Is there a way to force win11 to use a paging file?

antspants · Jan 20, 2025

Win711 said:
but it seems like a distraction from the problem.

The amount of memory isn’t a distraction from the problem.

It could be bad. Run zbooks diagnostics

antspants · Jan 20, 2025

At the least, try this

Run Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to manually run the Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool to check for memory problems in Windows 10 and Windows 11. The Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool can help you identify and diagnose problems with system memory (RAM) when you suspect your PC has a memory problem...

www.elevenforum.com

Win711 · Jan 20, 2025

antspants said:
The amount of memory isn’t a distraction from the problem.

It could be bad. Run zbooks diagnostics

The answer to the question of whether there is a way to force win11 to use a pagefile wouldn't depend on the amount of ram, the condition of it, or even if a real laptop exists behind the question. The whole situation could be hypothetical and an answer would still exist.

antspants · Jan 20, 2025

If you say so.

Win711 · Jan 20, 2025

antspants said:
If you say so.

Let's pretend a laptop as I described exists, how can the question be answered? How can I make windows favor offloading ram into a pagefile? It's an interesting question on its own without needing a practical application.

LesFerch · Jan 20, 2025

Win711 said:
I have a win11 laptop with 2gb ram with 10gb static size paging file on a SSD, but windows would rather run out of memory than use the paging file. Is there a tweak or app that will force windows to use a paging file? It's not possible to add more ram.

I'm not aware of any tweak that would help. If it were my machine, and Windows was a requirement, I would either run Windows 10 32 bit or Windows 7 SP1 (and use the Legacy Update site). Either option should be fast and stable with 2GB RAM.

neemobeer · Jan 20, 2025

The page file is much slower than using memory, if Windows doesn't have a reason to then it won't get used which you want unless you want your computer to run slower...

XxXxX · Jan 20, 2025

Win711 said:
The answer to the question of whether there is a way to force win11 to use a pagefile wouldn't depend on the amount of ram, the condition of it, or even if a real laptop exists behind the question. The whole situation could be hypothetical and an answer would still exist.

hypothetical ..
you will need access to the kernel as you would need to change the 'swappiness' settings to force the system to use swap at a lower level of RAM use.
this can be done on a Linux system as the user has access to the kernel and the 'swappiness' settings.
these settings work in a reverse order of priority.
setting the swap lower ie. to 10 would force the system to increase RAM usage.
setting the swap higher ie. to 90 would force the system to use the swap at a much lower level of RAM usage.

these settings on a Windows system i dont believe are available for the user to access.

swappiness at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

best of luck, Steve ..

Win711 · Jan 21, 2025

Everyone's intuition was correct that my laptop actually has 4gb of ram. Good call everyone!

But... my point that it's irrelevant still stands. The laptop uses 50% of the 4gb with nothing running (and defender deleted). Add 2 chrome pages and the ram is used up.

47% used up before I open anything. I couldn't believe a neutered win11 home still uses 2gb doing nothing.

One video playing and one list of videos open uses 76%. You can see in the taskbar which apps are open:

One chrome page with list of videos and the trading app uses 89%:

Here is one list of videos, one video playing, and one trading app using 90%:

I have to open the trading app first, then after it is up and stable, then I open chrome. Doing it the other way around doesn't work.

But the really funny thing is I can play as many videos at the same time as I want to open. Here are 4 videos playing at the same time:

The pagefile may be slower than ram, but evidently it is fast enough.

And the memory cleaner does work. Once everything is loaded up and running stable, it will bring memory utilization down to 50%.

I haven't played much with the memory cleaner, but maybe I can set it to automatically clean when free memory is below 20%, that way I never get into the problematic 10% range.

Ghot · Jan 21, 2025

Win711 said:
47% used up before I open anything. I couldn't believe a neutered win11 home still uses 2gb doing nothing.

4GB of RAM is barely enough for Win 11. 16GB is the current sweet spot, and that's rapidly turning to 32GB.

You can set any size Page file that you want... choose Custom page file and set the minimum and maximum to the same number... try 16384 to start. Computers like multiples of 1024MB

Win711 · Jan 21, 2025

LesFerch said:
I'm not aware of any tweak that would help. If it were my machine, and Windows was a requirement, I would either run Windows 10 32 bit or Windows 7 SP1 (and use the Legacy Update site). Either option should be fast and stable with 2GB RAM.

That reminds me of using VLC 32 bit and not being able to play videos very well because of, presumably, running out of memory. Upgrading to the 64bit version fixed the problem.

I don't know if I can get win7 on that laptop. I had originally considered an older laptop from ebay, but the last time I did that it came with a virus and stopped working after a couple years. I thought a brand new laptop with 4gb of ram would be enough to play videos uneventfully, but in hindsight I should have gone with ebay.

Win711 · Jan 21, 2025

Ghot said:
4GB of RAM is barely enough for Win 11. 16GB is the current sweet spot, and that's rapidly turning to 32GB.

