"No paging file" set but still shows up in Task Manager

blacklight186 · Nov 26, 2010

Hi guys,

I tried to set "No paging file" in the advanced menu of system settings (Windows Vista 32-bit). I rebooted the PC. However the Performance tab of Windows Task Manager shows:

Page File: 2314M / 3475M

Why is this so? I wanted to set "no paging file" because my idea was to setup a RAMdisk and use that for the paging file.

Thanks in advance for any advice...

Lottiemansion · Nov 26, 2010

Hi,

Nice idea, but what order are you doing thing in? RAM first & no page file second? Set page file third?

Do you have enough RAM?

Please remember RAM is volatile too, a HDD isn't. The system will need to build the page file a fresh each boot! Good or bad - not sure?

Have you done this before?

blacklight186 · Nov 26, 2010

thanks for your reply! I'm just experimenting cos I have some time to kill :D.. and also trying out the theory!

Theoretically it sounds like a good idea, I don't mind the bit o extra startup time.. but once my laptop starts up, it should b swapping files RAM to Ram rather than RAM to HDD and vice versa.. I guess it should be faster no?

I also am not sure if the remaining RAM would be sufficient.. wanted to experiment.. I have 4GB of RAM of which only 3072 MB is usable. I tried to create a 1GB RAMdisk and use that as page file, hoping that the remaining 2GB is sufficient....

I used My Computer -> Advanced system settings-> Advanced tab -> Performance Settings -> Advanced tab, click Change (under Virtual memory). Here i set my all my drives to None (no paging file) and rebooted.

Now, if I Ctrl+Alt+Del, Task Manager, click on Performance tab, under System last entry it shows Page File: 2314M / 3475M

From where is it getting the 3475M??

MilesAhead · Nov 26, 2010

Even if you run with 0 sized page file, no pagefile.sys, the kernel and other system stuff is paged to disk. A ramdisk for paging would only be useful if you have ram above what Windows can use normally. The main consideration, assuming you have enough ram and otherwise compatible hw to address the memory, is if the ramdisk software can establish itself as a drive letter to be present when Windows tries to establish the page file on it.

Since a ramdisk is implemented as a device driver it may be possible. That would be the number 1 thing I'd look at when choosing the ram disk software.

Also you'd want a UPS on your system to make sure a power glitch does scramble everything. (edit: I assumed a desktop as all you had in spec was 32 bit windows.)

Before getting too far into it I'd make sure you have some method to restore your system to usable condition if the experiment fails. Like a boot CD with registry restore(ERUNT/ERDNT etc..) or an image backup with bootable CD or usb stick to put things back if it breaks.

4 GB ram I'd say it's not worth the effort. If you had 8 on a 32 bit OS but with hw that could use it, then I'd say try it.

A simpler idea may be to try to set up the high unused ram as a disk cache.
Or, if you can access it via ramdisk, put a slow portable app on it to make it run faster. If you use Firefox browser you'll see much faster loading. I ran FF portable out of a ramdisk until I switched to chromium based browsers. If you get the ramdisk to work with the high memory, you can find step by step how to load FF portable into ramdisk on the web.

blacklight186 · Nov 26, 2010

thanks Miles

I'm on a laptop so no danger of data loss

... It will switch to battery if power goes.

I'm using a freeware called Gavotte Ramdisk... It works on driver level and you can setup as a drive letter as well as the size of the Ramdisk. Then reboot and voila! It is very easy to uninstall too

...

Well, I got the answer to my original question... the "Page File" under Performance Tab of Task Manager refers to available Physical + Virtual Memory (both). See Figure F here: Task Manager's Performance tab more useful in Windows Vista

This is why it is showing a high number although my page files are set to zero (to be accurate, it is showing Page File: 1168M / 2974M, 2974M refers to the 3072 MB usable memory i guess)

See this link guys (of RAMdisk), let me know what you think: http://www.jensscheffler.de/using-gavotte-ramdisk-in-windows-7

So far I've been trying to implement this without enabling PAE( I did not check if it is enabled now, but I have disabled DEP so PAE is probably off as well I think).

