Resolved Cannot resolve "Your system has no paging file"

I am on an XP Pro SP3 machine, up to date running a 40GB HDD and 768MB of RAM. The HDD is only 2/3rds full.
For the last week I have been getting the start up message, "Your system has no paging file, or the paging file is too small ".

I have tried the following repairs without success
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315270
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316528

I have found that changing the permissions to Full Control for those users that do not have it does not stick on restart.

Searching has not revealed any other solutions other than reformatting... Any thoughts on what I might do next?

Thanks

 

Thanks for the reply

Set as system managed

Minimum 2MB
Recommended 1147MB
Currently allocated 256MB

I tried at Minimum 1152 and max 2304 but the start up error remains and the currently allocated remains 256MB (I don't know if that should be the way it is or not)

 

There are two user accounts on the machine - both admin accounts. When I switch to have the other account open on start up, I get the same error

 

I had not as I don't have a definitive date on which it started. It isn't my computer as I was contacted after the fact. I don't know what consequences would arise if I did use SR

 

PF Usage starts at 550MB and climbs to between 850 and 950 as I open programs.

I found that MSmeng.exe is using 95%+ of the CPU on startup. A search tells me that Windows Defender is the culprit but that is not installed. MS Security Essentials is the culprit here for when I kill the process MSE sends up a warning. I have not found a solution to this as it restarts itself after I kill it. I have uninstalled and reinstalled MSE but the problem remains.

I noticed on Tuesday that the time/date was wrong so I corrected it and didn't think about it again until I glanced at it this morning. It was still on Tuesday's date so I replaced the CMOS battery. The old one barely moved the needle on my meter so, it made sense.

I then restarted and followed Evan's suggested path but on restart and after a search of My Computer, there was no pagefile.sys in spite of setting unhide operating system files and and show hidden files and folders.

As I was searching all of a sudden I got a BSOD - 0xD1.

Did a search and found a hotfix for the cause. I obtained the fix and restarted upon which another BSOD appeared - 0xA. Never got to use the hotfix

As 0xA referred to "recently added third-party software or hardware" as the possible cause, I discounted this as it simply wasn't the case. Last Known Good Configuration didn't work and the remaining options were do a repair install, system restore, etc...

At this point, as everything was backed up, I thought, don't waste any more time, just reinstall a fresh copy of XPP.

I was about to do so when I thought, the only thing I changed was the battery. I swapped out the new battery for the old one and the machine started normally and, with no error message.

I then went in and set the paging file to system managed, restarted and the error returned... but the machine runs.

Now, I'm not sure what to do. Reinstalling Windows appears like the easiest and fastest solution but since replacing the battery produced a BSOD on start up I don't know if it would do so if I was in the installation process and at least at this point I have a machine that pseudo works.

 

The resolution in the end was to sell the customer a new computer... they are happy.

Thanks everyone