Delete or reallocate temporary page file after system recovery

[DRiBay]

I recently had to recover my Windows 7 system after a crash. I have a relatively small boot drive that has my operating system and a few applications on it so I have the page file allocated to a different hard drive. While I was troubleshooting my crash of Windows 7 I disabled the other hard drives. I was able to recover my system but upon logging into Windows it told me it had created a temporary page file. I don't have a enough room to keep this page file on my boot drive and I have turned it off in the virtual memory settings, but "my computer" says there's virtually (no pun intended) no room left on the drive, but the virtual memory settings say there is like 13gb which is roughly the size of the page file so I know it is still lurking there somewhere. How do I remove it or get it to be fully reallocated to the other drive where it used to be?

 

[Darkbreeze]

You should be able to do it by Open Control Panel > Systems > Advanced System properties > Advanced tab > Performance > Settings Performance options > Advanced tab > Performance Settings > Performance Options > Advanced tab > Virtual Memory > Change > Uncheck Automatically manage paging file size > select system drive > select No paging File > Click OK/Apply till you exit all windows. Restart.

Then search your boot drive for pagefile.sys and swapfile.sys and delete them. You will have to make a few settings changes in order to do this most likely. In the control panel folder options you will need to change the hidden files and folder option to "show hidden files and folders" and uncheck "hide protected operating system files". You might also need to download and run the following script if windows won't let you have access and then delete the page file afterwards by right clicking on the pagefile and selecting "take ownership" and then deleting when it's done applying the setting.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1911-take-ownership-shortcut.html

 

[Solandri]

Temporary page files should disappear upon rebooting. If it sticks around, open a file explorer (windows key + E). Hit alt to access the Tools menu, go down to Folder Options. Click on the View tab. Uncheck "Hide protected operating system files". Hit Apply.

The pagefile should now be visible in the root directory of the drive. If you've turned off virtual memory as you've described, then you can just delete it. Re-check "Hide protected operating system files" and hit Apply.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Is there an echo in here? Just kidding.

 

[DRiBay]

Perfect. Thank you so much. I somehow did not know about the "hide protected operating system files" option. I deleted that pagefile.sys and I am back to normal. Thank you both.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Absolutely. Any time.

 

[Solandri]

Is there an echo in here? Just kidding.

Yeah, we typed up our replies at the same time. You hit Post 20 sec before I did.

 

[orlbuckeye]

I recently had to recover my Windows 7 system after a crash. I have a relatively small boot drive that has my operating system and a few applications on it so I have the page file allocated to a different hard drive. While I was troubleshooting my crash of Windows 7 I disabled the other hard drives. I was able to recover my system but upon logging into Windows it told me it had created a temporary page file. I don't have a enough room to keep this page file on my boot drive and I have turned it off in the virtual memory settings, but "my computer" says there's virtually (no pun intended) no room left on the drive, but the virtual memory settings say there is like 13gb which is roughly the size of the page file so I know it is still lurking there somewhere. How do I remove it or get it to be fully reallocated to the other drive where it used to be?

FYI - Is your drive a HD or a SSD? It's not recommended that you have a pagefile on an SSD. They say it's better to not have a page file then to have one on your SSD.

 

[Darkbreeze]

FYI - Is your drive a HD or a SSD? It's not recommended that you have a pagefile on an SSD. They say it's better to not have a page file then to have one on your SSD.

Wrong. If you have no pagefile you will be highly likely to encounter various and sundry errors, stops and crashes in windows, even if windows doesn't need the pagefile. It expects it to be there and it doesn't like it when it's not. There is no reason to not have a pagefile on an SSD, and in fact it will be much quicker since the pagefile is used in place of RAM and having a pagefile on an SSD results in a way faster pagefile access time over a pagefile on a HDD.

 

[orlbuckeye]

FYI - Is your drive a HD or a SSD? It's not recommended that you have a pagefile on an SSD. They say it's better to not have a page file then to have one on your SSD.

Wrong. If you have no pagefile you will be highly likely to encounter various and sundry errors, stops and crashes in windows, even if windows doesn't need the pagefile. It expects it to be there and it doesn't like it when it's not. There is no reason to not have a pagefile on an SSD, and in fact it will be much quicker since the pagefile is used in place of RAM and having a pagefile on an SSD results in a way faster pagefile access time over a pagefile on a HDD.

http://www.disk-partition.com/kb/tips-ssd-optimization-windows7-2.html

The article recommends no page file. I removed my page file after installing a SSD 3 years ago and didn't experience what you said. I did increase to 16 gb of ram after that but I used 8 gb for a year with nothing happening like you said.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I know people who have put small block chevy engines in 30-40 year old Chevy Vega's. They run and drive down the street. It doesn't make it a good idea.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

FYI - Is your drive a HD or a SSD? It's not recommended that you have a pagefile on an SSD. They say it's better to not have a page file then to have one on your SSD.

Wrong. If you have no pagefile you will be highly likely to encounter various and sundry errors, stops and crashes in windows, even if windows doesn't need the pagefile. It expects it to be there and it doesn't like it when it's not. There is no reason to not have a pagefile on an SSD, and in fact it will be much quicker since the pagefile is used in place of RAM and having a pagefile on an SSD results in a way faster pagefile access time over a pagefile on a HDD.

http://www.disk-partition.com/kb/tips-ssd-optimization-windows7-2.html

The article recommends no page file. I removed my page file after installing a SSD 3 years ago and didn't experience what you said. I did increase to 16 gb of ram after that but I used 8 gb for a year with nothing happening like you said.

