page faults = add memory ?

I noticed for the first time in process explorer that most apps are registering thousands of "page faults ". I have searched and found lots of info on this, and noted that one item indicated that if you have "lots" of page faults, that is an indication that you need to add more memory. Well, I have one gig of (two sticks of 512 DDR) memory and for some reason thought that should be adequate for general internet surfing with XP.

I do run a lot of resident apps and my firewall has been pegging out since upgrade to Firefox 0.9.2 so maybe that is the problem, but since I did not notice the page faults before, I have nothing to compare it to, but am considering looking at it again without the firewall or without Firefox. Meanwhile, any opinions how many page faults amount to "lots" and whether or not 1 gig should be adequate memory?

 

See if This article helps.

 

In order to see whats going on, use Task Manager. Process Tab, then view-> select columns. Add Page faults delta, Page faults, and Virtual memory size. See which process is doing it. I would almost assure you that your PF count is well within normal operation. The OS does a lot of PFs. With a gig o ram, you should have more than enough unless u are doing heavy graphics/video work.

 

LOL - I think Joe probably has it right. My system has about the same physical memory as yours and is running fine. I noticed that Explorer.exe is adding a page fault every second and that Outlook adds 25-30 every time I click on a post in my inbox - not opening them but just clicking on them.

 

Not sure why, but did not think to check the page faults on the firewall previously, but just did, and after about a half hour of up-time, the PF count on it alone is 17 million plus, so I am thinking that the fact that it is peggin out the cpu usage is surely the problem. Will try re-install the firewall to see if that negates the pegging, and if not, will revert to another firewall cause that just ain't right...

 

Post back. I did re-install the firewall, and that solved the cpu usage pegging out problem (I had missed and forgotten about an "update" to the firewall, which in retro had to cause the problem).

Also, altho the page faults in the firewall dropped drastically, but is still a concern, as now, after about two hours of up time, it registers 3.5 million page faults, which altho way way down, still seems to be way too high compared to other components.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what the potential implications are for the firewall itself invoking that many page faults? Does that mean maybe that it is just hyperactive and doing it's job very intensely? Or is it indicative of a problem? Or?

 

What firewall?

Running Sygate on XP - page fualts after 42 minutes is 92 K

Regards - Charles

 

without being the author of that software, i cant say for sure what its doing, but my guess it is does a lot of allocations of buffers to examine traffic back and forth. Depending on how efficient the programmer was, this could cause a lot of 'churn' of the memory, and the OS would be trimming the snot out of his working set to keep him under control. This behavior would generate a high number of page faults, although it wouldnt nessicarily be a problem in and of itself. Pagefaults are pretty expensive, CPU utilization-wise, but if the OS is trimming, its being done on the idle thread, and you would never notice it from a performance standpoint.

 

Joe:

Thanks for info.


charlesvar:

quote: "What firewall? "

SecurePoint. FWIW, FYI, you likely have not heard of or noticed this firewall, as I had not, or it was way down on the list, usually "unreviewed" and unrated. But, I had been looking for freeware that was NOT a cut down version of the costware, and yet was optimally secure, and this appeared to be a business oriented European firewall that was evolving to a free personal firewall. Anyway, I gave it a test run, and it passed all of the major online firewall tests, with no leaks or open ports , etc... So, it looks pretty good for now, but of course with my limited knowledge it is impossible to be certain. Drawbacks: forum is not very useful, some of the selections and dialogues are still in German, and of course the phantom update that triggered the firewall to eat up CPU usage is not very encouraging (altho, that might have been a "timing confict "...). But overall, at this point, it appears to fit my requirements well, altho frankly I am about to give up on freeware firewalls and go to a hardware router firewall...

 

Hi keywester,

Out of curiousity, is ICF running as well?

Its running it on my system along w/Sygate. You're the first person that I've seen raise this issue, so I'm going to run Sygate w/ and w/o ICF running during a comparable period of time to see if it makes a difference. The reason that I think it may make a difference is because w/ICF running, the 3rd party firewal is not as busy.

Regards - Charles

 

charlesvar:

quote: "...is ICF running as well? "

Nope, never have turned on ICF - is that worthwhile or even an advisable thing to do? Likely I am mistaken, but I thought that with any "regular" firewall running, that ICF should not be turned on... Or, does it matter? Most of all, does it help?

Altho I have noted where some people have done and still do run two "regular" (non ICF) firewalls simultaneously (myself included long long ago), I have also noted a lot of warnings that you should never run two "regular" (non ICF) firewalls simultaneously, and further, not even have two firewalls installed at the same time.

 

Hi Keywester,

I've never mixed two 3rd party firewalls - like you, read not a good thing to do. Have run ICF w/ both ZAP and Sygate and never had a problem. Did see a post from Johanna one time stating that Norton didn't like ICF at all.

I do know ICF "front ends" the two firewalls I've mentioned and both ZAP and Sygate are a lot less "busy" because of that.

Have run with ICF on/off and doesn't affect resources or time in any way that I can detect.

Regards - Charles

 

Interesting. Anyone else out there have any input on this side subject?