Disable windows10 virtual memory

Discussion in 'Windows 10' started by travolter, Apr 23, 2024.

  1. travolter

    travolter MDL Novice

    Aug 29, 2015
    4
    0
    0
    In XP times I used to work with virtual memory disabled and computer was running smooth and without problems.

    Im planning to run my win10 1607 without pagefile. (Fast wake up of minimized programs that I dont use for long time)

    Do you have any advices? I know that I have to take care about running out of memory or Ill get a black screen when memory empty.

    Any memory management program suggestion to run along computer without virtual memory? Maybe some ram cleaners when certain limit reached?.

    I wonder if exist a memory manager program that start to use virtual memory only when physical memory is empty.
     
  2. nosirrahx

    nosirrahx MDL Expert

    Nov 7, 2017
    1,263
    606
    60
    Between using an out of date OS and bypassing technology designed to make your system work faster and more efferently, there is no possibility you will accomplish what you are setting out to accomplish.

    Having enough RAM and picking which apps automatically load on boot is almost the entire equation.

    If you want to do something exotic, you can move your pagefile (and anything like systems temp folders and browser cache) to a used Optane drive. You might not get any performance benefit from this but at least a bunch of random reads and writes are moved to a drive literally designed for enduring lots of reads and writes forever.
     
  3. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    4,003
    2,919
    150
    If you have enough RAM, just use IM toolkit RAM disk, and put the swapfile there. Set the ramdisk as dynamically growing/shrinking, set the swapfile to a minimum like 256 MB and a maximum depending on the ram you have and your lickings.

    Ruining w/o a swapfile at all always lead to problems sooner or later, given there are always programs written considering it present, no matter the RAM you have.

    Once you have the ramdisk enabled, place there also the temp directory and the caches of browsers, so you will have a great improvements in speed, a vastly reduced traffic on SSDs/HDDs, and your storage wont be filled by the huge amount of crap that browers produce.
     
  4. Dark Dinosaur

    Dark Dinosaur X Æ A-12

    Feb 2, 2011
    4,145
    5,925
    150
    i keep at least 1-2 GB of page file
    it's needed for some things. keep it.
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  5. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    4,003
    2,919
    150
    There are max and min values for a reason.

    There isn't any need to start with a fixed size big swapfile.

    If you don t need a full dump, in case of crash, 64MB as a minimum is more than enough.

    If you need/want it, the minimum is 400MB for win10+ or 256 for older flavours
     
  6. TigTex

    TigTex MDL Senior Member

    Oct 5, 2009
    474
    378
    10
    My honest opinion... don't touch the pagefile. Windows knows what to do with it. Feel free to move it to a secondary drive in case your C: drive is running out of space and that's it.
     
  7. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    4,003
    2,919
    150
    MS set most of the settings for the average Joe, that doesn't prevent the users to turn on some neurons and mod the settings to fit their needs.

    Otherwise according to that logic we didn't need a control panel at all. MS knows well what desktop backround is best for you, what programs you need and so on.
     
  8. Dark Dinosaur

    Dark Dinosaur X Æ A-12

    Feb 2, 2011
    4,145
    5,925
    150
    from what i read online. i need for crash dumps. logs.
    one source claims to keep 1GB only for crash dumps .. bla bla
    since i can't validate ... if it needed or not ..
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  9. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    4,003
    2,919
    150
    Read above.

    It's 400MB

    If you don't trust me, try to set your pagefile smaller than 400MB and windows will tell you what I already said.
     
  10. Dark Dinosaur

    Dark Dinosaur X Æ A-12

    Feb 2, 2011
    4,145
    5,925
    150
    so i have to set 800-1000 according to the message :)

    upload_2024-4-23_22-37-48.png
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  11. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    4,003
    2,919
    150
    It's win 11?

