Do I need a system paging file?

[astral]

I am running Windows 7 on a 64bit machine with 8Gb of memory

The memory usage is rarely over the 4Gb level

So do I need a paging file?

Windows seems to get upset if I set the value to zero, sending a warning at startup

but with so much memory paging seems irrelevant.

Thanks

[Chicog]

I turned mine off on an ASUS Netbook with 2Gb. Doesn't moan at all.Mind you I only really use it for watching movies on planes and the occasional bit of email or browsing.

[muratremix]

You should set a fixed swap page of 4-8 gb. No matter how much memory you have, swap is an integral part of OS.

Without swap, when memory is full due to memory leak (bad coding) or others, your programs may shut down like in mobile phones & tablets.

[Tywais]

From article link at bottom. For very detailed testing of page/nopage use the link in the 2nd paragraph. Also this link is very helpful in explaining the myth - lifehacker.com. The bottom line is you are not going to gain much by disabling it but could run into problems with certain programs and conditions without it.

Myth: Disabling the Page File Improves Performance

Some people will tell you that you should disable the page file to speed up your computer. The thinking goes like this: the page file is slower than RAM, and if you have enough RAM, Windows will use the page file when it should be using RAM, slowing down your computer.

This isn’t really true. People have tested this theory and found that, while Windows can run without a page file if you have a large amount of RAM, there’s no performance benefit to disabling the page file.

However, disabling the page file can result in some bad things. If programs start to use up all your available memory, they’ll start crashing instead of being swapped out of the RAM into your page file. This can also cause problems when running software that requires a large amount of memory, such as virtual machines. Some programs may even refuse to run.

In summary, there’s no good reason to disable the page file – you’ll get some hard drive space back, but the potential system instability won’t be worth it.

How-To-Geek

[MilesofSmiles]

Good question.

You do need a paging file, it's part of the architecture of your system and it adds to the reliability of your machine.

IE. It does a lot more than function as 'extra ram',

Strictly speaking, Yes, you can run without it, but there are performance and reliability implications.

Try it for a day or two, but I wouldn't suggest doing it long term.

• http://www.tweakhound.com/2011/10/10/the-windows-7-pagefile-and-running-without-one/

Some interesting articles about the research done to make Win8 boot to much faster.

• http://redmondmag.com/articles/2012/05/23/windows-8-boot-options.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/22/designing-for-pcs-that-boot-faster-than-ever-before.aspx

[astral]

Thanks for that input and the links

I do understand why the page file may be necessary -

in a world where the apps need more memory than is available.

Clearly not the case on my machine or for many MS users.

All this talk about memory leakage scares the shit out of me.

In my professional opinion (sorry to take the high horse but I have over 30 years of experience in the industry)

any operating system that cannot contain application memory is CRAP.

I will have to experiment

[KittenKong]

All this talk about memory leakage scares the shit out of me.

In my professional opinion (sorry to take the high horse but I have over 30 years of experience in the industry)

any operating system that cannot contain application memory is CRAP.

Windows does a good job of containing application memory, but it also has to try to allocate what the application needs (or thinks it needs). Some badly coded applications will need much more memory than they should. That said, I have seen Firefox memory usage go up into the Gb range if several windows are open and especially if there is flash or js on the pages. So it might not take so long for the swap file to be called into use.

[Tywais]

All this talk about memory leakage scares the shit out of me.

In my professional opinion (sorry to take the high horse but I have over 30 years of experience in the industry)

any operating system that cannot contain application memory is CRAP.

Windows does a good job of containing application memory, but it also has to try to allocate what the application needs (or thinks it needs). Some badly coded applications will need much more memory than they should. That said, I have seen Firefox memory usage go up into the Gb range if several windows are open and especially if there is flash or js on the pages. So it might not take so long for the swap file to be called into use.

A couple of days ago my system seemed a bit sluggish which is unusual considering the horsepower I have. Took a look at FF and found 1.3GB memory used by it. I remember all the complaints across multiple forums some time ago and even now that FF has a memory leak. Mozilla team says it was a feature.

