Thanks for the clarification. Sounds like if you keep the page file enabled, it allows Windows to avoid the crash if it runs out of memory.

To ACTUALLY really improve an application application has to be ‘LargeAddressAware’ coded to be able to use over 3GB of RAM in any scenario.

Assign a page file should be located by measurement of IO activity in disk as it requires constant IO. Assigning even to slow with high random access would still be better than even a high performance drive.

MemoryUsage = increasing paged-, nonpaged-pool has absolutely nothing to do with x64 systems and on 8GB of RAM x64 would actually have 128GB of maximum size by default. Read microsoft documentation on subject.

And as what goes to ‘running out of memory’ it doesn’t have ANYTHING to ‘do you have paging file or not’, if your system RAM memory runs out windows will crash. as MS has screwed up that area pretty damn badly from day 1. They love to call paging as ‘extension of RAM’, but reality is it’s just a place to hard copy RAM to make it look good.

Thanks for writing in. The do’s and dont’s in this article are offered as guidance, based on my reading (sources referenced) and experimentation, i.e: your mileage may vary. In this case the article merely points out that you run the risk of crashes if you open enough applications to fill that 4GB of RAM.

“Things not to do:
• Don’t reduce the page file or disable it entirely.”

I own a 4GB machine, I disabled the pagefile and the whole system works superfast entirely in those 4 gigs.