My Fragmentation has increased from 2% to 3% when it use to be 0% -- what has happened? I have tried everything to defragment these two files: hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys. Now I just have one file pagefile.sys which is 979,968 kb. Is there any suggestion?
You can't defrag hiberfil.sys, so you exclude it.
To defrag pagefile.sys you run a Boot Time Defrag. 
another way to defrag those 2 files without using DF is to 'delete' them, so to speak.
for hiberfil.sys; start a Command Prompt as Administrator and type powercfg -h off
if you don't care about hibernation power save mode, leave it there.
the file is now gone.
if you do want it back, powercfg -h on
for pagefile.sys;
go to Control Panel, System, Advanced tab, Advanced button, tell it you don't want a Pagefile, reboot the PC (it'll be a bit slower with the pagefile) and go back into Control Panel and set it back up, either Custon and System Managed (it changes a bit depending on your Windows version, plus I'm not on my Windows Pc at the moment so that was from memory)
for pagefile.sys;
go to Control Panel, System, Advanced tab, Advanced button, tell it you don't want a Pagefile, reboot the PC . . .
There's an easier way. By installing Fixit 50463 Windows will clear (overwrite) the PagingFile with every shutdown.
looks like that FixIt only clears the contents, which suggests the file itself would still be fragmented.
i guess it depends on the method of 'clearing', it may simply delete and recreate the file or maybe write 0's to it.
looks like that FixIt only clears the contents, which suggests the file itself would still be fragmented.
Ever since installing Fixit 50463 on my pcs, pagefile.sys has not appeared in Defraggler\ File list. Any fragged remnants would be insignificant.
@kroozer,
i set that Registry variable to 1 to wipe the pagefile at shutdown, and although i can confirm the pagefile seems to not get fragmented, i don't like the extra time it now takes to shutdown.
having recently gone over to a SSD, shutdown was about 10secs, it's now about 90-120secs.
so the benefit of privacy and non-fragmentation of a cleared pagefile, for me, were negated by the delayed shutdown time.
but as feedback on the pagefile not getting frag'd, in the few days i had the setting on 1, DF never showed the pagefile as frag'd and i would normally see it sitting on somewhere above 2 and below 10 fragments.
having recently gone over to a SSD, shutdown was about 10secs, it's now about 90-120secs.
My shutdown takes only 8-15 secs cos PagingFile is set at 32-512 MB.
having recently gone over to a SSD, shutdown was about 10secs, it's now about 90-120secs.
How large is your Pagefile,
and is it on your SSD or a HDD ?
My personal view is that Virtual Ram should only be used as a last resort,
and those applications which waste the available Real RAM by choosing Virtual RAM should be penalised,
so increasing the fragmentation and further degrading the response of such applications is NOT a bad thing,
it actually helps to show which applications are rubbish and merit replacement
i don't have the pagefile on the SSD, it's on one of the mechanicals.
and yes, it is large, having 8gig of ram, i made the pagefile the old formula of 1.5 times, so it's 12gig, which i always thought as ridiculous but have been too lazy to change.
so that would definitely be a large part of the increased shutdown delay.
but it at least proved to me that the FixIt actually does something 'meaty' and has a direct or indirect action of helping the pagefile not fragment.
ps: i will decrease the PF down to 4gig initially and do some performance monitoring with the aim on seeing just how low i can get it, now i have so much ram compared to computing years ago where the physical vs virtual memory was the other way around.
I have only 6 GB RAM. Runs smooth, no trubbs.
ok, so you have 6gig phyiscal and 512meg (max) virtual.
thanks, i'll keep that in mind when 'downsizing' my PF.
i'll be interested in hearing other peoples size ratios, but i am off topic (it can creep up on you before you realise) so will start it in a new thread....
Just monitor your RAM usage with Task Mgr. Set mine to run at startup.
You can always let CleanMem keep it lean. I've disabled CleanMem in Task Scheduler, run only manually.
Perfmon is also a good process to use.
It's part of WIn7/Vista, not sure on the others.
Why are we messing with PageFile.sys anyways? If you want to decrease shutdown time while simultaneously wiping it for security reasons, then the solution is going to be keep a small pagefile. Typically 256mb-512mb might be suitible. If that doesn't work because you *need* it then you need to either replace sloppy applications or increase main ram.
It is also important to understand that a pagefile provides address space too, and those address may be null placeholders till needed. So.. there's really a lot to learn about all this.
If you're trying to really dig into what an app is doing, VMMap and RAMMap utilities from the Sysinternals suite is a good place to get started.
Having said that I learned a ton of stuff from:
http://blogs.technet...17/3155406.aspx
It was also suggested to me to keep pagefile.sys on a virtual drive in ram, if you have the space. I never experimented with doing that though. An alternative I also overheard was to encrypt the pagefile, then it never need be wiped. I have not experimented with that either.
i don't want to stay off topic for long, but to answer your question Keatah, we weren't messing around with the PF per say, it was just a side-effect of the clearing PF suggestion which in turn was a suggestion to reduce fragmentation.
you are dead right, a small PF is the way to go, as i have recently experimented with.
the old adage of 1.5 x RAM = PF seems much less important these days with RAM being cheap and most PC's having it in abundance.
i don't want to stay off topic for long.
all of this has been off topic