Can't run PageDefrag in Windows 7

re-format your computer and install open source linux ubuntu, just fyi,
thread closed!

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 20:52:41 -0500, "R. C. White"
wrote:

Hi, Bob.

That's interesting! Could you explain what those dates mean? Does this
change the practice I described? Does the page file move to a new location
on each restart?

The pagefile is just a scratch pad, a dummy file that contains
temporary data. The OS maintains pointers to that data, and those
pointers are only valid for the duration of the current Windows
session. During every system boot those pointers are cleared and the
system starts fresh. At that moment, the pagefile still contains lots
of data, (only the pointers were cleared), but it is data from a
previous Windows session and is invalid in the current session and
therefore is not used.**

The pagefile never physically moves and doesn't routinely get deleted
or recreated. It's created once, then it's reused over and over again.
If you let Windows manage the size of the pagefile, it will
dynamically grow (and theoretically shrink), as needed, and there lies
the possible rub.

When Windows needs to grow the pagefile, some number of days, weeks or
months after Windows was installed, it may find that the contiguous
disk blocks are already in use, so it will fragment the pagefile. It's
this physical fragmentation of the pagefile that can slow down access
to the contents of the pagefile.

An obvious method of preventing pagefile fragmentation is to remove
the pagefile (or temporarily move it to another drive or partition),
defragment the partition where you want the pagefile to reside, then
create a new pagefile, but this time manually set a minimum and
maximum size rather than letting Windows manage the size. Since the
pagefile will never shrink or grow, it cannot become fragmented.
Windows will alert you if the pagefile is too small, so there's little
or no danger from manually setting the size.

**If you boot a live Linux OS on your Windows system you can examine
the contents of the pagefile, looking for text strings and other
goodies. It's somewhat surprising to see what's typically stored in
there.

On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:19:09 -0500, Bob I wrote:



On 7/7/2010 9:14 PM, R. C. White wrote:
Hi, Ken.

I've noted that pagefile.sys is always dated today at the time that I
turned on the computer this morning. My understanding is that a new page
file is created each time the computer is restarted. It is started from
scratch each time, and probably in a different location. So defragging
would be of only transitory benefit anyhow, until the next restart.

Is that correct?

RC

Nope, you're looking at the Date Modified, enable Date Created to see
the correct info.


From a cursory search it seems that the "pagefile" is just a name used
by MS for what other systems refer to as a "Swap File" - a place to
swap out some memory resident instructions or data to allow another
application to have more memory room. When the larger application is
terminated, or the second program gains access's to the CPU the data
is swapped back into memory.

If this is correct then when the computer is shut down the pagefile
data simply becomes redundant as the applications that used this data
are stopped.

In fact the system wilt run (usually) pretty well with no pagefile
whatsoever.

Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

Hi, Char.

Thanks for the explanation. It mostly fits with what I already knew.

Back in the day when 20 MB was a giant HDD and we were still using MS-DOS
and FAT(12) and Peter Norton really wrote Norton Utilities, especially
DiskEdit, I spent many tedious hours reading my disks, byte by byte. I was
amazed at how much "erased" data was still there. Nowadays, I seldom look
that closely at my disks, but I'm confident that many of my secrets that I
"deleted" months or even years ago are still there and readable by anyone
with the right tools (Yes, they are still available and some are built right
into Win7, as I'm sure you know.) and just a small amount of skill. (Even
before MS-DOS and hard drives, I did the same things on floppies with
SuperZap and other utilities for my TRS-80s. Aah...memories! g )

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2010 (15.3.2804.0607) in Win7 Ultimate x64)


"Char Jackson" wrote in message
...

On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 20:52:41 -0500, "R. C. White"
wrote:

Hi, Bob.

That's interesting! Could you explain what those dates mean? Does this
change the practice I described? Does the page file move to a new location
on each restart?

