

Windows automatically manages your page file settings by default. Click Start, type Advanced System Settings into the Start menu and press Enter to open it.Ĭlick the Settings button under performance.Ĭlick over to the Advanced tab and click the Change button in the Virtual memory section. However, if you want to adjust your page file settings, you can do so from the Advanced System Settings window. Windows automatically manages the page file’s settings for you. In summary, there’s no good reason to disable the page file - you’ll get some hard drive space back, but the potential system instability won’t be worth it. This can also cause problems when running software that requires a large amount of memory, such as virtual machines. If programs start to use up all your available memory, they’ll start crashing instead of being swapped out of the RAM into your page file. However, disabling the page file can result in some bad things. People have tested this theory and found that, while Windows can run without a page file if you have a large amount of RAM, there’s no performance benefit to disabling the page file. The thinking goes like this: the page file is slower than RAM, and if you have enough RAM, Windows will use the page file when it should be using RAM, slowing down your computer. Some people will tell you that you should disable the page file to speed up your computer. Myth: Disabling the Page File Improves Performance You can also try freeing up memory - for example, by getting rid of useless programs running in the background.

If you do see your hard drive start to grind away and programs start to slow down when you have a large amount open, that’s an indication that your computer is using the page file - you can speed things up by adding more RAM. With enough RAM in modern computers, the average user’s computer shouldn’t normally use the page file in normal computer use. You’ll see your computer’s hard disk light blinking as this happens. If you maximize the program later and notice that it takes a while to come back instead of instantly snapping to life, it’s being swapped back in from your page file. For example, if you’ve had a program minimized for a long time and it isn’t doing anything, its data may be moved from RAM to your page file. Windows will try to move data you aren’t using to the page file. While writing this data to your hard disk and reading it back later is much slower than using RAM, it’s back-up memory - rather than throwing potentially important data away or having programs crash, the data is stored on your hard drive. When your RAM becomes full, Windows moves some of the data from your RAM back to your hard drive, placing it in the page file.
