Windows XP PageFile

[towert7]

Hello, i leave my desktop on all the time, and my page file will slowly keep increasing it seems, as if something is getting stored to the hard drive, and not removed. is this typical of windows XP. Obviously when i close a program, i will see the page file drop, but as the days go by it just slowly keeps increasing.

Right now my computer has been on for 50 days, and im at a page file of 1.22 GB

This gets annoying, because i have a program that uses the windows 16bit sub system, and once i go over 1GB of page file, I can no longer use this program.

No, i will not disable page fileing, i use programs that need it.

I have about 786mb of physical memory.

Is there a program that will do a check of the page file for any very old stuff, and remove it?

~Thanks

Edit: If i was to limit the page file to 0.99GB, what would happen if i left my computer on for a long time and it reached that amount? Would it just start to eat up physical RAM untill there is none left?

http://home.comcast.net/~towert7/pics/pagefile.gif

[[MS]]

You should look at what process is using that space. That's the first step in fixing it.

Got the processes tab in the task manager.
View->Select columns
check "Virtual Memory Size"

That should tell you which application is causing the memory requests that are increasing the page file usage.

[towert7]

']You should look at what process is using that space. That's the first step in fixing it.

Got the processes tab in the task manager.
View->Select columns
check "Virtual Memory Size"

That should tell you which application is causing the memory requests that are increasing the page file usage.

Ah, thank you very much!

Would you belive, my AIM program (form aol) is doing it...755,000Kb Wow.

Once again, thanks!

[[MS]]

Ah, thank you very much!

Would you belive, my AIM program (form aol) is doing it...755,000Kb Wow.

Once again, thanks!

On the forums I try not to comment on product from competitors. So I'll limit my comment to a simple "Um, ouch".

Note that page file is simply memory that's been allocated to a process but hasn't been accessed for a long time (or was pushed out of physical memory due to other requests). That means that over that period of time your IM client asked for 737MB of memory that it never released, and likely wasn't using. In other words, a memory leak.

[towert7]

']

Note that page file is simply memory that's been allocated to a process but hasn't been accessed for a long time (or was pushed out of physical memory due to other requests). That means that over that period of time your IM client asked for 737MB of memory that it never released, and likely wasn't using. In other words, a memory leak.

Exactly, up untill now though, i never knew how to find out what was using the page file.

I just cant belive that the program was written to do that (unless its been fixed in newer versions).

[BossNoodleKaboodle]

why is the CPU usage bar in red? I've never seen or used up that much of a paging file for anything and I make 500MB images in Photoshop regularly.

[towert7]

why is the CPU usage bar in red? I've never seen or used up that much of a paging file for anything and I make 500MB images in Photoshop regularly.
The red are the processor kernal times.

In the performance tab, click view > show kernal times.

[ashmedai]

In task bar, under View menu, he has "Show Kernel Times" enabled.

If i was to limit the page file to 0.99GB, what would happen if i left my computer on for a long time and it reached that amount? Would it just start to eat up physical RAM untill there is none left?

You should probably reduce it to about that point.Since you have XP do this:

Edit your pagefile so it's a permenant fixed size by setting it to the same number max & min. If possible put it on a seperate drive AND controller from windows/programs. I'd say set it to about 1GB. If you're putting it on a blank drive all the better since it'll get the fastest portion & anything added to the drive afterwards will end up after the permenant pagefile.

If you manage to use up enough memory that the physical memory AND the fixed pagefile run out, Windows will give you an "out of memory" type error message, BUT it will spill over to using a dynamic pagefile for the extra. You'll get the error popup but it is just warning you that you ran out. If you get this often you might want to install more memory or increase your pagefile size a bit, but with your physical memory and a 1GB pagefile it's unlikely. You don't want to set an arbitrarily large pagefile because it will degrade performance.

Mine has 1GB physical, 1GB pagefile. I've never gotten an out of memory error and I've done some pretty abusive multitasking.

[towert7]

Yea, ill sometimes do an average quality scan, or recorde TV from my tv tuner, or download programs from the internet over 500mb's (that's the main bog down)... but i too have never gotten an out of memory error on my computer.

I just recently added another drive to my computer, for spare data, so i might try and set that to a page file. I probably will not notice much of an increase, because the two drives operate at the same data throughput, but maybe by being on its own IDE channel it may help. (my two hard drives are on a PCI controller, and this new drive i just added to the IDE channel).

~Thanks for the info

[ashmedai]

It's not the drive speed that's the factor, it's that if it's on a seperate drive and channel, it gets to be first in line instead of waiting for whatever else your system drive is already doing to finish. Something like yours where the second drive is mostly to store files on is great, again assuming it's on a seperate channel and not master/slave with the first drive.

P2P is fairly greedy, but web browsing can actually be more so. Windows tends to leave memory (and virtual memory) occupied until something else requests it, so the actual amount of memory in active use may be much less than total memory minus free memory.

[dmonkey]

I have a question, would setting up the pagefile in another partition of the same drive help performance and prevent fragmentation? Or would that be a hinderance? There are two articles on the front page of Firingsquad.com, the Advanced Build Tweaks article and the Windows Optimization 101 or something like that article. One says to make two partitions, having one just for the pagefile and internet cache, while the other says to just make one big partition. The general consensus seems to be a lone partition spanning the whole drive, but I am confused on whether or not to have a single partition or two to prevent fragmentation.

[towert7]

I read an article that said they did make two partitions, and made the page file on the outside of the hard drive using a defrag program. I guess it makes it a little faster.
I have never tried this.
What i can say is that putting a Page File on a diffrent drive on a diffrent IDE channel should be the fastest option (especially if the drive is not used much).

Actually, it was a huge article now that i think of it.

I'll try and dig it up.

[iddqd]

How do you configure taskmanager to display ram load?

[towert7]

http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm that might have been the article.

They recommend not making two partitions on one drive.

iddqd, what do you mean display ram load?

[KoolDrew]

PF usage in the Task manager is NOT the actual PF usage, oddly enough. IF you want the real PF usage use perfmon.