Just because you haven't yet (and you eventually will) encountered problems does not mean that disabling the paging file is wise, or safe. Window's design requires that there be at least a minimal paging file. If there isn't enough RAM to satisfy an allocation request, and there isn't a paging file to back it up, Windows reacts very negatively at that point, up to, and including, possible loss of data or file system corruption. It's very unwise to think that you are smarter than the designers. I hope you have backups.

 

[orlbuckeye]

Well i've been doing for 3 years and I have 16 gb ram.

 

[USAFRet]

Reduce the pagefile down to 1GB, rather than no pagefile. Any bluescreen dump, and some applications require at least a minimal pagefile to work.

 

[orlbuckeye]

Well what i read when I first got my SSD was to not have a page file move it to the HD and not the SSD. I'm sure if not having a page file was as critical to Windows operation then MS would have not put a check box on the page file.

 

[USAFRet]

Well what i read when I first got my SSD was to not have a page file move it to the HD and not the SSD.

Having it on a different drive is different than no pagefile at all.

 

[orlbuckeye]

Yes i know the recommendation i got was EITHER none or move to HD. Even the article I posted in the topic says to turn off page file.

http://www.disk-partition.com/kb/tips-ssd-optimization-windows7-2.html

 

[Darkbreeze]

You can lead a horse to water.....................................................

 

[Darkbreeze]

http://lifehacker.com/5426041/understanding-the-windows-pagefile-and-why-you-shouldnt-disable-it

See, I got articles too. Heh.

 

[orlbuckeye]

The article doesn't mention the reason the first article I ever read said was to disable the page file. The reason the article gave was in reference to SSD's (Which is another myth- limit the number of writes to a SSD drive which i've also read contradicting articles on that subject also). I've never seen any errors like that except on my work PC because I can't control the resources I put in to it. I have XP and 2 gb of ram Core 2 duo Intel processor and I work in IT. But as soon as we pick a vendor i will be getting a pc with modern resources. Yes i do have a page file on my work PC but I still get out of memory error and I have 80 gb of free space.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The only benefit of disabling the paging file on the page from your link is regaining 3-4 GB of storage space on the hard drive. Is says it right in the first two lines. Anybody that worried about 3-4GB of storage space on their hard drive needs a new hard drive because it's either extremely old or has outlived its usefulness. Even getting an 8GB usb 3.0 thumb drive and allocating that space for the page file would be better than no page file.

 

[Solandri]

Well what i read when I first got my SSD was to not have a page file move it to the HD and not the SSD. I'm sure if not having a page file was as critical to Windows operation then MS would have not put a check box on the page file.

MS puts a check box there so you can disable the pagefile on a particular drive if you have multiple drives. If you disable all pagefiles, it will throw up a warning saying that operating without a pagefile is strongly not recommended. You can do it if you have gobs of RAM that you'll never completely use. But it's much safer to leave at least a small pagefile. I suspect the option to disable the pagefile entirely is there just to keep Windows compatible with embedded systems which run out of ROM.

The warning against pagefiles on the SSD is old, and dates from back in the day when SSDs were small and had limited write endurance. The fear then was that you'd fill RAM and start swapping, and the huge amount of data Windows wrote to the pagefile would wear out the 32 GB or 64 GB SSD's write cycles prematurely.

This isn't a concern anymore with modern SSDs. Sizes are bigger, and over provisioning and reserve memory cells are now the norm. So even consumer SSDs should be able to withstand more than a decade of writes.
http://techreport.com/review/26523/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-casualties-on-the-way-to-a-petabyte

Not only would I recommend keeping a pagefile on a system with the SSD, I would recommend putting it on the SSD. The SSD is about 10x slower than RAM, but about 100x faster than the HDD when it comes to random read/writes. So whereas your computer would slow down to a crawl if it started swapping to HDD, you'll barely notice the slowdown if it starts swapping to an SSD. (Of course if it's continuously swapping, you really should fix the situation by getting more RAM.) The one situation where I wouldn't recommend a swapfile on the SSD is if your SSD is nearly full. The need to erase cells before they can be written to again means the SSD slows down substantially if it's nearly full (ideally you want to keep 15%-25% free). Constantly writing to the pagefile will exacerbate this slowdown.

Remember folks, your computer is not a piece of fine art to be put on a pedestal to be babied and preserved. It's a machine, a tool - don't be afraid to use it. For SSDs in particular, don't be afraid to use up its write endurance. By the time your 128 GB SSD suffers write failures due to overuse, you'll probably be able to replace it with a 1 TB SSD for $100, if we haven't already moved on to holographic crystal storage or something.

 

[Darkbreeze]

By the time your 128 GB SSD suffers write failures due to overuse, you'll probably be able to replace it with a 1 TB SSD for $100, if we haven't already moved on to holographic crystal storage or something.

Wait, what, we don't have that yet? Prolly by this time next year. Except, they'll call it HATA.