minimize windows swap file usage

-1

I know completely disabling the swapfile is not a good idea, so i'd like just to minimize its usage, so that the memory pages will be swapped only when the physical memory is completely full.

I know this old registry setting to force the kernel in RAM, but what about the user apps?

EDIT: Recent PCs have a lot of RAM (>=8GB) and also have SSDs that dislikes frequent writes. Also i think unnecessary/strategic swapping slows down the system.

The Linux kernel has a nice configurable swappiness parameter, is there something similar on Windows?

eadmaster

Posted 2015-11-08T01:00:56.823

Reputation: 706

That sounds like a terrible idea – Keltari – 2015-11-08T01:10:24.360

@Keltari: could you explain why? – eadmaster – 2015-11-08T01:52:20.447

First off MS doesnt make things the way they are for no reason. They do massive amounts of research and testing, they do things they way they do, as it is generally the best way to do it. Now, as for your idea of not swapping until memory is full, that would just result in massive amounts of endless paging once the ceiling is hit. – Keltari – 2015-11-08T02:17:35.433

If you are having issues with paging, 99/100 you dont have enough memory to support your computer usage. – Keltari – 2015-11-08T02:18:20.837

Possible duplicate of Modify Windows "Swappiness"

– eadmaster – 2015-11-08T16:53:24.140

@Keltari: Firstly, Microsoft don't control the vast majority of software that can run on Windows, and secontly their settings are tuned for broadest compatibility and reliability, not best performance on a very specific combination of hardware. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-11-08T17:54:34.723

The closet thing to a "swappiness" parameter is the optimize memory allocation for foreground/background applications setting. – qasdfdsaq – 2015-11-08T17:56:57.583

Answers

1

Update to Windows 10, here Windows compresses RAM that was not used for a longer time and instead of paging it to the page file on disk, it stores the compressed memory inside the SYSTEM process.

enter image description here

This reduces paging dramatically and is what you want.

magicandre1981

Posted 2015-11-08T01:00:56.823

Reputation: 86 560

+1 great answer if he wants to upgrade – Kilisi – 2015-11-08T08:24:05.780

This is not exactly what i was thinking but would definitively help, thanks for the answer! – eadmaster – 2015-11-08T16:43:17.957