The Microsoft Windows operating system stores frames of memory that does not fit into the physical memory in the pagefile.sys file. Pagefile.sys is a system file that allows running tasks even when the physical memory has been exceeded. This guide will explain all you need to know about a Pagefile.sys file.
Pagefile.sys is a file that is used by Microsoft Windows to store frames of memory that do not currently fit into physical memory. This means the system can run more tasks than the memory has enough physical space for and simply swap frames in and out of the memory as required. By default it is located in C:\pagefile.sys, but you won't see it, unless you chose to reveal protected operating system files.
As a way of optimising memory, and improving performance, Windows will move any data that you a not currently using to the page file. For example if you are not actively using a tab or program that has been minimized, the data from this will have most likely been transferred from RAM to the page file. Upon reopening the tab, or reusing the program, it may take a moment longer to start back up, this is because the data is being transferred back away from the page file.
You may have heard that removing pagefile.sys will speed your computer up, because pagefile.sys is slower than RAM, however if you disable pagefile.sys, you will find that instead of having the pagefile.sys relieve the RAM during memory intensive tasks, they will start crashing instead of being transferred out into the page file. You may find that some memory heavy programs will simply refuse to run. So it is not recommended that you delete pagefile.sys.
Cleaning the pagefile.sys at system shutdown increases the performance of the system. To clean the pagefile.sys, modifications have to be made to the ClearPageFileAtShutdown key value in the Windows registry.
The registry can be accessed by the REGEDIT command. Once the changes have been made, the system has to be restarted for the modifications to take effect. Cleaning the pagefile.sys system file also results in a virtual memory extension.
In some versions of Windows, you can clean the file pagefile.sys to improve its overall performance. This can be done by creating or modifying the REG_DWORD value from 1 to 0 in the registry key ClearPageFileAtShutdown. This is located here:
HKEY_LOCAL_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management.
To do this:
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