Question about Windows XP Page File

I was looking at this website http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1494&page=2 and was wondering if I should select "No paging file" or not... Is there anything I should consider before doing anything to the page file settings?

Thanks,

Gracie

 

Hi Gracie,

While your computer won't explode by setting it to No paging file, I would leave it on system managed size. Windows XP handles the page file much better than older versions of windows. Programs assume there will be 4 Gigabytes of memory available even though they may not use it all. If this memory is not available in the RAM, then it will look to store it on the hard drive (in the page file). If there is no page file and you run a lot of programs or a few programs that hog a lot of memory, then you may run into problems.

Here is a very good article about it that Notok provided the link to:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

 

Hi All,

I seem to remember, the old rule of thumb was 1.5 times the amount of physical RAM you have. Allowing windows to manage the pagefile, fragmentation occurs, therefore you set the pagefile's initial & max. size to the same value.

Take care
rico

 

scroll down to :

on that article

 

Thanks everyone for the replys. All the information was useful .

Gracie

 

That's obsolete.

See http://www.standards.com/index.html?PageFileUsageMonitor

 

Hi Guys,

I think if windows manages the page file: initial size is 1.5 & max size 3 times. So why not let windows manage its pagefile?

Thanks
rico

 

Because that wastes space and increases fragmentation.