TheBigFatClown
Posts: 1,110 +495
A little history first. On the computer that is the subject of this post, I first installed Windows 7 about 6 years ago. And we've been happily married ever since.
Recently, in the past month or so, every time I switch applications, the system pauses and the hard drive thrashes for a few moments. I think it's safe to say that this is the Windows paging feature in action. I have 16GB of physical system memory(2x8GB DDR3).
I finally decided to turn the Window 7 paging feature off. And to my pleasant surprise, every time I switch applications now, there is no hard drive thrashing and it's almost instant.
I came across a tech article telling me that it was a bad idea to turn Windows 7 paging feature off and that applications would start crashing left and right. Well, it's only been about 48 hours since I made the decision to turn paging off, but so far, everything has been smooth. No crashes, faster response times between application switching.
So, I am gonna try this for awhile until I have solid proof that it's a bad idea and not blindly accept the opinion of one tech writer.
http://lifehacker.com/5426041/understanding-the-windows-pagefile-and-why-you-shouldnt-disable-it
The article I mention is referenced in the URL above for those curious. Just looking for some more opinions on the matter. What are your personal experiences if any with paging off?
This was done out of desperation because I tried finding out the "why" of my hard drive thrashing to no avail using Microsoft's Task Manager. It wasn't this way in the beginning.
6 years and no fresh re-installs? Yep, I'll think about installing fresh. Be nice to figure out the actual problem though.
It looks like the article was written about 6 years ago too, so maybe Microsoft resolved the issues the original author talked about in that time frame.
Recently, in the past month or so, every time I switch applications, the system pauses and the hard drive thrashes for a few moments. I think it's safe to say that this is the Windows paging feature in action. I have 16GB of physical system memory(2x8GB DDR3).
I finally decided to turn the Window 7 paging feature off. And to my pleasant surprise, every time I switch applications now, there is no hard drive thrashing and it's almost instant.
I came across a tech article telling me that it was a bad idea to turn Windows 7 paging feature off and that applications would start crashing left and right. Well, it's only been about 48 hours since I made the decision to turn paging off, but so far, everything has been smooth. No crashes, faster response times between application switching.
So, I am gonna try this for awhile until I have solid proof that it's a bad idea and not blindly accept the opinion of one tech writer.
http://lifehacker.com/5426041/understanding-the-windows-pagefile-and-why-you-shouldnt-disable-it
The article I mention is referenced in the URL above for those curious. Just looking for some more opinions on the matter. What are your personal experiences if any with paging off?
This was done out of desperation because I tried finding out the "why" of my hard drive thrashing to no avail using Microsoft's Task Manager. It wasn't this way in the beginning.
6 years and no fresh re-installs? Yep, I'll think about installing fresh. Be nice to figure out the actual problem though.
It looks like the article was written about 6 years ago too, so maybe Microsoft resolved the issues the original author talked about in that time frame.
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