Virtual memory in Windows 11

MouldyOldDough

I have 16Gb RAM - So would assume that (traditionally) the VM should be set at 1.5 times this - ie) 24Gb - why is it set at just 1024Mb - ie) 1.024Gb - by MS (I rebuilt my laptop a few months ago and have not altered any VM settings)

Neil_Jones

MouldyOldDough said:

I have 16Gb RAM - So would assume that (traditionally) the VM should be set at 1.5 times this - ie) 24Gb - why is it set at just 1024Mb - ie) 1.024Gb - by MS (I rebuilt my laptop a few months ago and have not altered any VM settings)

Because Virtual Memory is a legacy concept that's largely become irrelevant to a certain extent.

In an era of 8Gb/16Gb/24Gb memory as standard and SSD technology, you don't really need it as such, but legacy applications may still expect it.

Back in the days when standard memory capacity was less than a gigabyte, Virtual Memory was a key concept to keep things going, though it uses the hard drive as extra memory and it was really slow as well.

Vitor

Leave the setting as 'System Managed' and the paging file will grow as needed. Windows 11 also compresses what's held in RAM so has less need to save to the paging file.

MouldyOldDough

Vitor said:

Leave the setting as 'System Managed' and the paging file will grow as needed. Windows 11 also compresses what's held in RAM so has less need to save to the paging file.

Thanks - ok will do

km1500

I have run every Windows system I have owned since Windows 7 back in the day with the page file set to zero

I initially did this as a security measure so that there was not page file stuff left lying around on the hard drive. I was expecting problems but surprisingly have not had a single problem in all this time

my real installed memory has been normal for the time i.e about 2GB back then about a 8gb now

MouldyOldDough

km1500 said:

I have run every Windows system I have owned since Windows 7 back in the day with the page file set to zero

I initially did this as a security measure so that there was not page file stuff left lying around on the hard drive. I was expecting problems but surprisingly have not had a single problem in all this time
my real installed memory has been normal for the time i.e about 2GB back then about a 8gb now

I have run every OS since Win 3.1 and have always left the page file at its default value