Set Xp To Auto Clear Pagefile Registry

[thaichatham 0]

Your Pagefile is your "virtual memory" or "swap file", a reseved section of your hard drive to use as RAM (random access memory). The advantages of pagefile is that you can read a large chunk of data from a single area rather then from different locations on your hard drive. It also takes fewer I/O (input/output) operations so a file can be read or writen faser. This can contain sometimes sensitve data like passwords that can sometimes be vulnerable without proper protection. Follow the next steps to set windsows to autmatically clear it upon shut down.1. Go to start menue2. Click "run"3. Enter "regedit.exe" hit "enter" or hit "ok"4. Open "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" 5. Open "system"6. Open "currentcontrolset"7. Open "control"8. Open "Session Manager"9. Open "Memory management"10. On the right hand side right click on the value "ClearPageFileAtShutDown" - if there is no value there right click in the open section and add a DWORD value and name it "ClearPageFileAtShutdown"11. Change value to "1"12. RebootYour all set! --note, shutdown may be higher for slower computers

[jipman 0]

Note.

Editing your registry could be dangerous and kill your computer.

A better option is to use xp-antispy that can do that for you

get it from http://xp-antispy.org/

[qwijibow 0]

True... and although deleting the registry file will make it slightly harder to find passwords in the swap, its not impossable. (their exist many *un-delete* tools)

the best option would be to use an encrypted swap file that is encrypted using a random key dureing each bootup. But i dont know if this is possable under windows. (for you linux-ers, https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-27947pted+swap.html)

[jipman 0]

Hehe.... Well... howabout using NO swap? with the great amount of RAM people have nowadays i've heard that people with 1 GB RAM sometimes don't need to use page file.

[jipman 0]

GRrr.... I forgot to add something again...Using encrypted swaps I think you're system boot time will go quite up and your pc's performance goes down.ps. any mod's please add these 2 posts

[thaichatham 0]

Have you dissabled your pagefile Jipman, if so what was your experience like, ever cause problems like running out of ram while converting video and trying to use computer at same time. I have 512, and 768 in pagefile, I know thats alot but im constantly doing demeanding operations with this 2.4 p4. I let windows manage it, any recomendations?

[thaichatham 0]

- on a side not Jipp, guess i can just monitor peak ussage in task manager more closely. Is the peak ussage for this session only? Or Maybe just the past hr, not sure. I nosed around a bit didnt see much. Thnx for the replies!

Edited April 21, 2009 by yordan
Rremoved the words "please erase previous thread", which could lead to an infinite loop of previous thread removal... (see edit history)

[qwijibow 0]

maybe if you have less than 64megs of ram encrypted swap would slow down booting a little.but with modern computers, the time taken to encrypt a megabyte of data is nothing compared to the time it takes a disk to write a megabyte.i use an encrypted home partiton, and the performance hit isnt even measureable.at the moment, my kernel is set to 60% swappyness, and my swap partiton very rarely goes below 99.5% free.

[iGuest 3]

The authors descrption of the pagefile and virtual memory is confused and best ignored. The pagefile is most certainly NOT virtual memory. Virtual memory is a system in which the pagefile is a component. It is used to store infrequently accessed data, thus leaving more RAM for more important uses.

The pagefile can indeed contain passwords and other sensitive data. But accessing this data through the pagefile is not easily done and is likely to take considerable time, even for a well equipped hacker. In most systems accessing such data can be done by other means and with far less effort. Unless you are willing to take the time to guard your system from these other threats as well, cearing the pagefile will do virtually nothing for security.

Clearing the pagefile overwrites every byte of the pagefile with zero's. It does not delete the file. Doing this will most certainly increase shutdown times, particularly for laptops. The are absolutely NO performance benefits from clearing the pagefile.

The pagefile was designed to improve performance, disabling it will almost always be a bad idea. Leave it on system managed, Windows designers know more about memory management than you do. 

