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WinXP swap file question / problem. by AndyA 2009-02-10 09:43:50
My machine has 4GBytes of ram (well 3.5GB of usable ram since it's a 32bit OS) and is rarely using more than about 1.5GB for applications but is still thrashing the HD like crazy.

Taking a look at the task manager it seems that windows in it's wisdom has decided to use about half a gig of swap, cache about a gig of files and leave over a gig of ram unused. Hardly what I would consider an optimal use of resources.

So in order to try and force windows to be sensible I tried shrinking and/or disabling the swap file. Only windows seems to be ignoring this setting.

Currently System Properties -> Advanced -> Performance options -> Advanced -> Virtual memory is reporting "Total paging file size for all drives: 128 MB" but the task manager is reporting a Page File Usage of 721MB. It is also reporting 2,767,600k of available memory.

Either windows is fitting 721MB of data in to a 128MB file or something weird is going on.

Basically no matter what size I set the swap file to or even if I disable it completely the task manager still reports a swap file in the 700MB region and page faults on applications indicating that it genuinely is using a swap file.

Any ideas (other than install Linux)?
[ Reply ]
  Did you reboot afterwards? (n/t) by imrambi2009-02-10 09:49:57
    ^^ What he said by jpprater2009-02-10 09:53:19
      The boxes saying Reboot Required were for a reason by AndyA2009-02-10 09:56:42
  One thing I did with regards to the swap file is by Snate2009-02-10 09:55:13
    Would be nice to do but by AndyA2009-02-10 10:00:01
      Oh well, I did the same thing on my laptop even by Snate2009-02-10 10:03:56
  With that much memory, I see no reason why you can by mpicklesimer12009-02-10 10:24:07
    I tried. It still used 720MB of swap. by AndyA2009-02-10 10:52:05
      Task manager sucks by Menetlaus2009-02-10 12:33:22
        Cache isn't "commit charge" by hobbs2009-02-10 13:22:40
          Correction: by hobbs2009-02-10 13:24:40
  make sure you're setting the changes? by ihavebigpiranha2009-02-10 11:38:37
  Windows lies. by hobbs2009-02-10 13:19:31

 

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