Clearing page file usage

The page file, also known as the swap file, pagefile, or paging file, is a file on your hard drive. The computer uses the copies in RAM rather than repeatedly reading the same files from your hard drive.

When you view a web page, the web page is downloaded and stored in your RAM. Image Credit: Glenn Batuyong on Flickr. This file is a form of virtual memory. Image Credit: Honou on Flickr. You can also try freeing up memory — for example, by getting rid of useless programs running in the background. Some people will tell you that you should disable the page file to speed up your computer.

However, disabling the page file can result in some bad things. This can also cause problems when running software that requires a large amount of memory, such as virtual machines. Some programs may even refuse to run. However, if you want to adjust your page file settings, you can do so from the Advanced System Settings window. Windows automatically manages your page file settings by default. Most users should leave these settings alone and allow Windows to make the best decision for you.

However, one tweak that may help in some situations is moving the page file to another drive. If you have two separate hard drives in your computer, assuming one is the system drive with your programs installed on it and one is a less-used data drive, moving the page file to the data drive can potentially offer some increased performance when your page file is in-use.

Assuming that Windows will already be using the system drive if it needs to use the page file, this spreads out the hard drive activity instead of concentrating it on one drive. Note that this will only help if you actually have two separate hard drives in your computer. In summary, the page file is an essential part of Windows. This how-to tutorial shows you how to tweak the Windows 10 Registry file to force the deletion of pagefile.

With this method, the next time you start your Windows 10 computer, the paging file will be recreated with new data. Disclaimer: Editing the Windows Registry file is a serious undertaking.

A corrupted Windows Registry file could render your computer inoperable, requiring a reinstallation of the Windows 10 operating system and potential loss of data. Back up the Windows 10 Registry file and create a valid restore point before you proceed.

To see what your current paging file settings are, follow these steps: 1. Open File Explorer and right-click Computer. Click the Settings button under the Performance section and then click the Advanced tab.

You should see a screen similar to Figure B. Preventing kernel code from paging is telling the system to keep in memory things that may no longer be needed, thereby occupying memory that could be utilized by your application. Your application needs more memory in order to page less. If you can't increase the size of RAM, you need to free things up.

I would not try to play with memory management - lots of really smart engineers have worked on those algorithms for years. Another option is to look at everything else that is taking up memory on the system and see if it is really needed to reside in memory. Here again, the memory manager does a pretty good job of moving things out that aren't needed in order to give memory to the applications that are asking for memory.

That is a laborious process. The easiest way is to increase RAM. You say it is not in your hands. I would then find whose hands it is in and have a negotiation session. Best Regards Cartman Please remember to mark the replies as an answers if they help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnmff microsoft. I am checking to see if the problem has been resolved. If there's anything you'd like to know, don't hesitate to ask. From our alerting tool i am getting daily High page file usage on many servers.

Normally, Windows stores files, programs, and other data in your RAM because it is quicker to read from RAM than it is to read from a hard drive. Then your computer uses the copies in RAM instead of repeatedly reading the same files from your hard drive. However, when your system runs out of physical memory or random access memory, then Windows moves some data from the RAM back to the hard drive and places it in a page file.

This file is a form of virtual memory. So what is pagefile. It is the file where Windows keeps track of how your computer juggles a lot of demands for memory.

If there are some data that you are not using, then Windows will try to move them to the page file. And you should know that deleting the page file may result in some bad things.