Pagefile too small?

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Hello, today I found interesting issue. Did someone saw this before?

Some applications freeze (Office2010, Synology Station Client, Chrome ..) and in Windows logs, there is event: “Service Windows Error reporting ended: Pagefile too small”
But when I check this, pagefile has 22 GB. Never saw that much..

I know that error reporting service is not the cause of issues. But why is his pagefile so big? Could be the size cause of computer freezing?

PC =
Dell Optiplex 7070 SFF
8 GB DDR4
M.2 256 GB PCIe SSD
Win 10 1809 Ent

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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Page files are generally 1 to 1.5 times the size of RAM maximum. How you managed to get a 22GB file on an 8GB machine I don’t know.

Set the page file to zero and reboot, then set it to “system managed” and reboot.
What size is now?

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

doriel

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User is productive in these hours, cant get on his computer right at this moment, screenshot is from the past. I will try your suggestion and I will put result in here.
I would never set it this big, I leave this descision on OS, I found it by accident when investigating why his applications freezing.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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doriel wrote:

pagefile has 22 GB

I think the message should have been ‘page file too big’.

On my laptop with 16GB of RAM page file is 2.5GB !

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Office applications mostly copy to page file as soon as they are loaded and the cursor is moved, MS loves using your drive space; similar with the new space hog Chrome (and that can hog space even after you think you’ve closed it). Same for little Notepad and a number of other 3rd party software.

MS expects you to reboot every 2.4 hours, Chrome’s trying to reduce that limit to 0.2. Gross inefficiency is somehow regarded as ‘better’ than high efficiency.

Here’s a screenshot from a few minutes ago of this W7 machine after 55 days uptime, only 3x1GB allowed for page file (1GB per SSD). I’ve seen the Windows slide-up warning about ‘too much memory’ this session, thus the maxima in PageFileMonitor.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

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[doriel]

I suspect Synology Surveillence Station Client, that is eating most from pagefile, but that is just my wild guess. That PC displays security cameras, where user has approx 20 cameras displayed in application. Video codec is H.264, so maybe data flow is high on this machine and Windows compensates this by adding more and more to pagefile size.

MS expects you to reboot every 2.4 hours.

This computer is on 24/7 and users do reboot rarely. Every other day I would say.

Update:
Ooops. Our company recold-holder users 🙂
And the award goes to… Blue line is affected computer

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by doriel.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by doriel.

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The machine only has 8GB of RAM and a single drive? Maybe running Synology and using it as a general purpose/MS Office is simply too much for it without frequent browser restarts.

Needs someone checking the various Resource Managers throughout a typical day to check it isn’t being swamped; one machine trying to do the work of two.

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doriel

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Security system has its own Synology NAS storage and dvrserver. User is just viewing, if some truck is comming inside or outside. Records are being stored on Synology NAS server.
Also user is working in SAP to print papers for trucks, then he checks his email inbox..
Apart of cameras, I think it is sufficient machine. Maybe my explanation was vague.

Still waiting to try:

Set the page file to zero and reboot, then set it to “system managed” and reboot.
What size is now?

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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I’ve always setup a dedicated partition of 6GB formatted FAT32 for the page file since Win 2K.  The page file has a fixed sized of 4GB, but its actual size fluctuates, usually less but never more.  It’s currently 3,048MB.

On my dual-boot machines I use the same dedicated partition for both sides.  I’ve never had any issues with, or caused by, the page file.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

2 users thanked author for this post.

satrow, doriel

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Had a dedicated 2nd hdd and the primary partition was circa 5Gb and the secondary logical partition was used for personal data on NT4WS, w2k and XP

Also used sysinternals pagefiledefrag occasionally to tidy the pagefile up. The speed benefits showed compared to standard single drive setups.

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satrow wrote:

MS expects you to reboot every 2.4 hours

Whoa, say what?? Inquiring minds want to know.

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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Need to lern sum inglish ‘cos that you ain’t aimed at you – obviously.

PS memes and smilies didn’t replace all forms of humour/humor.

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Elly

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MS expects you to reboot every 2.4 hours

Although satrow was joking, I actually think his math holds up.

Start with the classic “reboot daily” Windows advice from years ago, and then update that guidance to adjust for degraded build quality and decreased stability resulting from the current “Windows 10” release strategy, so…

( 24 hours per reboot ) / ( Windows 10 ) = 2.4 hours per reboot

Thank you satrow for your insight and shrewd semi-quantitative analysis! 🙂

2 users thanked author for this post.

doriel, Alex5723

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bbearren wrote:

I’ve always setup a dedicated partition

That’s fine as a power user but not for standard rollout in a company. The fix in a company is “15 minute re-image” unless it’s an easy fix.

cheers, Paul

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[doriel]

Finally I was able to put my hands on that machine.
Setting was “system managed”

I set the size to zero manually. And restarted PC.

Then, I set to “system managed” and restated again.

File size was exatly the same as before.
So I set to manually and doubled the recommended size to total 3788MB.

I am going to let it that way, until user complains 🙂
I did not try to delete C:pagefile.sys
Interesting is, that recommended value shows 1894 MB and actual size is nearly 12 times greater.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by doriel.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by doriel.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by doriel.

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