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AnswerRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
Dave Kreskowiak25-Nov-19 14:36
mveDave Kreskowiak25-Nov-19 14:36 
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
Cp-Coder25-Nov-19 14:49
Cp-Coder25-Nov-19 14:49 
AnswerRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
Jörgen Andersson25-Nov-19 21:08
professionalJörgen Andersson25-Nov-19 21:08 
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
Cp-Coder25-Nov-19 23:20
Cp-Coder25-Nov-19 23:20 
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
kalberts26-Nov-19 0:04
kalberts26-Nov-19 0:04 
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
Jörgen Andersson26-Nov-19 1:25
professionalJörgen Andersson26-Nov-19 1:25 
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
Dan Neely26-Nov-19 2:54
Dan Neely26-Nov-19 2:54 
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
kalberts26-Nov-19 4:26
kalberts26-Nov-19 4:26 
A pagefile wouldn't solve the problem of some process going berserk - it would just take a little longer.

I love automatic garbage collection. For a number of years, I worked with C/C++ and its explicit malloc/free: For every single piece of C/C++ software I have worked on, a walkthrough of the memory use has revealed leaks. You fix them all before the release, but for the next release, new leaks has in mysterious ways crept in. Always. Then you become too eager, and free() memory that is still referenced by a pointer that you overlooked... If I should point out one single benefit from switching from C/C++ to C#, the automatic garbage collection is the obvious winner.

If you truly need more virtual space than what is physically available, then you must of course have a pagefile to support it. For my home machine, I have never seen more than slightly over half of my physical RAM being in use for anything, even when I deliberately tried to start many "large" applications at the same time. I guess part of the reason is that none of my applications have excessively large data structures - executable code doesn't require pagefile space (except possibly while being debugged), and code pages that you don't reference are not brought into RAM at all, no matter how large the executable is.

My funniest out-of-memory story happened back in the DOS days, not to me but to one of my collagues: This dBase-application refused to start; we didn't have a clue about why. After a long search for software causes, the PC was wheeled down to the hardware guys to verify that the hardware was OK. Down there, they plugged in probes and meters, and the application started with no problems. The PC was returned to my colleague, application woudln't start. Back to the lab: The application started.

After several trips back and forth, it was realized that this application was so demanding that you had to keep the cover off the PC to give it enough space. Many old tower cabinets had covers that you had to slide backwards: This was deliberate, to make sure that you disconnected all cables (or: the power cable) before digging into the electronics. The HW guys of course had to plug the power cable back in to do the testing.

But they did not plug in the mouse: The dBase application input was keyboard-only. So at boot-up, the mouse driver looked around for a mouse, found none, and terminated, freeing up a couple hundred bytes. When the PC was returnd to be installed in the office, the mouse was plugged in (we had started using Windows 2.11), the mouse driver found hardware, and clinged to its bytes of RAM. This was enough to make the total RAM requirements exceed the 512 kbyte available. (But 640 kbyte would have been sufficient for anybody...)
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
Dan Neely26-Nov-19 4:39
Dan Neely26-Nov-19 4:39 
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
kalberts26-Nov-19 6:01
kalberts26-Nov-19 6:01 
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
kalberts26-Nov-19 3:51
kalberts26-Nov-19 3:51 
AnswerRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
Jörgen Andersson25-Nov-19 21:20
professionalJörgen Andersson25-Nov-19 21:20 
GeneralRe: Should I disable my Pagefile and Swapfile? Pin
Cp-Coder25-Nov-19 23:22
Cp-Coder25-Nov-19 23:22 
GeneralNow that's a nice idea Pin
OriginalGriff25-Nov-19 10:28
mveOriginalGriff25-Nov-19 10:28 
PraiseRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
Jörgen Andersson25-Nov-19 10:48
professionalJörgen Andersson25-Nov-19 10:48 
GeneralRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
PIEBALDconsult25-Nov-19 10:52
mvePIEBALDconsult25-Nov-19 10:52 
GeneralRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
Super Lloyd25-Nov-19 12:00
Super Lloyd25-Nov-19 12:00 
GeneralRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
TheGreatAndPowerfulOz25-Nov-19 15:20
TheGreatAndPowerfulOz25-Nov-19 15:20 
GeneralRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
Super Lloyd25-Nov-19 15:48
Super Lloyd25-Nov-19 15:48 
GeneralRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
TheGreatAndPowerfulOz25-Nov-19 15:22
TheGreatAndPowerfulOz25-Nov-19 15:22 
GeneralRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
dandy7225-Nov-19 16:16
dandy7225-Nov-19 16:16 
GeneralRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter25-Nov-19 20:39
professionalKornfeld Eliyahu Peter25-Nov-19 20:39 
GeneralRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
den2k8825-Nov-19 21:10
professionalden2k8825-Nov-19 21:10 
GeneralRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
Sander Rossel25-Nov-19 21:44
professionalSander Rossel25-Nov-19 21:44 
JokeRe: Now that's a nice idea Pin
Daniel Pfeffer25-Nov-19 23:51
professionalDaniel Pfeffer25-Nov-19 23:51 

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