You can set any size Page file that you want... choose Custom page file and set the minimum and maximum to the same number... try 16384 to start. Computers like multiples of 1024MB

The laptop has 8000 mb min and 8000 mb max.... static 8gb pagefile. Do you think multiples of 1024 would make a difference?

Ghot · Jan 21, 2025

Win711 said:
The laptop has 8000 mb min and 8000 mb max.... static 8gb pagefile. Do you think multiples of 1024 would make a difference?

Set the min and max to 16384.

As I'm sure others have mentioned, the best option is to just "let Windows manage the page file".

You could also just add more RAM. This site will help you find compatible RAM...

Memory & SSD Upgrades | Crucial.com

Crucial Memory and SSD upgrades - 100% Compatibility Guaranteed for - FREE US Delivery

www.crucial.com

If this was a cartoon... the RAM would be the Roadrunner, and the drive would be Wile E. Coyote.

Here's a benchmark of the RAM in my specs. Even an SSD can't touch that. ^^

Win711 · Jan 21, 2025

Ghot said:
Set the min and max to 16384.

16gb is a little much for just using 2 apps. And my drive is kinda small. I thought 8gb was plenty.

Ghot said:
As I'm sure others have mentioned, the best option is to just "let Windows manage the page file".

I'm not sure microsoft agrees:

Memory allocation errors can be caused by slow page file growth

Symptoms
Applications that frequently allocate memory may experience random "out-of-memory" errors. Such errors can result in other errors or unexpected behavior in affected applications.

Cause
Memory allocation failures can occur due to latencies that are associated with growing the size of a page file to support additional memory requirements in the system. A potential cause of these failures is when the page file size is configured as "automatic." Automatic page-file size starts with a small page file and grows automatically as needed.

The IO system consists of many components, including file system filters, file systems, volume filters, storage filters, and so on. The specific components on a given system can cause variability in page file growth.

Workaround
To work around this issue, manually configure the size of the page file.

Memory allocation errors can be caused by slow page file growth - Windows Client

Describes an issue that causes memory allocation errors that can be caused by slow page file growth.

learn.microsoft.com

Ghot said:
You could also just add more RAM. This site will help you find compatible RAM...

Memory & SSD Upgrades | Crucial.com

Crucial Memory and SSD upgrades - 100% Compatibility Guaranteed for - FREE US Delivery

www.crucial.com

If this was a cartoon... the RAM would be the Roadrunner, and the drive would be Wile E. Coyote.

If I could I would have a long time ago but the ram is soldered to the board and no slots remain.

Technology keeps getting better and better lol

Ghot · Jan 21, 2025

Win711 said:
It's a cheap laptop (not a chromebook), but all it does is play youtube, VLC, and a trading app.

I have Firefox open to FOUR tabs.... Task Manager shows 17 instances of Firefox running.
This is normal with modern browsers.

Some things use quite a bit of RAM. It's tax return time... might be time to get a new laptop.

Here ya go...

DownloadMoreRAM.com - CloudRAM 2.0

downloadmoreram.com

NO! This is not real. This is just a joke.

Win711 · Jan 21, 2025

Ghot said:
I have Firefox open to FOUR tabs.... Task Manager shows 17 instances of Firefox running.
This is normal with modern browsers.

45 chrome windows open, some with multiple tabs. Firefox with 10 tabs open. I don't know why I have "chromium (9)" on the list.

Ghot · Jan 21, 2025

Win711 said:
I don't know why I have "chromium (9)" on the list.

Chromium is EDGE or part of EDGE. Probably. It's hard to tell with Microsoft. :/

Windows 11 is an experiment on how to best screw up an operating system.

The first four items on your TM list are using 12.5GB of RAM. That's why things are slow.
And Windows will always use the RAM as much as it can.
It will only switch to the page file when the RAM starts to bog down.

Here's my Task Manager sorted for RAM usage. I have 16GB of RAM installed.

4 Firefox tabs open, Bitdefender AV/firewall, AIDA64 Extreme monitoring software, and that's about it.

Win711 · Jan 21, 2025

Ghot said:
Chromium is EDGE or part of EDGE. Probably. It's hard to tell with Microsoft. :/

I keep forgetting Edge exists lol

Ghot said:
Windows 11 is an experiment on how to best screw up an operating system.

I don't know... I kinda think win10 was the experiment. Win11 is the official accomplishment.

zbook · Jan 21, 2025

When available run the V2 log collector > post a share link

(see post #20)

Win711 · Jan 21, 2025

zbook said:
When available run the V2 log collector > post a share link

(see post #20)

Is there anything you can say to convince me that it's not a waste of time? I think windows is running normally; the laptop just doesn't have enough ram and there is no way to tweak the kernel to use the pagefile. Until someone comes up with another solution all I can do is use the memory cleaner to push ram into the pagefile.

Is there a way to force win11 to use a paging file?

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