slow writes and limited cycles of an SSD are big negatives for a paging file. So this leads you back to… disabling the page file!
My experience has been that disabling it does cause problems with a few apps, and will cause things to fail if you use too much memory. If you can deal with these issues, it does seem to provide a performance benefit, especially on PCs with slow hard drives.
I'm more in favor of using a small paging file.