Running Windows without a paging file


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i ran without a page file and than started playing Warcraft 3 and the game went down several times saying i had not enough memory or something, as soon as i put a page file on i had no more probs with that game

a lot more can be said about page file but try to google it

The advantage of having NO pagefile would be that you are certain that nothing that would normally be in RAM (because it is insanely fast read/write) would ever be read from your HD making everything run slower. The ONE problem with this? You need A LOT of RAM. Because if at ANY ONE TIME something suddenly needs even 1 byte more RAM than you have on your system, and nothing can be terminated to free more RAM, you have absolutely no pagefile, your computer will crash, or at the very least, the program wil crash.

If you have around a GB of RAM, you do not need a pagefile, BUT, even then, if you edit large video clips and preview them in RAM, or if you edit large images in programs such as Photoshop, then even with insane amounts of RAM, it gets used up and you need a pagefile. If none of these applies to you, and you have 512MB+ RAM, you could probably disable virtual memory/pagefile. But normally your pagefile is only written to when you are running LOW on RAM, not out of it. Windows will use the pagefile when you are low, not fully out of RAM. So if you have enough RAM, you probably would not normally need to disable the pagefile anyway...

Haha, the short answer? Don't disable the virtual memory/pagefile. Your computer will crash excessively.

  Quote
Originally posted by Baud

Thanks for your answer, use_imagination.

I thought XP would care for creating a page file when physical RAM was exhausted, but reading you, it doesn't look to be the case.

You're right... Windows use the page file when the memory is exhausted, and games take a loooot of memory... ;)

If you use a page file, setup the file to a fixed size, is better for performance, because Windows don't waste time shrinking and stretching the file accordingly to needs.

I have 512 MB RAM and a fixed 256 MB page file (just in case ;) ) in the second HD, to split the work between the reading files in the main HD and the virtual memory management if needed.

Hope this helps... :D

  Quote
Originally posted by xStainDx

windows will use VM no matter if your memory is depleted or if your memory is not. all programs need VM. its just how things work. i disagree with running w/o a page file.

In fact, I was running a lot of time without a page file just to do the "eXPerience" (:D)... never a problem with normal tasks. Just when I start a "memory hungry" application like photo or image programs or games, the message "not enough memory" appears, not in every case, sometimes.

In the days of Win9x you could, with a little technical know-how, put the Windows pagefile on a RAM drive, assuming of course you actually had enough RAM. This has a number of advantages. Firstly, RAM is horrendously fast so speed would be improved dramatically. Secondly, it solves the problem of programs complaining of no pagefile.

But now with NT-based OS's being mainstream, this has become more difficult. It is possible to load a RAM drive driver before the GUI starts, but its currently impossible to load the RAM drive driver before the kernel creates the pagefile. To be able to tell Windows to use a RAM drive for the pagefile, the drive has to exist before the kernel starts to load, which is impossible with NT/2K/XP.

  Quote
Originally posted by ZeroSeven

In the days of Win9x you could, with a little technical know-how, put the Windows pagefile on a RAM drive, assuming of course you actually had enough RAM. This has a number of advantages. Firstly, RAM is horrendously fast so speed would be improved dramatically. Secondly, it solves the problem of programs complaining of no pagefile.

I know some ppl doing that, but is pointless: Wasting memory to build virtual memory...??? Illogical... :D

And I never saw a program "complaining" about pagefile, just complaining about "not enough memory".

I did run Win9x too without a pagefile... no problems using simple applications or office applications.... ;)

  Quote
Originally posted by ZeroSeven

But now with NT-based OS's being mainstream, this has become more difficult. It is possible to load a RAM drive driver before the GUI starts, but its currently impossible to load the RAM drive driver before the kernel creates the pagefile. To be able to tell Windows to use a RAM drive for the pagefile, the drive has to exist before the kernel starts to load, which is impossible with NT/2K/XP.

There are (VxD or SYS, can't remember) drivers around to create RAM disks to be used in NT kernel OS'es... ;)

Here's a little trick I use...

Setup a RAM drive with about 128-256MB (standard size of a page file) then set your page file to that RAM drive. It work s perfectly, because technically there's a page file, but its stored on in your RAM.