[Chicog]

It's all well and good reading articles about it, but there is no substitute for actually trying it out.

And in several years of using a netbook with Windows 7, 2Gb of RAM and no page file, I never had a single problem. Not an application crash, a BSOD, a hang or anything. Not that I tinkered with the machine. Just Office 2010, a PDF reader, antivirus. Oh and Chrome browser.

Providing you have a decent backup, go ahead and try it.

Windows loves memory, but in my experience it doesn't cry if it doesn't have a page file - as long as at least 2GB is available and you aren't overloading it.

If you want several apps open at the same time, different story I would imagine.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Chicog

[MKAsok]

It's all well and good reading articles about it, but there is no substitute for actually trying it out.

This. I dual boot my MBP with Win7. I only allocated 60GB on the SSD to windows because I hardly ever use it any more. Deleted the page file to free up some space on the windows partition and haven't had any problems whatsover (I do have 16GB of RAM on board).

[alfalfa19]

I always disable mine, to save space on the c drive, and reduce storage space used for my system images. I have never had any problems doing this, in Windows 7.

[4evermaat]

Set a fixed pagefile of 1gb. If your system crashes, windows can still generate a crash log. It is a myth that you need 1.5x the size of physical ram installed. The only reason you need a larger pagefile is if you do not have enough ram.

"You dont need to learn to love yourself; you just need to UNLEARN all the reasons you reject yourself..." -sent from TV app (Note 2).

[rhythmworx]

Yes you want it...should your system crash, power cut, on reboot the page file will help save your files becoming corrupt or even worse turn the drive into RAW format.

[astral]

I am running with a 2Gb swap file

52% of my 8Gb memory in use

I see windows recommended a file of 12Gb

1.5x physical memory.

Quite ridiculous

[Chicog]

Yes you want it...should your system crash, power cut, on reboot the page file will help save your files becoming corrupt or even worse turn the drive into RAW format.

What on earth is that pile of pony?

[astral]

IMHO opinion Memory Leakage is when one application accesses and possibly corrupts the dataspace

allocated to another application.

Definitely not acceptable and should be controlled by the OS

I accept that there may be other definitions.

FF grabbing more "virtual memory" to support multiple open pages, is a valid use of memory

unless it fails to release the memory when not required.

That does seem to be a FF "feature"

Virtual memory can be unlimited, consisting of Physical Memory plus the Paging File (swap file)

Allocate more if you need it.

Paging between physical memory and the swap file, will impact performance

and the answer, generally, is to add more physical memory.

Or allocate the process to another cpu, if you have that possibility.

This is the way we describe matters on HP NonStop machines

before anyone starts nitpicking on definitions.

[rhythmworx]

Yes you want it...should your system crash, power cut, on reboot the page file will help save your files becoming corrupt or even worse turn the drive into RAW format.

What on earth is that pile of pony?

Yes my bad, I originally written too much information then realised I was waffling on, so just threw it in there lol.

I was ready for bed.

[jpinx]

Usually an OS will use almost all the RAM available. Testing for how much RAM is free is a red-herring. The OS will swap the stuff into and out of the RAM and/or pagefile according to what it needs. It may or may not complain when things are a bit busy and slowing down. In linux you can look at what is using how much of the hardware (top is a good tool) - maybe there is a similar tool for windows. In the past I cerainly ran XP with just 1 Gb RAM and no swap. It was ok unless I opened too many applications, especially a load of Thaivisa pages which are very scripty

[rhythmworx]

Usually an OS will use almost all the RAM available. Testing for how much RAM is free is a red-herring. The OS will swap the stuff into and out of the RAM and/or pagefile according to what it needs. It may or may not complain when things are a bit busy and slowing down. In linux you can look at what is using how much of the hardware (top is a good tool) - maybe there is a similar tool for windows. In the past I cerainly ran XP with just 1 Gb RAM and no swap. It was ok unless I opened too many applications, especially a load of Thaivisa pages which are very scripty

Win 7 will show everything that is taking up RAM, the resource monitor is a good tool.

