Swap file usage

Hi folks -

A question - My system has a gig of ram. However, I notice that when some programs are running there may be approximately half of the ram available but the swap file is in use. Any thoughts on why ram would be left unused and the system would be using virtual memory?

Example - When DisKeeper is active in the background and my anti-virus app is scanning, according to Task Manager there may be 500 - 600 mb of memory available and about 250 meg of the swap file is being used. CPU usage is in the mid 90 to 100 percentile range as this is happening.

If anyone has a clue as to how to make the system use available ram instead of virtual memory I'd sure be interested in hearing about it!

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Art

 

The key is whether or not any actual paging activity is going on.

Just because the swapfile is "in use" does not mean that there is any activity to it, which is what causes performance degradation.

So, if there is actually a sustained paging rate, then something is strange. If not, I wouldn't worry about it.

BTW Remember that this is a virtual system. Meaning that if a running application has the potential to ask for 8 GBs of storage (for whatever reason), windows is not about to try and allocate that much real Ram to it. The "leftovers" are going to appear as pagefile usage.

 

Swapfile

Thanks for the replies.

WhitPhil - Yes, the task manager indicates that there is actual usage going on as the swapfile use is in flux - in the instance I stated it varies from 248MB to 263MB observed. Since Task Manager shows considerably more than this amount of ram available I'm a little concerned about the use of the swapfile with more than enough ram not in use.

While I do realize that some apps will want to use the swapfile, does this mean that if I reduced the swapfile size the system would, indeed, be 'forced' to use ram as Steve Jones suggested or would the system just run slower?

Thanks again for the assistance, it's very much appreciated.

Art