Thanks,

Lottiemansion · Nov 26, 2010

OK Brill,

Where do you go from here?

After all, this is your trial & you have the "issues", we don't bring them.

Lorien · Nov 26, 2010

Check out the comments in the following thread - they are somewhat in conflict with each other and none really provide any evidence to support their opinions - but it does present some different points of view and is worth considering and perhaps a bit of research to validate the different claims: Disabling the Windows page file - Vista-General-Discussion - Windows-Vista. Notice that there is mention of the possibility that some programs require the existence of a paging file to function. I don't know if you have any such programs (or even if this is totally accurate), but it's something to consider.

The following article addresses how to disable the page file: Tweak Windows Vista Virtual Memory (Change or Disable Paging File Size) » My Digital Life. Although you can select to have no page file on any drive, I've read elsewhere that sometimes that doesn't work (sometimes it comes back) and that it may be more effective to select a custom size where the minimum and maximum are the same and what is stated at the bottom of the screen as the minimum size (but I can't prove that).

The following tutorial provides much information on changing the paging file (altering the size, moving it to another drive,...). Read it carefully as it offers many excellent suggestions and provides a few cautiions. Moving it to another partition on the same drive hurts performance. Moving it to another drive that is at least as fast as the system drive can improve performance. Note that it is recommended that the paging file not be disabled or removed (though it does not address the use of a RAMDRIVE as an alternative - however, with only 4GB I do not believe that is a practical solution as I do not believe that is not enough RAM to truly do what you want to do here since most of the RAM is already in use and I'm not sure you can use the difference in what's there and what's available for these purposes). http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/132201-virtual-memory-paging-file-change.html.

I'm not quite sure why Task Manager shows so much page file usage, but if you confirm what you've done with the above articles, perhaps you'll find a step you skipped or some other explanation. As previously mentioned, this may not be the true pagefile.sys but some other paging mechanism in progress. Download Process Explorer Process Explorer and examine this information in greater detail to see if you can learn anything more (as this program is superior to Task Manager and provides much more information).

I hope this helps.

Good luck!

MilesAhead · Nov 26, 2010

blacklight186 said:
thanks Miles

I'm on a laptop so no danger of data loss ... It will switch to battery if power goes.

I'm using a freeware called Gavotte Ramdisk... It works on driver level and you can setup as a drive letter as well as the size of the Ramdisk. Then reboot and voila! It is very easy to uninstall too ...

Well, I got the answer to my original question... the "Page File" under Performance Tab of Task Manager refers to available Physical + Virtual Memory (both). See Figure F here: Task Manager's Performance tab more useful in Windows Vista

This is why it is showing a high number although my page files are set to zero (to be accurate, it is showing Page File: 1168M / 2974M, 2974M refers to the 3072 MB usable memory i guess)
Thanks,

Right. If you run no page file, it will still show ram usage. Why they call it page file I have no clue. But if you look to the left you'll see figures for Kernel ram that is swapped out(paged) even though you run no paging file. It pages systems stuff to disk if you like it or not. The user level paging is all you control.
Or, probably more correctly, it pages parts of the Kernel in as needed. For instance program code is swapped in using file mapping. The OS doesn't have to load your whole program at once. Probably does so it will be snappy once it's loaded, but it doesn't have to. As soon as the CPU tries to access an instruction that isn't in ram, page fault, the system swaps it in. At least that's what happens on real commercial computers like they use in data centers.

On the drive letter assignment of the ram disk, my point was if Windows tries to create a page file in the ram disk, before the ram disk is there, then you will have problems. It's a matter of timing. Does the drive letter assignment happen before or after the page file creation. I guess you can try assigning the page file and see if it gets an error. Could give you trouble booting which is why I recommended having a recovery strategy.

"No paging file" set but still shows up in Task Manager

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