questions about the page file

[LMHmedchem]

Yesterday I restored my system from an image and then put in some new ram. I was running the windows version of memtest and looking at the resources in the task manager when I noticed something odd. There was a good deal of pagefile usage, but I didn't actually have a page file at that point in time. I always remove the pagefile from my system before I make an image so that the image is smaller. I had forgotten to add a pagefile back before I started memtest.

In short, how is the system paging without a pagfile? Does it make one on its own if it needs one? I know that virtual memory is a continuous space of hardware RAM space and disk file space, so in this case is that task manager showing data that has been paged to hardware RAM?

I added a 4GB page file while memtest was running and the pagefile size in the task manager when from 2GB to 4GB. The question is where did the original 2GB come from in the first place?

LMHmedchem

[~Dad]

I'm glad you asked that! It never made sense to me when Task Master would show a dynamic Page File and Comit Charge while I could demonstrate that I was using only a fraction of my RAM. Who needed a PF? I always meant to look it up but never did 'til now. This is pretty simplistic but so is my understanding of memory usage period. It's probably not a sufficient answer for you but it did answer mine.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_th...s_Task_Manager

[PommieB]

Windows creates it's own dynamic page file, you can change this to a permanent page file, you wouldn't need to remove it. A dynamic page file varies in size, a permanent page file is a size that is set manually on the C: drive and is set size, rather than a variable size.

[~Dad]

I've always thought of the PF as an overflow or backup resource for when the demand for memory was in excess of actual memory available. It never made sense that I had a PF when I had unused memory. If I have 8Gs of memory and a game or app takes only a fraction of that, why was my HDD involved at all? Why did my PF increase? So it wasn't that simple? This is just how Windows divvys up memory?

[PommieB]

The page file was created in the day's when people used 512mb or less of memory, there's little need for a dynamic page file with 4gb + of memory, the first thing you did with Xp after installing was change from dynamic to permanent, you usually set the file at half the amount of your memory, the more memory the less need for a large page file, a lot of people run without the Page file or reduce it to a insignificant figure like 512mb and forget about it.