Now, please tell me… Is this normal? Or some tweaking can bring it down? Most of my friends say that their normal page file usage remains in the 200-300 region.. What is going on???:S :S
just in case it matters, my rig is-
c2d e6300 @ 1.86ghz
512 mb transcend 533 mhz
160 gb seagate
asus p5ld2-vm se
using Windows xp sp2
@Mods: Not really sure where to post this, so doing it here…
xp’s leaky memory management often fails to release memory after a process halt
if this pf usage is after several days of uptime, there is no reason to worry…most xp machines need a restart once a week at least…
however, if the pf usage is this high after a fresh restart, then i would isolate the offending process by sorting the process list by memory usage and determining whhich process is utilizing an inordinately high memory amount
do this: Go to task manager, click on view>select columns and check the ‘Virtual Memory Size’ box. Then it’ll show you which program’s using the maximum amount of virtual memory. You’ll be able to figure out the rest. See the screenshot attached.
I remember an old trick we used to use to reduce swap file usage… this should not do any harm to your setup … if it does not make a difference than delete the entry.
In the Windows directory there is a file named system.ini open this file with notepad and go down to the [386Enh] section and just below this heading make this entry and restart XP… check the swap file usage before and after making this entry and post back here…
It makes Windows use up physical ram to the max before touching page file. This I remember from the Intel 386 computer days. This used to be one of the tricks we used back then to speed up the computer
one more way is to use only the physical memory with no page size. I used to turn off paging completely even when i had just 512MB RAM on a amd 3000+ setup. It used to work fine. Only thing that you need to watch out is whether you are using too many memory intensive tasks at a time.