How much virtual memory with 2 GB RAM ?

[troyrae360]

If you must play with the page file, set it to run off a fast disk that is not being accessed by another program or OS, making a partition wont help!!, it needs to be a seperate drive that isn't used often eg, your music and movie drive, or somthing fast maybe a raptor or a SSD

 

[TheLaughingMan]

As far as i look Win7 virtual page management has same options as WinXP and dont let you fully disable it? So i did best i could and keep it minimal 128-384MB and didn't see any slowdown

How could i turn it off? (so windoze never came up to use my hdd for swap anymore on next reboot)

There should be three options in that Paging File menu. Windows managed, personally managed, and No Paging Files. Select No Paging Files then restart.

There will still be Paging Files. Windows has some tasks that have to use Paging files for some reason, but they are really small and I think are only accessed during long periods of idle.

 

[Zubasa]

There should be three options in that Paging File menu. Windows managed, personally managed, and No Paging Files. Select No Paging Files then restart.

There will still be Paging Files. Windows has some tasks that have to use Paging files for some reason, but they are really small and I think are only accessed during long periods of idle.

Pagefile is also used for Memory Dump during a BSOD.
On the other hand, there is really little benefit from disabling the pagefile.

 

[adambrown81]

I think for 2 GB ram you need 4 GB virtual memory .It work well.Thanking You .

 

[caleb]

you made a bad assumption.

You forget that when windows changes it all the time, its fragmenting itself, and your HDD - and since you cant defrag a page file, its not something fixable.

if you delete it, reboot, defrag, and set a static sized page file, it will be one contiguous fragment thus eliminating a possible source of poor performance on the system.

Ive tested it multiple times on with games and having defined swap file will eventually decrease performance. Memory managment isnt a task you can compare to a defragmented .avi file on your HDD and I agree maybe it has SOME TINY impact on seek times but is not as much an issue as OS running out of swap file or having some other problem with reorganization of its resources because of insufficent space. I would even put this so called "optimalization" from Windows 95 times on the MYTH BUSTER's shelf.

 

[vagxtr]

There should be three options in that Paging File menu. Windows managed, personally managed, and No Paging Files. Select No Paging Files then restart.

There will still be Paging Files. Windows has some tasks that have to use Paging files for some reason, but they are really small and I think are only accessed during long periods of idle.

That's the persisting problem i'm talking about i heavily use WinXP (cause i simply can't easily adapte to Vista/Win7 explorer that in file bar needs the click to the utter right corner to show slash style hierarchy instead drop down menus or hassling with selecting file by file and not to select all cause now rows extend full line instead on file name only ... digress but i would like the best w98/w2k kind of explorer) and in WinXP it simply nagging for its PageFile and it virtually shadows that nagging Vista/7 so i rather manually select where Win will crap than that it actually decides for me. In WinXP when app uses 1.5GB he always start to paging no matter that the rest of memory is empty, and more memory i have installed in WinXP the kernel uses more for it's bloat! so with 3.5GB it uses almost 1GB while on 256MB it used 128MB?!

btw. Does anyone knows how to resurrect default shortcuts under Win7 Library if it's mistakenly deleted, w/o full reinstall

 

[JrRacinFan]

I have been playing around with this alot. Currently have it set for 1GB on my 500GB drive I use for media purposes.

 

[Anusha]

it will slow you down if you have it disabled. ignore what someone may have told you.



i have mine on )let windows decide), its currently set itself to 4-6GB and using 400mb idleing.

No it doesn't. Pagefile slows down my PC like crazy!!! I always keep it disabled.

Why you really need a pagefile is for two things.
1. Some programs NEED it, as in specifically ASKS for it.
2. Defrag RAM to remove small unusable blocks of RAM, and make bigger contiguous space for new apps.

With a pagefile you waste RAM because you unnecessarily keep stuff in the pagefile = not best performance

Without a pagefile you waste RAM because you make small *holes* in address space that cannot be used by anything. Space is there, but they are scattered around. = can't get the full utilization

Choose what's best for you.

But keep a pagefile if u don't have 4GB RAM.

FYI, in the past 2 years, I have crashed Windows only once because of not having a pagefile. That was when playing Crysis with Very High quality mode, in Vista x64 with 4GB RAM.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

That's the persisting problem i'm talking about i heavily use WinXP (cause i simply can't easily adapte to Vista/Win7 explorer that in file bar needs the click to the utter right corner to show slash style hierarchy instead drop down menus or hassling with selecting file by file and not to select all cause now rows extend full line instead on file name only ... digress but i would like the best w98/w2k kind of explorer) and in WinXP it simply nagging for its PageFile and it virtually shadows that nagging Vista/7 so i rather manually select where Win will crap than that it actually decides for me. In WinXP when app uses 1.5GB he always start to paging no matter that the rest of memory is empty, and more memory i have installed in WinXP the kernel uses more for it's bloat! so with 3.5GB it uses almost 1GB while on 256MB it used 128MB?!

btw. Does anyone knows how to resurrect default shortcuts under Win7 Library if it's mistakenly deleted, w/o full reinstall

I like the new Exployer in Win7 because it is more flexiable and moving to frequently used locations is a lot easier. I am not sure about the first comment, but the second you may want to try the other view such as "small icons" or "detail" instead of the "list" you are currently using. I hate it too.

And the default icons. Which icons are you talking about? If you are talking about Computer, Recycle Bin, etc. Then first be sure you have your desktop icons on. Right click, check menu for "Show Desktop icons". Second. Right click on desktop and click on Personalize. In the personalization you should find the options about which icons the desktop has like recycle bin, your documents, etc.

 

[vagxtr]

I like the new Exployer in Win7 because it is more flexiable and moving to frequently used locations is a lot easier. I am not sure about the first comment, but the second you may want to try the other view such as "small icons" or "detail" instead of the "list" you are currently using. I hate it too.

Yep it's more flexible but some plain mouse actions are become more complex. I'm using details, list is something i always disliked and it's virtually harder to find things that way if you dont use keyboard.

And the default icons. Which icons are you talking about? If you are talking about Computer, Recycle Bin, etc. Then first be sure you have your desktop icons on. Right click, check menu for "Show Desktop icons". Second. Right click on desktop and click on Personalize. In the personalization you should find the options about which icons the desktop has like recycle bin, your documents, etc.

No i'm taking about Vista/Win7 library default icons, for MyComputer there's still place on desktop and then wherever you want but i accidentally delete Documents shortcut in libraries and there's no way i cant bring it back as library item.