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Does it make sense to disable the windows swap file?

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Deozaan:
Thanks tomos, PageDfrg gave me the option to defrag my pagefile when I reboot. It says it is 2 fragments, so it doesn't appear too badly fragmented.

When I disabled the pagefile, I also deleted the actual file. So it had to be created again once I enabled it. When I enabled it, I'm pretty sure it's just how it was before. I just let the system decide how much disk space to use, which is 2GB just like my RAM.

I'm not exactly sure what started up the Out of Memory issues for IE though. It only happens if I leave Gmail or iGoogle or Google Reader open for a while. I don't normally use IE but I have a lot of e-mail and RSS subscriptions, etc., on my old Google account, so to be logged in to both of them at once I use IE for the old one.

Carol Haynes:
It is a very bad idea to allow Windows to decide on the size of the PageFile. The trouble is it will make a small one, then decide it needs a bit bigger, then a bit bigger and before long you have fragments all over your disc.

Fix the maximum and minimum sizes to be the same. As a rule of thumb 1.5 x memory is useful but with 2Gb of memory you can probably allocate less. Once you create a new PageFile defrag it and it will then remain as a single contiguous file forever.

f0dder:
Back when I used a paging file, I used to set a "reasonable lower bound", around 1gig, based on how much would ever go in there. But I let windows manage the upper bound, just in case I would get into a silly extreme situation where it was necessary. But of course with todays hard disk sizes, you might as well just make a fixed 4gig pagefile :) (or grab enough physical RAM you don't need one in the first place :) :)).

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