Pagefile Size

kony wrote:

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:32:22 -0800, Robert Heiling
wrote:

kony wrote:

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:49:59 -0800, Robert Heiling
wrote:

But just what is it that people are actually trying to accomplish with this
"optimization"? When stripped down to the bottom line, all they're doing is
attempting to save some HD space. That's the part that is silly.

What is it that you are trying to accomplish by setting a
pagefile extremely large without any reason to think it
should be that large?

By "extremely", you mean approximately double what some are already discussing?

Let's get more specific... How about one byte (ignoring that
it can't be set to a mere one byte difference)? What
justification do you have to set your pagefile even ONE BYTE
larger than others who have no issues with their pagefile
being undersized?

Reserve capacity is an easy answer to that question. The problem is that an
"undersized" value hasn't been agreed upon here from what I've seen. Why do you
suppose that MS gives a recommendation for the minimum, but not for the maximum
(your "undersized" if not enough)?

What percent of a 250GB or + or even a 120GB HD is that?

Doesn't matter.
Overkill for no reason is senseless.
IF you had reason, it'd be an entirely different matter.

Not overkill. A different sense of priorities that I prefer. But Ok, Then let's
hear what you think it should be for my system. Let's hear what you think will
never be too little under any circumstances of use.

Are you so tight on
disk space that 2-3 GB represents a big hit? Sure! on the 10 yr old system out
in the garage with an 8 GB HD shared as dual-boot, I don't have a 4 GB pagefile,
but things have changed a lot in the past 10 years.

So you don't really have a reason, just "I have free HDD
space." OK, if you want to be lazy about it, it's your
machine, but that's hardly a reason to advocate it.

I'm no different than anyone else who advocates to others what he had found to
work for himself.

If it is merely to be sure you don't run out of virtual
memory space,

No. It's actually to be sure that I won't have to worry like the people are
doing here right now. The only mistake you can make is to make it too small.
There's no downside to making it "too big" other than a little bit of disk space
that isn't going to break the bank.

I don't have a 4GB pagefile and am not worrying. The vast
majority of people don't either.

The vast majority don't even know they have a pagefile, in fact, they aren't
even permitted to look at system files.

Bob is just nuts. ;-)

That's old news. :^}

do you see a lot of people reporting they have
that problem? No, and it's not at all usual for them to
have set a 4GB pagefile

I see people here with a problem in making a decision and attempting to
micro-manage and outguess the OS and being presented with conflicting advice.
That's what I see.

No, the OS has to guess because it isn't designed to
dynamically monitor and readjust.

That's strange. Then why do they offer a minimum and a maximum size and how does
the OS manage to readjust between those 2 limits?

The user isn't
constrained like this, they can make an informed and
targeted decision in retrospect, or consideration of future
needs. Only so much logic can be reasonably built into the
OS, and the rest is provided by a savvy user.

Is that why I've seen so many different informed and targeted decisions here?

It's similar to MANY different OS defaults, did you really
keep ALL of those defaults?

An apples & oranges smoke screen!

IOW, you have a solution for a problem that doesn't usually
exist.

The existence of this discussion proves that a number of people have a problem
deciding how large (or small) their pagefile should be. It's a problem that I
don't have. I'd call that a solution, Yes.

Actually most people never change the setting - and end up
with a much smaller pagefile than you have, never growing
even close to that size, and never have a problem.

For me, this isn't a contest to see who has the smallest pagefile. Would you
spend $1000 in labor to save on $900 in parts?

Since it is a discussion quite specifically about what size
to make it, the answer "as big as possible" really doesn't
address anything but the OS build-in limit, which they'd
assumed at the time would be far larger than necessary else
they'd have made it even bigger (max).

If they had done that, then a different decision would need to be made. But they
didn't!

Bob

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 18:57:08 GMT Too Much Ying and you will Pay With
Yang then (Citizen Bob) sent this :

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 11:13:16 +0000, Shep© wrote:


I was advised to make the maximum 1.5GB even though the initial was
512MB. I have more than ample disk space to that is not an issue.