Larry Miller, Microsoft MCSA

[iGuest 3]

Xp Auto Pagefile RegistrySet Xp To Auto Clear Pagefile

"The pagefile was designed to improve performance, disabling it willAlmost always be a bad idea. Leave it on system managed, WindowsDesigners know more about memory management than you do. "

 They know systems that were avilable for the general public around the time the OS were developed. That means they not count that average user would have 4 GB memory and dual Xenon Dell 670. As such XP may not handle such case.

The memory management designed around that memory is not available as plenty. Using a file to dump unimportant part looks a good idea in that case.

 When there is a plenty of memory dumping part of it to file - just in case - cause more slowdown than performance advantage. It would be far more efficient that a video coder and other algorithm is written such way that is not memory hungry. Same with the background applications such as virus scanners.

-reply by A Denever

[iGuest 3]

Reply to commentSet Xp To Auto Clear Pagefile

Systems with 4GB of RAM were available when XP was released and it was thoroughly tested with this configuration. Microsoft designers understood in great detail how XP would perform with 4GB of RAM. Many XP systems were using 4GB of RAM the day they went into service. The fact that the average user did not have access to such systems is irrelevant.

 When Microsoft states that a particular OS supports a specific size of RAM it means that it has been tested with that configuration. Some 64 bit server operating systems support no less than 2TB of RAM. That is over 2 trillion bytes. The system could theoretically handle more but that was the largest that was practical to test. When it becomes practical to test with more RAM the number will be raised. Lack of commercial hardware is not a serious obstacle to testing. I believe that the largest commercial server will support only 512GB of RAM, and that only recently became available.

 

-reply by Larry Miller

[Quatrux 4]

I personally used to disable pagefiles, because I've got a lot of RAM, but sometimes some software just says that you need some virtual memory and gives an error message, for this reason I only use 256-512 MB of SWAP and never had any problems even when converting video and etc. Same was with XP, same is with Windows 7..I suggest to not use the auto clear pagefile feature as there is practically nothing proper from it, it only makes your computer slower while shutting down, it's the same as making an IDE of some-kind while saving a file (a PHP or Java etc.) to always trim the file before the save and convert tabs to spaces, which just on every saving of the file takes some time, especially if it's a big file, why don't just do it manually when needed..

[wutske 0]

It seems like their is some confusing around the page file.First of all, the pagefile is a file on your (slow) disk drive that is used to move less frequently used page from your system memory (RAM) to the swap file (disk). When a program requests these pages (page fault error occurs) the system has to read these pages from the swap file (disk) back to the system memory (RAM). Since a disk is still 10x to 100x slower compared to your ram this will slow down the overall performance.The reason why such thing as a pagefile exists is because you can have loads of virtual memory at low cost (price per Gb is 270x higher for RAM) and while you don't use it all the time, it's still a usefull thing because sometimes the amount of system memory isn't sufficient and you'll need the pagefile. If you disable the pagefile and you run out of memory then it's likely that a lot of programs start crashing or hang and you'll end up with a useless system.For clearing the pagefile at shutdown, there's no need to do this. Depending on the size of the pagefile it will slow down the shutdown process significantly (and it's also not a good practice if you have a SSD). I've also never heard anything about pagefiles being used to recover passwords or to hack a system.

[levimage 0]

. Go to start menue2. Click "run"
3. Enter "regedit.exe" hit "enter" or hit "ok"
4. Open "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"
5. Open "system"
6. Open "currentcontrolset"
7. Open "control"
8. Open "Session Manager"
9. Open "Memory management"
10. On the right hand side right click on the value "ClearPageFileAtShutDown"
- if there is no value there right click in the open section and add a DWORD
value and name it "ClearPageFileAtShutdown"
11. Change value to "1

When in the registry you can highlight the key. In this case ' Memory Managment' and right click it... select export. Name it some thing like 'Page On.reg' save it to the desktop.
Now change the value to 1. Right click the 'Memory Management' select export and save it now to something like 'Page Off.reg'.

You can later double click these files to import them into the registry to turn on or off the Pagefile respectively. Also you will have to reboot the PC for the changes to take effect.

Levimage