They still haven't fixed the known issue of MP4 file icons on the desktop causing massive memory leaks to cause a system crash though if your aware it's happening you can stop it I guess more than 50% of people don't though.

[Chicog]

Usually an OS will use almost all the RAM available. Testing for how much RAM is free is a red-herring. The OS will swap the stuff into and out of the RAM and/or pagefile according to what it needs. It may or may not complain when things are a bit busy and slowing down. In linux you can look at what is using how much of the hardware (top is a good tool) - maybe there is a similar tool for windows. In the past I cerainly ran XP with just 1 Gb RAM and no swap. It was ok unless I opened too many applications, especially a load of Thaivisa pages which are very scripty

Win 7 will show everything that is taking up RAM, the resource monitor is a good tool.

They still haven't fixed the known issue of MP4 file icons on the desktop causing massive memory leaks to cause a system crash though if your aware it's happening you can stop it I guess more than 50% of people don't though.

An obscure bug with an easy workaround: Disable thumbnail generation.

[JSixpack]

It's all well and good reading articles about it, but there is no substitute for actually trying it out.

So you definitely compared respective speeds then? And the result was?

And in several years of using a netbook with Windows 7, 2Gb of RAM and no page file, I never had a single problem.

. . .

Windows loves memory, but in my experience it doesn't cry if it doesn't have a page file - as long as at least 2GB is available and you aren't overloading it.

If you want several apps open at the same time, different story I would imagine.

But I've always had a page file, Windows-allocated, and never had a single problem--relating to memory capacity anyway.

As Tywais points out, open a lot of tabs in Firefox, as I always do, and you're looking at 1+ GB memory usage easily. I've heard Chrome is about the same.

[JSixpack]

IMHO opinion Memory Leakage is when one application accesses and possibly corrupts the dataspace

allocated to another application.

Why don't we just stick to standard definitions widely used and recognized in the industry rather than uneducated "opinions?"

The wrong definition usually leads to wrong conclusions. Seen a good case of that recently around here.

And that's hardly a "nitpick."

[JSixpack]

I am running with a 2Gb swap file

52% of my 8Gb memory in use

I see windows recommended a file of 12Gb

1.5x physical memory.

Quite ridiculous

But there's no reason not to let Windows handle it unless you're running out of room on the drive. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

You might be surprised how people do use quite a lot of memory by never closing anything and keeping a lot of memory hogs running at all times, often using virtual desktops.

[Chicog]

It's all well and good reading articles about it, but there is no substitute for actually trying it out.

So you definitely compared respective speeds then? And the result was?

No, but in my case it was about saving disk space so it was an either/or rather than a "how fast?".

It's a netbook so I never expected it to fly.

Perfectly usable without the page file though.

I should qualify that all my other machines have loads of RAM and disk and I generally just created a fixed page file on a separate disk.

I wouldn't tell anyone to get rid of the page file unless they have a specific reason, I'm just saying that I've never had the problems that many people seem to warn against but have never experienced.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Chicog

[damole]

I just turned off my pagefile, Windows 7 Home Premium, 8 GB RAM. Lets see what happens.

[KernelPanic]

I just turned off my pagefile, Windows 7 Home Premium, 8 GB RAM. Lets see what happens.

And that was the last we ever heard of Damole.

[damole]

Well after a month of no page file and no problems my pagefile is back to system managed. I just started using XAMPP again for some web development I'm doing and the Apache server kept crashing and then I got a memory warning from Windows. Turned the page file back on and everything was fine.

[4evermaat]

Well after a month of no page file and no problems my pagefile is back to system managed. I just started using XAMPP again for some web development I'm doing and the Apache server kept crashing and then I got a memory warning from Windows. Turned the page file back on and everything was fine.

Just use a 1GB fixed (1024 MB min/max size) and you should be fine. System managed file can be larger than needed, especially if you have 4+GB ram