Question Page Faults with 0 MB Virtual Memory

[bill_phillips]

How is it that page faults are occurring when there's plenty of memory available and 0 MB of virtual memory allocated? Click Page Fault Screenshots to see screenshots of current Windows 10 Memory Resource Monitor showing >20 GB of Free memory and LatencyMon Process view with processes sorted by number of Hard Pagefaults showing several thousand pagefaults.

How can this be? There's lots of memory available. Can these page faults be eliminated? If yes how?

 

[TJ Hooker]

An application doesn't necessarily load everything it could possibly need into RAM when it first loads. If it later tries to access something that hasn't been loaded into memory, you'll get a (hard) page fault.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_fault#Major

AFAIK this is part of normal operation, and not something that can be eliminated. Are you having any actual performance issues?

Edit: and why did you disable page file?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Windows requires that a page file be configured and present, no matter how much RAM may exist.

 

[bill_phillips]

An application doesn't necessarily load everything it could possibly need into RAM when it first loads. If it later tries to access something that hasn't been loaded into memory, you'll get a (hard) page fault.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_fault#Major

AFAIK this is part of normal operation, and not something that can be eliminated. Are you having any actual performance issues?

Edit: and why did you disable page file?

Thanks TJ. Actually not having a page file is ok if you have enough memory and provide a dedicated dump file. See link below. And I do have performance problems when I'm mixing audio using my Digital Audio Workstation. My thinking is if Win10 isn't handling page faults, it has more time to process the plugins I use for mixing.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...opriate-page-file-size-for-64-bit-versions-of

I eliminated the page file because I thought it would reduce latency when I'm mixing. However, Win10 never seems to use more than 12GB and still has page faults. I'm looking for a way to convince Win10 to use more of my 32GB of physical memory and generate fewer page faults.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

The link you provided said exactly what we were telling you. A page file is required at all times, no matter how much RAM may be present. Your page faults are due to that missing file. However, it's your system, treat it as you will.

 

[Colif]

Page faults are badly named operations : Contrary to what "fault" might suggest, valid page faults are not errors, and are common and necessary to increase the amount of memory available to programs in any operating system that utilizes virtual memory, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_fault

Windows designed to use virtual memory, so therefor you get Page faults.

Couldn't you set up some of the ram as a Ramdisk and use that? if you want to use more of the ram and less of the ssd/hdd, it might fix the problem...

 

[bill_phillips]

I actually think that I've convinced my PC to keep pages loaded. I'm only using about 10% of the installed memory. So there's no need to unload pages that haven't been used for a while. I typed msconfig, opened the boot tab, then unchecked and checked the Maximum Memory box which enters my installed memory of 32,768 GB into the box. Then click Ok, Apply, Ok and Restart. Page Faults dropped to the low single digits. If, it worked, I'm expecting In use memory to creep up but haven't had a chance to test it yet.

Edit 5/29/19: I don't believe the msconfig settings above did anything. I'm guessing they have no effect in Windows 10. Page Faults continue to occur at high rates.

 

[bill_phillips]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_fault#Major

Edit: and why did you disable page file?

I disabled the page file because I thought that page faults were avoidable but I've learned that page faults are inevitable from the link above you provided and confirmed it from other sources. I now plan to try various page file options with my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) PC to see if any combination provides superior performance.