The easiest way is to monitor your swapfile usage.I used Cacheman,
http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_...e=product&id=7
I play some big graphics games and my swapfile was being used to
around 350 meg with 512 meg of ram installed.Set minimum to 400 meg
max to 765 meg after defragging pagefile drive in Safemode with
Auslogic defragger,
http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag/index.php
which I think also supports your O/S.

Now when I end games the swapfile doesn't have to resize as much and
saves time on the system coming back to normal.
As always with the swapfile/pagefile.sys it's the re sizing that eats
up time.

The reason for the use of Safemode and defrag once I determined the
correct settings for me is so that the space allocated to the swapfile
is not fragmented when formed.

HTH



--
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http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
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On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 14:57:22 -0500, kony wrote:

With 780-odd MB memory allocated as you reported earlier
(but really, you should consider the peak value not the
momentary as you did), 512MB pagefile should work. You are
continually overlooking that there is no one generic answer
that fits all systems as well as actually looking at YOUR
system usage. Don't tell us what you have the pagefile set
to, tell us what your PEAK Commit Charge is.

Currently it is 817556 MB.

Remember that if you have too small a pagefile set, it won't
just slow down your use, you will see a warning message.
You could continue to have the system set to something like
a 512MB minimum (which minimizes fragmentation, contiguous
file if the disk space is available but even then, the file
itself may have fragmented access because that's how paging
works- only what's needed is read back), and a larger
maximum. You'd want your minimum large enough that your big
jobs don't exceed it, and the larger maximum is just a
failsafe should you do something very unusual. Keep in mind
that if you did such an unusual task and suddenly needed
another GB of virtual memory, you'd be sitting around for
ages waiting for the system to stop thrashing the HDD
swapping it all back and forth from disk to real memory.

I am currently using what you recommended earlier when I was having
the problem with corrupt NTFS volumes. That is 512MB/1.5GB. I have not
experienced any thrashing or messages.

You don't need to set initial same as max, just set initial
large enough that you don't "expect" it to ever be
exceeded... for example you could set a 1GB min and 2GB max.

I will try that because with this particular video conversion program,
I am now for the first time I can remember, substantially exceeding
512NB RAM size. Before it was at most 300MB.

I was advised to make the maximum 1.5GB even though the initial was
512MB. I have more than ample disk space so that is not an issue.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

But as you said, I should set the minimum to a number larger than the
Peak Commit Charge. How about a compromise: 1GB/1.5GB? If the
corruption problem returns I can always go back.


--

"All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient
and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of
God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is
the task of religion to fit man into this lawfulness. Religion
must remain an outlet for people who say to themsleves, 'I am
not the kind of person I want to be'."
--Frank Herbert, "Dune"

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:21:11 +0000, Shep© wrote:

The easiest way is to monitor your swapfile usage.I used Cacheman,
http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_...e=product&id=7

I am running Win2K. Which one of the two versions should I use?


--

"All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient
and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of
God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is
the task of religion to fit man into this lawfulness. Religion
must remain an outlet for people who say to themsleves, 'I am
not the kind of person I want to be'."
--Frank Herbert, "Dune"

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 15:38:31 GMT Too Much Ying and you will Pay With
Yang then (Citizen Bob) sent this :

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:21:11 +0000, Shep© wrote:

The easiest way is to monitor your swapfile usage.I used Cacheman,
http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_...e=product&id=7

I am running Win2K. Which one of the two versions should I use?

It states it's compatible with win2k/XP/WinNT.



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page...m?bandID=88558

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:32:50 +0000, Shep© wrote:

I am running Win2K. Which one of the two versions should I use?

It states it's compatible with win2k/XP/WinNT.

I installed the XP version. The other one is a command line variant.

Here's the data it reports:

RAM: Peak Usage 500MB. Recall that I have 512MB RAM installed.

So it would appear that I am pushing the upper limit and could profit
from 1GB of RAM. However, this usage is caused by one particular video
application which I never use except this one instance. Ordinarily I
run at most 300MB RAM maximum.

Pafefile: Allocation 732MB. Recall that I have it set to 512MB/1.5GB.

It would seem that I am within the maximum pagefile setting. Maybe I
should set it to 1.0GB/1.5GB. I would rather not increase the maximum
beyond what it is now because in the past when it was larger I ran
into corrupt NTFS volume problems, presumably because of excess
fragmentation.