Note: Only use this if you have 512MB+ RAM!!!

On NT-based OS's you CANNOT create a ramdrive BEFORE the pagefile is created, thus using a ramdrive for the pagefile is impossible on NT-based OS's. On 9x however, you can load the Ramdrive through config.sys which loads before Windows, so the pagefile can be created on the ramdrive.

As a previous poster suggested, this should only be done if you have at least 512mb RAM, if not more.

  Quote
Originally posted by ZeroSeven

On NT-based OS's you CANNOT create a ramdrive BEFORE the pagefile is created, thus using a ramdrive for the pagefile is impossible on NT-based OS's.

There is a little confussion here:

I never said to put the pagefile in the RAM drive... ;)

I don't know how JZolloXP did that... Again, I think is pointless, using RAM to simulate RAM...??? :D

Its not totally pointless. In fact it has more of a point to it than disabling the pagefile altogether. If you disable the pagefile, then you will have problems with some apps/games, regardless of how much RAM you may have on the system. If you use a ramdrive for the pagefile (which is what my original post was about), not only will it speed up the system but it will also solve the problem of apps/games not liking the fact there is no pagefile. But its only viable if you have enough RAM, there is little point doing it with a system that has less than 512mb.

The Windows pagefile is always used, regardless of the amount of RAM available on the system, so there will always be a little bit of slowdown because of this. Putting the pagefile on a ramdrive solves this. But with todays systems, there isnt really much point in either disabling the pagefile or putting it on a RAM drive. Hard drives are getting faster all the time, and systems with a lot of RAM wont see much slowdown at all really.

I've got 768 Mb of RAM...pagefile set to 50 Mb...I play a lot of games and never had any problems with stuff crashing.

I'll try setting it to even lower....maybe 10 Mb or something....let's see what happens.

A lot of games make their own pagefile by the way...for example Neverwinter Nights eats up about 500 Mb...

Running without a pagefile is a really bad idea. No ifs or buts about it. Never mind all the rhetoric of "it works" or "I was able to do all basic tasks". Windows NT/2K/XP without a pagefile is like a computer without a harddrive. Yes you can run explorer, but you pay a huge price. And as many of you have pointed out, games and real apps are likely to crash!

What is the price? Performance. Windows invisibly swaps memory when there are multiple applications running - that will happen whether you have 128Mb or 1Gb. Say for example you are running warcraft III. We all know it is a hog for memory. If windows has a pagefile, it can swap all the RAM used by the backgrounds apps, including some of the system services themselves, and then allocate large contiguous spaces of physical RAM to Warcraft. That makes Warcraft extremely happy because it can write enormous chuncks of data to RAM without a slowdown. If you do not have a pagefile, chances are that your the RAM usage of the many processes running on your machine are breaking up your physical RAM into small chunks, making the Operating System work harder to store large amounts of data in RAM. That will result in unacceptable performance, and yes you will see the infamous "Your computer is running low on virtual memory" - whether you have 2Mb or 200Mb of physical RAM available.

lol... i run it all the time without a pagefile when i had more than 512MB of ram and it ran fine. I don't think it's needed if you have more than 512 but for some applications like CAD stuff and all that would need it... Adobe Photoshop too....

  Quote
Originally posted by freeza

i have 512 mb and i have my pagefile set at 128 MB, no problems at all so far ;D

Yes but have you tried letting the OS decide for itself and then compare the performance? By limiting your Pagefile size like so, the OS is not able to freely swap its RAM to disk to give priority to other applications. If your system is fast enough, or if you do not burst to 400Mb usage levels, then you should be fine, but try running a process (or set of processes) that uses up 80% plus of physical RAM and your system would definitely run better with a larger page file.

Do as you will though....if it works for you, then who are we to tell you you are wrong.

hehehe I have 512 megs of ram and a 1.5 gig swap file and at times windows xp pops up telling me that it needs to expande my virtual memory. I think I'm one of those people that needs a few gigs of ram to run a system without a swap file. I tried it once it ran nice and fast untill I ran out of memory.

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