Where is pagefile.sys in windows xp

It's a fair bet that many Windows XP musicians don't even know they have a page file, let alone where it is or what effect it could have on their recording. We reveal all. Windows XP requires a lot less tweaking than previous Microsoft operating systems to make it suitable for running musical applications, which is great news for us PC musicians using XP. However, it's still not all plain sailing, and there's a lot of conflicting information about the most suitable size for the Windows XP 'page' file, so this month I thought I would explore the various setup options.

With the rather generous page file default setting you may be wasting drive space, while if you initially make the page file too small, Windows may increase its size at an inopportune moment during recording, and ruin an otherwise perfect take.

Some musicians even suggest you can disable the page file altogether, to guarantee no audio interruptions, if you have MB or more of RAM. But is this a good idea? The MB is a safety valve; in normal use the pagefile. First, we'll have a brief recap of the processes at work. An Intel or later processor can address up to 4GB of memory, which the processor manages in 'pages', each of which is 4K in size. Since the vast majority of people have far less physical RAM than 4GB, programs are allowed to occupy as much of this virtual 4GB of space as they wish, but with only the active parts actually in physical RAM.

If one of your applications ever tries to access an address that isn't currently sitting in system RAM, this generates an interrupt called a page fault, and the system then retrieves the address either from an application file on your hard drive or from the page file.

But data will only be paged out to the page file if you have less RAM than you really need. Otherwise it sits in the Page Pool in RAM, along with current data pages and the file cache the vcache of Win 9x , which contains data recently read or written to your hard drives. There is also a non-paged area in RAM for critical code that can't be sent to the page file. Any remaining RAM is normally used to make the file cache larger.

This last fact is one that causes a lot of confusion: Microsoft regard unused RAM as wasted space, while many users worry if their free RAM figure becomes low.

The most important thing to remember is that if any application requires more physical RAM, some of the file cache will be instantly discarded to make way for it, so we don't have to worry about XP cache size as much as many people think. Although many of us use SiSoftware's Sandra utility to provide loads of information about our PCs, as well as running various benchmarks, it's overkill for those who just want to find out what processor and RAM their machine has.

You can normally find out the basics from Windows' System applet in Control Panel, or wade through various pages in your BIOS, but here's an easy option for you. It's also a very clean install — just four files in their own folder, with no changes to the system folder or Registry — and runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, , and XP.

You can't actually disable virtual memory, but it is possible to set page file size to zero in the Advanced section of the System applet, under 'Performance'. However, this can sometimes waste lots of RAM, since some applications request large amounts of virtual memory when launched. Wartogh Sep 12, Ask a Question. Replies 2 Views Sep 13, Wartogh.

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YouTube is removing 'dislike' counter from all videos Arbie replied 27 minutes ago. Congress will require automakers to implement anti-drunk driving tech in vehicles Pwnjuice replied 36 minutes ago. Learn more. How to delete pagefile Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 9 months ago. Active 4 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 4k times. Improve this question. Removing the pagefile will have a negative impact on the performance of your system. It should also be noted that XP is now obsolete and you should consider migrating to Windows 7 or greater.

Burgi but its using 4GB space unnecessary — atek. Memory dump! While your memory dump goes into the page file, your pagefile gets used for Show 7 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. This answer assumes you know and accept the consequences of deleting the page file. You can disable it by doing the following: Open the System Properties window Navigate to the "Advanced" tab.

On the "Performance" section, choose the "Setting" button. On the "Performance Options" dialog box that opens, navigate to the "Advanced" tab.

On the "Virtual Memory" section, click on "Change". It will open "Virtual Memory" window. Uncheck the option "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" Select the drive where pagefile.