How do you disable or enable your virtual memory and paging file when needed? (2024)

FAQs

How do you disable or enable your virtual memory and paging file when needed? ›

In the System Properties dialog, click the Advanced tab. Click Settings under Performance. In the Performance Options dialog, click the Advanced tab, and under Virtual memory, click Change. In the Virtual Memory dialog box, select a drive to store the paging file.

In the Performance Options window, go to the Advanced tab and click on “Change…” under Virtual Memory. Uncheck “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives”. Select the system drive with the large pagefile. sys, choose “No paging file,” and then press Set.

Click the "Settings" button under the Performance section. Click over to the "Advanced" tab in the Performance Options window. Click the "Change" button in the "Virtual memory" section. Since Windows automatically manages your page file settings by default, the options here will by grayed out.

Disabling virtual memory is not recommended for systems with low amounts of RAM (4GB and lower), because it will heavily impact overall system stability and the user experience. On Macs with 8GB of RAM or more, virtual memory can be disabled, but we recommend checking its status before doing so.

Go to the Start Menu and click on Settings. Type performance. Choose Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows. In the new window, go to the Advanced tab and under the Virtual memory section, click on Change.

If you open an app and it gets stored in the swap partition, it will load faster than it would if it weren't open at all. This is what RAM Boost and other virtual memory features like it are really doing. And you're probably better off not using them at all.

The BIOS will never disable RAM.

With virtual memory, program execution depends on memory capabilities that exceed what the underlying hardware can support. This can sometimes lead to system instability, slowdown, or even crash.

How do I enable memory paging? ›

Click Settings under Performance. Click the Advanced tab, and click Change under Virtual Memory. Select the drive to use to store the paging file. Select Custom size and set Initial size (MB) and Maximum size (MB).

Rules are very simple. If a single ssd, choose that drive and have a single page file. If 2 or more SSDs, choose whichever suits e.g. fastest or most capacity. The same applies if only HDDs.

We recommend that you either allow the system to manage the page file size or to set it at 150% of the size of the physical RAM.

Go to the Advanced tab. Press Change. Unset the checkbox labeled Automatically manage paging file size for all drives if it is set. Switch to No paging file.

In addition to applications crashing anytime you run up against the memory limit, you'll also come across a lot of applications that simply won't run properly if the pagefile is disabled. For instance, you really won't want to run a virtual machine on a box with no pagefile, and some defrag utilities will also fail.

2 Disable your virtual memory and paging file

To disable your virtual memory and paging file, open the Virtual memory window, uncheck the box that says Automatically manage paging file size for all drives, select each drive and choose No paging file, click on Set, click on OK, and restart your computer.

Pagefile. RAM is a limited resource, whereas for most practical purposes, virtual memory is unlimited. There can be many processes, and each process has its own 2 GB of private virtual address space.

A page file is required to ensure that the database cache can release memory if other services or applications request memory.