The pagefile is just a scratch pad, a dummy file that contains
temporary data. The OS maintains pointers to that data, and those
pointers are only valid for the duration of the current Windows
session. During every system boot those pointers are cleared and the
system starts fresh. At that moment, the pagefile still contains lots
of data, (only the pointers were cleared), but it is data from a
previous Windows session and is invalid in the current session and
therefore is not used.**

The pagefile never physically moves and doesn't routinely get deleted
or recreated. It's created once, then it's reused over and over again.
If you let Windows manage the size of the pagefile, it will
dynamically grow (and theoretically shrink), as needed, and there lies
the possible rub.

When Windows needs to grow the pagefile, some number of days, weeks or
months after Windows was installed, it may find that the contiguous
disk blocks are already in use, so it will fragment the pagefile. It's
this physical fragmentation of the pagefile that can slow down access
to the contents of the pagefile.

An obvious method of preventing pagefile fragmentation is to remove
the pagefile (or temporarily move it to another drive or partition),
defragment the partition where you want the pagefile to reside, then
create a new pagefile, but this time manually set a minimum and
maximum size rather than letting Windows manage the size. Since the
pagefile will never shrink or grow, it cannot become fragmented.
Windows will alert you if the pagefile is too small, so there's little
or no danger from manually setting the size.

**If you boot a live Linux OS on your Windows system you can examine
the contents of the pagefile, looking for text strings and other
goodies. It's somewhat surprising to see what's typically stored in
there.

R. C. White wrote:
Hi, Char.

Thanks for the explanation. It mostly fits with what I already knew.



Back in the day when 20 MB was a giant HDD and we were still using
MS-DOS and FAT(12) and Peter Norton really wrote Norton Utilities,
especially DiskEdit, I spent many tedious hours reading my disks,
byte by byte. I was amazed at how much "erased" data was still
there. Nowadays, I seldom look that closely at my disks, but I'm
confident that many of my secrets that I "deleted" months or even
years ago are still there and readable by anyone with the right tools
(Yes, they are still available and some are built right into Win7,
as I'm sure you know.) and just a small amount of skill. (Even
before MS-DOS and hard drives, I did the same things on floppies with
SuperZap and other utilities for my TRS-80s. Aah...memories! g )

Data is never deleted. Sectors are just marked as available. If they are
never used again, the data remains. So called disk cleaning software
just overwrites the sectors numerous times to make the original data
unreadable.

Peter Norton selling out to Symantec was like having Santa Claus die. :-(
--
Crash

"Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable."
~ Laurence J. Peter ~

On Fri, 9 Jul 2010 11:15:45 -0500, R. C. White wrote:

Hi, Char.

Thanks for the explanation. It mostly fits with what I already knew.

Back in the day when 20 MB was a giant HDD and we were still using MS-DOS
and FAT(12) and Peter Norton really wrote Norton Utilities, especially
DiskEdit, I spent many tedious hours reading my disks, byte by byte. I was
amazed at how much "erased" data was still there. Nowadays, I seldom look
that closely at my disks, but I'm confident that many of my secrets that I
"deleted" months or even years ago are still there and readable by anyone
with the right tools (Yes, they are still available and some are built right
into Win7, as I'm sure you know.) and just a small amount of skill. (Even
before MS-DOS and hard drives, I did the same things on floppies with
SuperZap and other utilities for my TRS-80s. Aah...memories! g )

RC

That's why I use Eraser, http://sourceforge.net/projects/eraser

There are other such programs.

I usually only erase disks or their free space when I am finished with
them, especially if I'm going to give them away.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

Date Created= the date that the file was created
Date Modified= the last time the file was saved

The practice? Defragging? Unless you created a large swapfile while
running a very fragmented hard drive, there would be no benefit. Nope it
stays right where it started, why would it move, that would be a
pointless waste of time.

On 7/8/2010 8:52 PM, R. C. White wrote:
Hi, Bob.

That's interesting! Could you explain what those dates mean? Does this
change the practice I described? Does the page file move to a new
location on each restart?

RC