Enormous PageFile will not delete

V

VisitorQ

New Member
Hi - I understand that this is no doubt an elementary question but please understand I'm not hugely computer literate....

After revealing the hidden files on my computer (Windows XP) I was suprised to see that the PageFile is a huge 741MB. I had thought that Eraser was overwriting this on shutdown but it seems not. I looked around to find a solution and have followed instructions on various sites to delete this by editing the registry values like so:

(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management)

ClearPageFileAtShutdown REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1)
and
PagingFiles REG_MULTI_SZ C:\pagefile.sys 0 0

This has made... no difference! It's still the huge 2/3 of a GB after reboot. I'm trying to keep a clean and secure computer and this is really bugging me!

How can I manage to free up this space and overwrite the pagefile? Any help would be gratefully received.

Incidentally, I searched the forum but nothing seemed to solve the problem. I'm going to erase unused space with system restore off and pagefile size at 0 0 to see if that works. Please help, though!
 
In Control Panel/System/Advanced/Advanced/Performance/settings/change/system managed 1534-minimum 2mb=1'572 kb on My computerC:/page file.system. That is what mine is. I am on XP Home SP2.
 
Thanks for the reply. I tried changing the size of the file to a minimum of 2MB and a max of 100MB but an error box came up saying that I must enter a numeric value in the initial file size! Even turning the pagefile off and rebooting makes no difference as it's the same still on start-up.

I understand now that the huge size is just that allocated by the computer itself, though, which is fine I guess as long as Eraser is overwriting this. I can't see how it can overwrite 741MB so quickly on shutdown, though.

Also - I now know where to find the place to make adjustments to the virtual memory, so thanks again. I really am not so hot with computers!

I'm going to try again tomorrow after sleep.
 
You could also look for info on the page file in the computers Help and Support center on the Start Menu, just a idea.
 
Whe pagefile wipe just zeros the file it does not remove it. I also suggest you make the file a fixed size to stop it growing/shrinking and littering the drive with leaked data.

If you have sufficient RAM you can turn off the file all together.

Garrett
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top