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Question

Problems with changing paging file to another drive

Jun 28, 2012 8:48AM PDT

Hi Grin

I have got an Asus Eee PC netbook and windows XP came pre-installed on my laptop. At the moment my laptop is running very slow and windows xp freezes whenever the hard drive is accessed, like when saving a file off the internet, or when creating a zip/rar file. I think this freezing issue could be down to virtual memory issues, since my paging file is only 500MB and windows XP recommends that I have a paging file of at least 1519MB.

Since I only have around 900MB free disk space on my C drive I want to delete the 500MB paging file from my C drive, and create a 3000MB paging file on my E drive instead. So I went into the virtual memory setting page and turned off the paging file for the C drive ("no paging file"), and I selected "custom size" for my E drive and changed both settings ("initial size", "maximum size") to 3000MB, since I have plenty of space on my E drive.

After rebooting my laptop I checked the settings for the paging file and my E drive now had a paging file of 3000MB and my C drive didn't have a paging file. But then a few seconds later a message popped up on my screen saying that the C drive was running critically low on disk space, and I was down to just 27MB free. This doesn't make any sense since before changing the paging file I had over 900MB free space and with the 500MB paging file turned off for the C drive I should have over 1400MB free space, and not 27MB free space.

I then changed the paging file settings to what they were before and rebooted my laptop and then my 900MB of free disk space had returned. Can someone please explain to me what has happened, and how do I resolve this issue?

Thanks. Happy

Discussion is locked

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Answer
That's news to me.
Jun 28, 2012 8:53AM PDT

Here I have for over a decade "let windows manage" that. But if you are running with that low disk space I would not do anything until I get a few more GB free.

There are unresolved bugs like this in XP but rather than discuss that, why not move some things over to the other drive, use CCLEANER (see google) and let Windows manage this?

Bob

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Answer
Agree with Bob
Jun 28, 2012 8:53PM PDT

The common consensus is to let Windows manage the PF.

Why not move some files over to the E drive instead?

With disk space as low as you have you are always going to have to manage that unless you physically move files off the drive.

Mark