Unable to defrag 2GB pagefile

[Zatiria]

Here's my problem:

 

A few weeks ago the pagefile on two computers I'm taking care of has mysteriously fragmented. Both computers are running 32 bit Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3. The pagefile has the same size on both computers: 2 GB. I know that Windows can move the pagefile and change its size but on both computers the pagefile has a fixed size set in the settings.

 

Beforehand the pagefile on both computers was in 1 fragment. After the fragmentation the pagefile on the first computer had 2 fragments while the pagefile on the other one had many very small fragments. As can be expected the performance of both computers was affected by this.

 

Knowing from experience how difficult it can be to defragment the pagefile I prepared accordingly: I freed up as much space as possible on the system partition on both computers. By the end of this process the first computer had 60 GB of free space on the system partition while the second one had 28 GB.

 

I then defragmented free space on the system partition on both computers (I allowed fragmentation to get as much continuous free space as possible). When the process was done I had a large chunk of free space at the end of the partition on both computers.

 

I immediately selected the Boot Defrag to run once and rebooted both computers. On the second computer everything went as expected: the pagefile was once again in one fragment and I then done a full defrag on that computer to defragment the rest of the files. However the pagefile on the first computer was still fragmented even though the drive map showed more than enough continuous free space to fit the 2 GB pagefile. I then tried another defragmentation utility that has the ability to defragment the pagefile, PageDefrag (developed by Sysinternals). I did this because the last time I had problems defragmenting the pagefile I found that using a different defragmentation utility often changed the location of the file so that Defraggler would fully defragment it afterwards. However this time it didn't work. I then freed additional 8 GBs on the system partition on this computer and did the whole process again but the Boot Defrag still fails to fully defragment the pagefile.

 

All of the actions described above were done using the latest version of Defraggler (2.15.741).

 

I attached a screenshot of the drive map from a few minutes ago. As you can see there seems to be enough free space to fit the entire 2GB pagefile. Those lone red blocks were caused by Avast virus definitions update a few minutes ago while the lone blue blocks report either no files or contain files in the C:\$Extend folder.

 

Any suggestions on how to fully defragment this pagefile are welcome.

[kroozer]

Any suggestions . . .

 

Your issue may be caused from having an unnecessarily large PagingFile. Don't be concerned if you set it smaller cos Windows will overwrite the old (least frequently used) pages if needed.

 

You can reduce the min and max of the PagingFile to the minimum allowed, defrag [C], then expand to the desired custom sizes.

You can also temporarily select no PagingFile, defrag [C], then revert to desired sizes.

 

I have no PagingFile issues cos I have it set small, a min 32 MB and max 512 MB and have Windows clear the PagingFile daily.

 

By installing Fixit 50463 Windows will clear (overwrite) the PagingFile with every shutdown.

[DennisD]

A different suggestion to my mate above, but if these two computers can be switched off why not just disable the page file. This is what I've always done to get my page file back to one contiguous file.

 

In the Virtual Memory settings I set "No Paging File", reboot my computer, defrag the drive to get as much contiguous free space as possible, and then reset the page file to the same min and max settings.

 

Then reboot again, and the page file is back as one file. And thus far it's always worked out that way.

[Willy2]

- Perhaps DF overlooked one or two files that prevented DF from defragmenting the pagefile.

- Try "Pagedefrag" (Sysinternals)

- Install CLEANMEM. It (dramatically) reduces program memory usage and as a result it reduces the need for Windows to access the pagefile.

http://www.pcwintech.com/about-cleanmem

- The problem seems to be those meta date files/folders, e.g. "C:\$Extend" because you deleted a lot of files. Use the MS Defragmentation program, it can e.g. defragment/re-arrange these meta data files as well.