How to Manage Page File Size?

[viveknayyar007]

While working with Windows, especially when using Windows XP or above, there might be instances when you have noticed Windows showing a notification saying ‘Low Virtual Memory’. This is because the physical memory, which is the RAM of the computer is full, and even the paging file that Windows automatically maintains and uses as the virtual RAM is out of space as well.

The paging file in Windows stores all the most inactive running applications and instances of software, and allows the operating system to perform paging (formerly known as file swapping) between the physical memory and the paging file. When both the physical and virtual memory are overloaded due to heavy applications running in the foreground and background, the system performance remarkably decreases, hence making the end users experience reduced speed.

Since Windows allows the minimum size of the paging file to be 1.5 times the physical memory (RAM) and can go up to 4 GB to the max, administrators can manually customize the default settings, and modify the paging file size as required.

For example, if a computer has 4 GB of RAM installed as its physical memory, the minimum size of the paging file can be 6 GB and can increase up to 16 GB if needed.

Although Microsoft Windows is configured to automatically manage the paging file size (the virtual memory) according to the consumption, setting the maximum page file size manually might sometimes increase the speed of the computer at the cost of additional consumption of the hard disk space that the increased paging file size would occupy.

Administrator account is used to modify the virtual memory settings in Windows operating systems, and the process is given as below:

■Log on to Windows computer with administrator account.
■Click Start button.
■From the Start menu, right-click Computer and then click Properties from the context menu that appears.
■On the opened window, from the left pane, click Advanced system settings.



■On the System Properties box, ensure that you are on the Advanced tab.
■Click Settings under the Performance section.



■On the Performance Options box, go to the Advanced tab.



■Under the Virtual memory section, click Change button.
■On the opened Virtual Memory box, uncheck Automatically manage paging file size for all drives checkbox.



■From the drive list, click to select the one on which Windows is installed (typically the C: drive).
■ Click to select the Custom size radio button.



■In the enabled fields, specify the minimum and maximum values for the paging file size.
■Click Set button to save the settings.
■Finally click OK to save the changes.
■Restart the computer to allow the changes to take effect.

Note: The steps given above are as per Windows 7 interface.