Issues with Pagefile.sys / Virtual Memory  

Can you help me with the following details:

1) Is the PC freezing randomly
2) Any specific access which triggers the sluggish performance
3) What all applications you have installed (games / heavy apps)

With 32 GB RAM and a pagefile on an SSD I would consider the chances of the pagefile causing a problem as very remote, not worth considering. It is almost certainly larger than necessary but that won't cause any issues, except wasting disk space.

There is no reason you should have any pagefile at all - maybe 1 or 2GB for the odd faults. Set it at 2GB and you will see it works perfectly.

tanujchadha said:

Can you help me with the following details:

1) Is the PC freezing randomly
2) Any specific access which triggers the sluggish performance
3) What all applications you have installed (games / heavy apps)

Hi there Tanujchadha,

Thanks for getting back to me. I did reply, but must have done something wrong as it has not posted.

From everything I can see, the freezing and crashing is random. Definitely more noticeable in games or when a few apps are open at once. I have noticed it if I am doing something intensive in Adobe applications as well. Or with Visio/Project/Excel/Powerpoint.

There does not seem to be anything in particular that triggers the sluggish performance. More a case of as the machine is put under some load, performance drops off quite surprisingly.

I have over 93 games installed (only a few are processor/graphics intensive). Apps wise, the main applications I have installed are:

MS Office 365 - full install of 2016 apps including OneNote, Sway and Outlook
Chrome
MS Project 2016
MS Visio 2016
Norton Security with Backup
Dropbox
Skype
Rainmeter
Copernic
Spotify
Sonos
Adobe - full creative suite
Corel Technical Suite X7
Corel Painter 2016
Google Photos
Alienware standard "bloatware"
ObjectDock
Origin
Steam
MediaMonkey
WinAMP
VLC
Notepad++
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (only run manually and with full exclusions in place for Norton)
Evernote
PerfectDisk 14
Dell Display Manager
Picassa 3
Wunderlist
Wacom Art pad and drivers
3D Connexion "mouse"
System Mechanic Professional
Dual monitor set up
Standard Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard

This is far from an exhaustive list, but is a list of the main applications in use on a fairly regular basis. By far the most use for this machine is as a work machine and Office is the most used software. This includes fairly heavy use of MS Project.

Any thoughts you have on this issue are most gratefully received.


Cheers
Sanj :)

whs said:

There is no reason you should have any pagefile at all - maybe 1 or 2GB for the odd faults. Set it at 2GB and you will see it works perfectly.

Thanks whs,

I thought with hibernate enabled the machine needs to have a pagefile? I know I was not clear that hibernate is enabled.

Regards
S

$ Set Frustration/Level=High

I have a 50GB partition for nothing other than a 25GB CONTIGUOUS Pagefile and I'll move the swapfile there as well. I've set Virtual Memory as Custom size of 25000MB however, Microsoft with it's infinite wisdom, when applying patches/updates, will reconfigure Virtual Memory to be 3070MB on 5 different volumes/partitions. I'll go back and reset everything (Set No Pagefile on the 5 volumes) and set custom 25000MB on my page partition and sometime down the road MS will set Virtual Memory to 3070MB on 5 different volumes again. It's an infinite loop, I'll set Virtual Memory the way *I* want it and MS will reconfigure it.

MS, Please leave the Virtual Memory settings the hell alone.

$ Set Frustration/Level=Normal

In order for accurate crash dump files to be created, then your page file must be at least as large as your physical memory + 257MB. Otherwise, if you get a bluescreen no crashdump file will be created (some people don't care about this, probably most people.. but when you find you need a crashdump.. such as to send it to MS or get help in the forum, it's too late to enable it.)

You also need at least a minimal page file or some kinds of applications won't work correctly, such as Photoshop.

I have 16GB of memory and set Virtual Memory to 25GB (25000MB) however, MS changes it to 5 individual files of 3070MB each. Not only does this fragment the pagefile but fragments the contents of each of the files. What a way to restrict performance of the system.

MDSBigPaPa: your issue is probably result of running some 3rd party "optimization" software. Windows never changes virtual memory settings afaik (in contrast to other important settings). Uninstall all bloatware/malware named optimizer, mechanic, speed booster etc etc.