Windows 10: Why does Windows keep on increasing size of a Paging file even on a system with 16Gb RAM?

Hi, I use a laptop with 16Gb RAM running Windows 10 Pro 64bit. I read many articles and posts that with a lot of RAM you don't really need a page file and it can be disabled. There are posts on Microsoft forum itself which say that we must have page file for Windows to "manage RAM efficiently". I wanted the system to use RAM for paging so I created a 4Gb RAM Disk and placed paging file on it. It has a 3Gb size limit. The paging file stays small till I start the browser. With every new tab on the Chrome based browser or Firefox the page file size keeps increasing in size. When it reaches 3Gb l

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Why does Windows keep on increasing size of a Paging file even on a system with 16Gb RAM?

Hi,



I use a laptop with 16Gb RAM running Windows 10 Pro 64bit. I read many articles and posts that with a lot of RAM you don't really need a page file and it can be disabled. There are posts on Microsoft forum itself which say that we must have page file for Windows to "manage RAM efficiently". I wanted the system to use RAM for paging so I created a 4Gb RAM Disk and placed paging file on it. It has a 3Gb size limit. The paging file stays small till I start the browser. With every new tab on the Chrome based browser or Firefox the page file size keeps increasing in size. When it reaches 3Gb limit, the system starts hanging and misbehaving. Questions:



1. Why doesn't Windows use the RAM to max limit first and then start using the page file?



2. The reason I created the RAM disk is because Windows is not utilizing the RAM efficiently. Why shouldn't Windows use RAM fully first and when it starts running out of memory, create a page file.



3. Windows does seem to reduce the page file size some times but not all the time. If I close the browsers it does seem to reduce the page file size but there doesn't seem to be any pattern. Can Windows provide a utility or mechanism or option to reduce page file size when applications have been closed?



4. How come Windows starts hanging when it reaches the page file size limit, it hangs even though some RAM is free. Can't it limit using page file when the limit is reached instead of hanging. How can it assume unlimited page file size expansion?



5. Why is it that browser affects the page file size so much. It doesn't increase much if I use multiple normal applications. Applications like Virtualbox, a Virtual machine (VM) manager, also increase page file size drastically but that is an exception as it requires a lot of resources to run a VM.



I think Windows doesn't manage paging well. They recommend switching off page file but still create it, it's odd. I think Microsoft Windows team should rethink the code to manage RAM and the page file.

 

Page file size?

Deleting it is fine, but keep in mind if you delete your page file a memory dump has no where to go and will be deleted. Not a big deal but just FYI. Really there is nothing to gain by deleting a page file. Except for the physical space. Windows set your page file the same size as your ram for a reason. So suggesting you should delete it if you have 16+ Gb ram and wont need it is inaccurate. You can also recover Data on a BSOD if you have the dump file

"Microsoft says that, when the page file is set to a system-managed size and the computer is configured for automatic memory dumps, “Windows sets the size of the paging file large enough to ensure that a kernel memory dump can be captured most of the time.” As Microsoft points out, crash dumps are an important consideration when deciding what size the page file should be. The page file must be large enough to contain the memory data."

http://www.howtogeek.com/196672/windows-memory-dumps-what-exactly-are-they-for/

 

Page file size?

Well, I have 16GB of RAM so my page file is turned off. Less reads and writes to an SSD drive and system is faster since it's (let's say) forced to use RAM.