Windows XP pagefile problem

[Jay37]

Hello all,

Best site I've ever seen... and I'm a 25+ year veteran IT/telecom professional. Definitely how I envisioned using the Internet.

I have a problem and you would think I could figure it out, but it may be a bug. I have 6 month old HP Pavilion laptop (p4, 3.0 Ghz, 384MB) running Windows XP Home w/SP2. Since I've started running more apps at once, I'm running low on virtual memory.

So I go to the System program in Control Panel and modify the pagefile for 1024-1510 MB. I APPLY and OK on the program. I reboot the system, but the pagefile stays at 574 MB (factory). IT WON'T CHANGE, no matter how I try to modify it. Consequently, I get the "Virtual Memory Too Low..." warning message and the system slows down until I close apps.

What am I doing wrong? I am performing the modifications according to the XP documentation. Maybe a bug in XP or in SP2? I've tried Microsoft support, but don't find a similar problem or known bug.

Don't know enough about XP yet to know if there is some other aspect to modifying the pagefile sucessfully.

Any ideas? Thank you all...

Jay37

 

[IRstuff]

you might get more help on Tek-Tips

TTFN

 

[johnwm]

You need to be logged in on an Admin level account to change pagefile size

Good Luck
johnwm
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[Jay37]

I am the system Administrator...

I have the privilege to modify it, I was going to mention that in the original post.

Will try the other Tips...

Anyone else have any ideas?

Thank you all.

Jay37

 

[redtreetoad]

Jay37,
Run the Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del in XP). Choose the "performance" tab and look at two values:
1) Under “Physical Memory”, is the "Total" value showing 384MB? If not, reseat the RAM in the socket and try again.
2) Under the "Commit Charge" look at the "Limit" value. The upper limit of the page file should be able to be set to slightly less than this value.

Also Page Files require contiguous disk space. If the drive you’re choosing to create the file is really fragmented and can't create the upper range of your setting (1510 MB), then you need to defragment the volume or choose another drive (if available).

/// Mike