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Sysinternals PageDefrag: Good, Bad?
Carol Haynes:
Excellent tool but if you want to avoid fragmentation before you use it set your page file to a fixed size. By default Windows XP sets page file to have minumum and maximum values.
In WIndows Vista the default is 'let windows manage it' and there are no details of size. The good and the bad are that in Vista by default page file is deleted when Windows is shutdown or restarted which can lead to a lot of fragmentation (and means that page file defragmentation doesn't work because there is no page file to defragment. Change the page file to fixed size and then defrag it.
Steven Avery:
Hi Folks,
in Vista by default page file is deleted when Windows is shutdown or restarted which can lead to a lot of fragmentation -Carol Haynes
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Wouldn't this reduce fragmentation ? Surely when the new page file is built it is built in one contiguous piece, hopefully, thus it would be a defacto defrag (definitely a defiant defacto defrag .. say that five times fast).
On XP, has anybody used PageDefrag and seen a lot of fragmentation ? As in the picture on their web site.
Also is there a utility to delete the page file in XP as in Vista ? (e.g. on closing). Since that is my only fragmented system file, I could do that rather than a defrag.
One utility would be to go to no page file, and then back to having one, would that take two reboots ? I don't know if XP could do that without reboots.
Shalom,
Steven Avery
Carol Haynes:
No - the Vista approach would cause more fragmentation.
You are assuming that there are large contiguous free spaces on your hard disk.
If you have 3Gb of memory then Vista will create a 3Gb page file initially - and there is absolutely no guarantee that there will be 3Gb of contiguous free space - and contiguous free space is not a requirement for the creation of a page file.
By setting a fixed page file size and then defragging it you will get a single page file that will be used every time you start Windows and so it shouldn't ever need to be defragged again as the same space will be used every time.
f0dder:
Get enough RAM and turn off the pagefile entirely - voila, problem solved :)
mrainey:
Get enough RAM and turn off the pagefile entirely - voila, problem solved
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I did just that a year or two ago, based on info in several of your posts. I've never had a problem (using XP Pro).
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