Page File Size

Hi, I got this answer wrong because I picked " increase page fle size"

You are the desktop administrator for your company. Rodney, a user in the research department, uses a Windows XP Professional computer. His computer has a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 computer with 512 MB RAM. Rodney complains that his computer is running slowly.

You open Task Manager and view the following statistics:

CPU Usage: 89%
PF Usage: 274 MB
Physical Memory (K) Total: 523276
Physical Memory (K) Available: 201616
Commit Charge (K) Total: 282276
Commit Charge (K) Limit: 1278024

Pick solutions: add more ram, upgrade disk drive, upgrade cpu, increase page file size

My answer after taking looking at the PF USAGE, was to Increase the
PAGE FILE SIZE, however the answer was to upgrade the CPU. Although the CPU
usage is running very high, why isn't "Increasing the Page File Size" also recommended,
it says the ram is "512" installed, but the Page file is "274" which is not 1.5 X
the size of the ram. Can someone explain this. thanks, ric

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Comments

royal

When you go through the exam books, CPU should generally not be above 30-50% on average unless it's the occasional spike. That Pagefile size is very low since the page file is typically 1.5x the memory you have.

There's always going to be some page file utilization but as you can see, there's a total of 523276 (523MB of memory) which means the page file has the capability to grow to somewhere around 784MB which as you can see, it's not anywhere up to that point yet. On top of that, the page file is a component in the virtual memory system. The page file really starts filling up due to there being no more RAM to allocate to requesting applications causing Windows to write that data into the page file causing future application memory calls to hard page fault in which Windows has to find that memory in the page file for the application to use. Hard page faults cause more strain on your disks since Windows has to write the data to disk and then find the data when an application calls it. This is why it's very important to make sure your system has enough memory.

Design properly!

susuandme

thanks, I thought the page file had to be a static number, which didn't change,
that it had to be 1.5 X the amount of memory.. and could not change. I read that you have to set your page file at 1.5 x. It must be true then that the page file can start out even LOWER then the amount of actual Ram you have in your computer, which would be the "initial size". then it can grow .. as need, to the "maximum size" which would be the top .. 1.5 x . thanks, If I saw the page file size at 274M and the actual Ram on the computer was 512M on a real test, I think if you did not explain this I would keep selecting increase page file size..

royal

By default, Windows will manage the size of the page file as it sees fit. Though depending on the application installed on the Operating System, that application may require you to set a static minimum and maximum limit. For instance, Exchange 2003 wants 1.5x amount of page file space while Exchange 2007 wants the size of the page file to be the amount of memory + 10MB. Another thing is the store.exe for Exchange tries to eat up as much memory as it can which is one reason why it's not good to install Exchange on a Domain Controller; because the Domain Controller wants memory to do its operation such as caching NTDS.DIT which is where the data for AD is stored in.

More info than you needed, but I already wrote it so you get it!

Also, you thought because you did not look. Again, you need to play and lab what you read. You could've have known that if you just went to go look at the page file settings! DO DO DO!

skrpune

susuandme - I think that you're misreading the question and confusing some terms here. The question details state that page file *usage* is 274 MB, not the page file *size*. The page file is and should be bigger than the usage.

Do a test run on an XP Computer - if you go to Task Manager & click on the Performance tab, the PF Usage will be shown...you'll see a green bar indicating how much is being used out of the total available. You won't be shown (and weren't told in this example) the overall size of the page file in that graph.

Sie

susuandme wrote: »

CPU Usage: 89%
PF Usage: 274 MB
Physical Memory (K) Total: 523276
Physical Memory (K) Available: 201616
Commit Charge (K) Total: 282276
Commit Charge (K) Limit: 1278024

Dont forget these two readings too that would have helped you out.

Total is the amount of pagefile-backed virtual address space in use.

Limit is the maximum possible value for Total; it is the sum of the current pagefile size plus the physical memory available for paging

skrpune

Sie wrote: »

Dont forget these two readings too that would have helped you out.

Total is the amount of pagefile-backed virtual address space in use.

Limit is the maximum possible value for Total; it is the sum of the current pagefile size plus the physical memory available for paging

Good call, I totally missed that.

And one clarification on my earlier post - in the PF Usage graph you won't be shown the exact amount/value of the page file size, but you can estimate/surmise it from the value of the PF Usage indicated and the graph. For example, if it says that the page file usage is 274MB and about 1/4 of the bar scale is bright green, then do some quick math and you'll see that you've got plenty (about 3/4) of the page file space to spare and there's no need to increase the page file size.