    If so they raised the value again
     
  12. Dark Dinosaur

    Dark Dinosaur X Æ A-12

    Feb 2, 2011
    4,145
    5,925
    150
    10 LTSC SN (EnterpriseSN)
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  13. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    4,003
    2,919
    150
    #13 acer-5100, Apr 23, 2024
    Last edited: May 17, 2024
    upload_2024-4-23_22-5-0.png


    Looks like they adjust the value according to the amount of RAM you have installed. This is on a 4GB machine

    BTW, just set the dump to reduced size. So the above limit won't apply.

    Reduced dumps are enough to investigate the blue screens, for normal users and normal technicians.

    Full dumps are useful for MS itself, via telemetry, and for kernel driver developers and other advanced scenarios.
     
  14. TigTex

    TigTex MDL Senior Member

    Oct 5, 2009
    474
    378
    10
    If you set a value that is too low or zero, once you run out of memory, windows will kill the app that is consuming the most memory. <- this is a problem. If you set a value that is too high, you will waste hard disk space <- this might be a problem. Leave it to MS defaults.
    That's it. There's no magic in the pagefile. If you are under high memory pressure, setting it to use a secondary drive used to improve the performance, especially in the HDD world 10 years ago. Now with SSDs and cheap RAM, the pagefile is just a failsafe for apps that leak memory or to dump the kernel in case of a BSOD.
    If you never run out of memory, the pagefile will be kept at near 0bytes usage at all times so whatever you do with it is insignificant.
     
  15. travolter

    travolter MDL Novice

    Aug 29, 2015
    4
    0
    0
    Thank you for all your replies guys. Its very instructive follow the topic and read the replies.
    I forgot to mention that Im using a computer that is limited in several ways.
    -Its a N4000 laptop that is limited by video drivers to use only win10 or newer.
    -Its a laptop that have the memory soldered to the board.. so you cannt upgrade. 4Gb available.

    In this scenario I wonder if a tool like cleanmem should help.

    I never needed a tool like that even when I was very limited of ram in XP years. Also I always though that these tools were just a placebo.
    Do you have any experience to share using tools like that?
     
  16. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    4,003
    2,919
    150
    #16 acer-5100, Apr 23, 2024
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2024
    In which planet?

    Windows, if not instructed differently, used to set the pagefile to twice the amount of the RAM installed (which was really dumb given you need a bigger file if you have little RAM).

    Now that huge amounts of ram are common, that rule is mitigated, but still the pagefile is very big, if set to automatic.

    Perhaps 10/11 IoT, Win Embedded, ThinPC, Win XP flp are set with no pagefile.sys by default, so is nothing out of this world.

    Just there are poorly written SW (including some by MS) that assume the file is there so having no swapfile may be annoying.
     
  17. nosirrahx

    nosirrahx MDL Expert

    Nov 7, 2017
    1,263
    606
    60
    Paging is not binary. Its used more based on how much RAM is left and how infrequently the contents of RAM is accessed.

    You can move the page file to a different drive and then watch its access which will be limited to paging alone. It's never going to be 0.
     
  18. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    4,003
    2,919
    150

    You can use rammap.exe which is a tool written by the legendary Mark Russinovic (and now downloadable from the MS website).

    It does marvels freeing the ram (but most of the ram freed is because it moves thing to the swapfile), btw is still an essential tool if you need real RAM space and you're in short of it
     
  19. atgpud2003

    atgpud2003 MDL Addicted

    Apr 30, 2015
    613
    110
    30
    If you are playing around Virtual memory, I would leave as default.. But if you have 4GB Ram, I highly recommended get 8GB or more.. 16GB is more standard today.. As my system, I am using 32GB ram and I set my Virtual memory as 16GB which works for me.. Let me remind you having 4GB I suggest increase Real RAM to 8GB or 16GB and you can lower 1/2 of Virtual Memory.. Should be fine..

    ATGPUD2003
     
  20. TigTex

    TigTex MDL Senior Member

    Oct 5, 2009
    474
    378
    10
    Unfortunately, that will not work on soldered RAM. There's always the Linux way... for such a low spec device, linux is quite capable as you won't be doing much more than internet access and word processing with it.