HI,
Thanks for exact explanainsion but I'm still a little confused. Which option is the best in my sytuation?
1.To Set a Custom Size for Paging File Size on a Drive
2.To Remove (disable) Paging File on a Drive
3.To Set Size of Paging File on a Drive to be System Managed
4.To Set Size of Paging File on All Drives to be System Managed
and what value is the best in my case?
Thanks in advance for any sugestions !!!!
Hello @oxixx,
I would recommend to leave the paging file to be system managed.
By default, the paging file will be on your Windows drive. If you are tight on free space on the Windows drive, then you could have the paging file on another internal drive instead that does have plenty of free space.
Just an added two cents for others, as to why even with tons of RAM, page files are needed:
BSOD's dump files:
Older info but still good: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ns-for-windows
Also newer for Windows 10:A complete memory dump records all the contents of system memory when your computer stops unexpectedly. A complete memory dump may contain data from processes that were running when the memory dump was collected.
If you select the Complete memory dump option, you must have a paging file on the boot volume that is sufficient to hold all the physical RAM plus 1 megabyte (MB).
A small memory dump records the smallest set of useful information that may help identify why your computer stopped unexpectedly. This option requires a paging file of at least 2 MB on the boot volume and specifies that Windows 2000 and later create a new file every time your computer stops unexpectedly.
A kernel memory dump records only the kernel memory. This speeds up the process of recording information in a log when your computer stops unexpectedly. You must have a pagefile large enough to accommodate your kernel memory. For 32-bit systems, kernel memory is usually between150MB and 2GB. Additionally, on Windows 2003 and Windows XP, the page file must be on the boot volume. Otherwise, a memory dump cannot be created.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ic-memory-dump
An Automatic Memory Dump contains the same information as a Kernel Memory Dump. The difference between the two is not in the dump file itself, but in the way that Windows sets the size of the system paging file.
If the system paging file size is set to System managed size, and the kernel-mode crash dump is set to Automatic Memory Dump, then Windows can set the size of the paging file to less than the size of RAM. In this case, Windows sets the size of the paging file large enough to ensure that a kernel memory dump can be captured most of the time.
If the computer crashes and the paging file is not large enough to capture a kernel memory dump, Windows increases the size of the paging file to at least the size of RAM. The time of this event is recorded here in the Registry:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl\LastCrashTime
The increased paging file size stays in place for 4 weeks and then returns to the smaller size. If you want to return to the smaller paging file before 4 weeks, you can delete the Registry entry.
To see the paging file settings, go to Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced system settings. Under Performance, click Settings. On the Advanced tab, under Virtual memory, click Change. In the Virtual Memory dialog box, you can see the paging file settings.
I'm newbe and I'm not sure if I understood everything wel thias is what I supposed to do?
What You thing about this setup?
Only time in recent Years I've see anyone have a NEED to manually set page file size were Hard Core Cities: Skylines on Steam Players with dozens of Mods and Hundreds of assets. In all other cases, Windows knows best.
People keep asking about the size of the pagefile/virtual memory. I have no doubt that file must have its use but I think all the explanations I've read so far were copy-pasted from some source that was either badly written or misinterpreted. My point is, if you have enough RAM on your machine then you never should need a pagefile. Before you unholster your guns, let me explain.
The rationale most often provided is that applications need a certain amount of memory and they have no way of knowing if that memory will be available when needed, so the system should be able to "page" them temporarily to a swapfile. This makes sense in theory, but only if the swapfile is not limited in size. Unfortunately, users are allowed to set the size of the swapfile, both on Windows and Linux, which means the system may end up running out of paging space anyway. Moreover, if too many RAM-intensive applications run concurrently, some heavy swapping occurs and the system slows down to the point of becoming virtually unusable (I've been there).
In practice, three cases can be considered:
(a) All applications can run in the available RAM and the pagefile is never used.
(b) The combined memory used by running applications is occasionally greater that the available RAM, in which case paging occurs; performance should be normal if applications with paged memory do not run concurrently with those that only use RAM at any moment.
(c) The combined memory used by running applications is permanently greater than RAM available so swapping is essentially continuous. Performance can be a disaster.
For items (a) and (b) + fixed pagefile size, no matter how much RAM you install and no matter the size of the pagefile, the possibility exists that the system will crash unless applications are designed to check for memory when they make dynamic allocations.
For items (b) + a system-managed pagefile size and (c), if too many memory-hungry applications run concurrently the odds are that the system will become unusable due to heavy file swapping.
From my experience, with 16GB of RAM, no virtual memory, and only a few a few large applications running, I have never had any problems; also, there was a noticeable improvement in performance. The only case when a program failed to run as expected and fixing the problem required re-enabling virtual memory was when I had ~10GB of free RAM and the error message didn't even suggest a memory limitation, but I found some clues on the web that pointed me in the right direction.
Bottom line, if you know what you're doing then you're better off with a swapfile of size 0.
Relax, I agree with the points you are making...
...For items (a) and (b) + fixed pagefile size, no matter how much RAM you install and no matter the size of the pagefile, the possibility exists that the system will crash unless applications are designed to check for memory every time they make dynamic allocations....
That perhaps is the only point on which I'd differ. Windows 10 is very good at managing memory and shutting down and throwing away less important functions when memory gets tight. For example, on a 32-bit system of mine when it had just 1GB of RAM, even with a swapfile, WinKey+L could not bring up the lock screen, there just wasn't enough memory to support it. Also, user switching wasn't possible. If you tried the system would log out of the first user in order to sign in to the second. Windows does it's level best to sacrifice its own use of memory to keep (just) enough to satisfy your apps' demands. The last thing it wants to do is crash, and it shuts down as much as it can get away with to avoid it.
From my experience, with 16GB of RAM, no virtual memory, and only a few a few large applications running, I have never had any problems...
That doesn't surprise me. I've occasionally forgotten to reinstate the swapfile on a 4GB x64 system. Sometimes it's taken weeks before I even noticed
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