moving page file

My machine at home is Win98SE; however, a new machine here at the camp is Win2kSP3. I like to keep the OS on its own relatively small partition, so I can copy it regularly with DiskCopy. With Win98, I could move the swap file. I don't know how the trick is done with Win2k, however. Thus my small drive C: has far too much space devoted to the swap file (*page file* in Win2K?). Can I move it to one of the other physical drives?
Regards,
O.

 

Yes you can.

My Computer -> right click -> properties
Advanced
Performance Options
Virtual Memory
Change...

Set you page file here.


Cheers

Dagga

 

And moving it off the system drive should give you some performance improvement as well.

I'd ignore the warning you will get about the memory dump that will no longer work in the event of a crash. The file is almost never used by anyone and never (that I've ever heard) used by normal mortals. I think there are 4 programmers at Microsoft that can make sense of it.

 

Thanks, D. I tried this when I first began with this machine; I dropped the page file on C: to the minimum (2MB), and told it to run 5500 MB on H:, another physical. Windows did not like that at all, so I returned C: to the recommended 1500MB, figuring I was barking up the wrong tree. Is it the case that I MUST have a significant page file on the OS drive?
Regards,
O.

 

Instead of setting a minimum setting on C: you should just delete the entries for the drives you don't want the pagefile on and click set.
On my home machine I have the pagefile on a separate "swap" partition, and no pagefile on the os partition.

 

I successfully followed your instruction, but the resulting numbers don't add up.

I have a 996 MB drive dedicated to the PageFile; the page file is set to 985 Min and Max and the page file on my Win2k C drive was set blank on Min and Max.

Now come three puzzles:

1. "Performance Options>Virtual Memory" states that "Total paging file size for all drives is 1753 MB ", not 985 MB.

2. The total available displayed by Win2k's Windows Task Manager under the heading "Commit Charge (K)> Limit" should be the sum of RAM, 524 MB, and 985 MB -- that is, 1,509 MB. But what Windows Task Manager actuall displays is 2287 MB.

3. The difference between these two last numbers is identical to the Min Virtual Memory I HAD on the C drive!

What's going on?

No other drive besides the PageFile drive is listed as having a page file.

Regards,
NormanS

 

Update.

By setting the page file on drive C to 10 MB min/max, instead of 0 min/max, the numbers now do add up. Appparently, eventhough the Virtual Memory setting was blank, in fact, the actual file was not 0 in size! In other words, Win2k Virtual memory control lied. Perhaps, Win2k only accepts changing the page file size on the C drive to a value other than 0.

Before changing to page file on C to 10 MB, I ran Perfect Disk Analysis, which clearly showed that the page file on drive C was huge (about 778 MB), not 0.

 

Is it true that Virtual Memory (Page File size) on drive C cannot be set to 0, as has been my experience?

 

I dont have a copy of 2KPro installed here at home but as far as I know it should be possibel to have a 0MB pagefile on C (i.e. not have one at all)

My XP Pro certainly has that and when I build servers at work I always move the page file off C for performance and integrity reasons.

I'd also like to issue with Newt's earlier statement

"I'd ignore the warning you will get about the memory dump that will no longer work in the event of a crash. The file is almost never used by anyone and never (that I've ever heard) used by normal mortals. I think there are 4 programmers at Microsoft that can make sense of it. "

Whoa re these 4 people - I've never yet had a dump file mean anything to anyone !!!!!

 

Thanks AndyO for your reply.

Please exand on what you mean by "integrity reasons ".

Regards,
NormanS

 

NormanS

Page files have a nasty habit of becoming corrupted and getting waaaay to big

If this happens on your C drive and fills it then your machine will crash. If the machine is a server this is BAD news so I like to keep it seperate if at all possible

 

Thanks AndyO for your explanation.