--

"All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient
and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of
God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is
the task of religion to fit man into this lawfulness. Religion
must remain an outlet for people who say to themsleves, 'I am
not the kind of person I want to be'."
--Frank Herbert, "Dune"

Citizen Bob wrote:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:32:50 +0000, Shep© wrote:

I am running Win2K. Which one of the two versions should I use?

It states it's compatible with win2k/XP/WinNT.

I installed the XP version. The other one is a command line variant.

Here's the data it reports:

RAM: Peak Usage 500MB. Recall that I have 512MB RAM installed.

So it would appear that I am pushing the upper limit and could profit
from 1GB of RAM. However, this usage is caused by one particular video
application which I never use except this one instance. Ordinarily I
run at most 300MB RAM maximum.

Pafefile: Allocation 732MB. Recall that I have it set to 512MB/1.5GB.

It would seem that I am within the maximum pagefile setting. Maybe I
should set it to 1.0GB/1.5GB. I would rather not increase the maximum
beyond what it is now because in the past when it was larger I ran
into corrupt NTFS volume problems, presumably because of excess
fragmentation.

It wont have anything to do with fragmentation.

On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 16:19:26 GMT Too Much Ying and you will Pay With
Yang then (Citizen Bob) sent this :

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:32:50 +0000, Shep© wrote:

I am running Win2K. Which one of the two versions should I use?

It states it's compatible with win2k/XP/WinNT.

I installed the XP version. The other one is a command line variant.

Here's the data it reports:

RAM: Peak Usage 500MB. Recall that I have 512MB RAM installed.

So it would appear that I am pushing the upper limit and could profit
from 1GB of RAM. However, this usage is caused by one particular video
application which I never use except this one instance. Ordinarily I
run at most 300MB RAM maximum.

Pafefile: Allocation 732MB. Recall that I have it set to 512MB/1.5GB.

It would seem that I am within the maximum pagefile setting. Maybe I
should set it to 1.0GB/1.5GB. I would rather not increase the maximum
beyond what it is now because in the past when it was larger I ran
into corrupt NTFS volume problems, presumably because of excess
fragmentation.

I'd set it at say 600 meg min and 765 max
Unless you use another ram hungry program sometime that should do you
fine and if you did run out you know what to do anyway e.g just
increase the max size a bit after monitoring it again
PS
I've just added another 512 meg of RAM to bring mine to 1 gig but left
my 300/765 as is.My big games now shutdown instantly as the
pagefile.sys is barely if ever used however some pagefile.sys is
always used if there as it's tied to the RAM allocation but also in
Cacheman I disable the,"Executive Paging" as that forces windows to
use all the physical ram before going to the swapfile/pagefile.sys

HTH



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page...m?bandID=88558

On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:34:04 +0000, Shep© wrote:

in Cacheman I disable the,"Executive Paging" as that forces windows to
use all the physical ram before going to the swapfile/pagefile.sys

Where is this "executive paging". I looked in CachemanXP but did not
find it.


--

"All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient
and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of
God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is
the task of religion to fit man into this lawfulness. Religion
must remain an outlet for people who say to themsleves, 'I am
not the kind of person I want to be'."
--Frank Herbert, "Dune"

On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 22:45:36 GMT Too Much Ying and you will Pay With
Yang then (Citizen Bob) sent this :

On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:34:04 +0000, Shep© wrote:

in Cacheman I disable the,"Executive Paging" as that forces windows to
use all the physical ram before going to the swapfile/pagefile.sys

Where is this "executive paging". I looked in CachemanXP but did not
find it.

Tweaks Tab.Untick it.

You must understand that no matter what MS say there are core
fundamental rules that never change in their O/S.
I've been tweaking this crap since win 3.11 let alone DOS.MS always
allow for the none intervention of user interaction,which is fine.It
doesn't matter if it's Win95/Win98/ME/Win2K/NT 1/2/3/4/WinXP.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.It was only a
genius,"Slight-of-Hand" by BG that led us to these badly programmed
operating system running on out-dated before they were born updated
2086 processors.

NAND
Only gamers know what PCs can really do and can't do ;-)




--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
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