Page File Issue

Ryo Hazuki

<edit>Dang I spelt Issue wrong, could someone change it?<edit>


Im have 2 hard drives installed in my PC.

The first contains WindowsXP, the second contains Windows2K.

Some of The pagefile for windowsXP is allocated to the second drive(win2k)

now the problem is when I start up windows2k, it has to delete the pagefile for windowsXP, It takes quite a while.

Im pretty sure the 2 Operating systems use the same pagefile name (eg. Pagefile.sys)

So is there a way to change the one Win2k or XP uses?

Or Should I allow the pagefile to be cleared when I shutdown windowsXP? This causes slower shutdowns though!

Any ideas?

sceptre

If I'm reading you correctly, you've got 2 pagefiles for XP (pagefile spread over 2 drives is 2 pagefiles). Effectively you've got three pagefiles when you probably only need two. The easiest thing to do is to delete the allocation of XP pagefile on the win2k drive.

In XP, right-click My Computer, click Properties. Go for the Advanced tab. Click the "settings" button under "performance". Click the Advanced tab. Click "Change"
(they really do like to hide it, don't they)

Click the non-XP drive in the list. Change the pagefile setting to "No paging file". Careful to do this only with the one you want to change. Click "Set." Click "OK" all the way out, reboot and you should be set.

Careful that you do this correctly. Get it wrong (ie by deleting the pagefile allocation on your XP system drive) and you may have hassle getting into XP at all, depending on how much RAM you have.

Ryo Hazuki

Well, I would consider the XP pagefile as 1 single pagefile, even though its split over the 2 hard drives.

Splitting the pagefile over 2 drives offers better performance, in what way im not sure (seek-times? )but in any case
I want to keep it this way, and still stop the massive delay at the Win2k startup.

I want to know if its possible to change the name windows assigns to the pagefile.

retneil

change name at the following hive location :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\
Session Manager\Memory Management

pdogs

I agree that the pagefile is one pagefile but which can be split over multiple partitions. In any case, perhaps that's only semantics.

If the pagefile is split-up in this manner, Windows Memory Management will utilise those parts of it to best effect using whichever partition(s) that will create the best performance. So splitting it should result in improved rather than decreased performance.

Some performance gain can be achieved by setting the min = max size; this at the least minimises defragmentation of that partition.

Having some or all of the pagefile on a physical HDD other than the one the OS is installed on, improves performance and prolongs HDD life because the drive heads have to travel less as they swap in and out pages from virtual memory.

Having at least 2MB on the OS partitiion is recommended so that a minidump can be created if necessary. Having a total pagefile size of at least RAM plus 2MB is recommended for a complete ramdump. If you dont understand about debugging such "dumps" then this needn't even concern you.

Getting the settings as you want them from RClick MyComputer>>Properties can take a bit of fiddling, since if you make more than one change at a time, the changes may not stick even after a reboot. You need to go back in after every change/reboot and check them out till they stick like you want them.

HERE is a link regarding changing the pagefile name.

Since you appear to be dual booting Win2K/XP (or are you choosing the boot choice via hardware/BIOS) then it is up to you how to split the pagefile up for both OSes. The pagefile on any given partition will be shared by the OSes assuming its settings refer to it from the VM settings via MyComputer in either OS.

Hope this helps. Good Luck.

PS BTW The difference between a dual boot from a menu on the Master's Active Partition and choosing via hardware/BIOS relates, in the main, to Drive Letter Assignments.