Thursday, September 14, 2006

DisablePagingExecutive Boost Windows Performance

Tweaking Windows core performance by editing registry key called DisablePagingExecutive only if

  1. plenty of memory installed, e.g. 1 GB RAM or more
  2. most of the memory being unused or idle on most of the time (wasting resource!), and
  3. Windows 2000 and above (Windows XP, Windows 2003) is running.
DisablePagingExecutive is a DWORD data type that could be located at registry path

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

The initial setup of Windows XP default DisablePagingExecutive value to zero. Setting this value to 1 to enable Windows core to fully utilize the huge memory installed. Tweaking this registry key benefits driver debugging too as all of the code and data are always memory resident. It also improves Windows system core performance by preventing high frequency of disk read in order to get code and data out from hard disk to memory for processing!

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This article has 10 comments.

Anonymous said...

I did it on my XP,and it's faster..

This type of idea applies to Mac OS x?

sorry for my english

Anonymous said...

Yes, I did it too, and set it back to zero immediately. Why ? Some Applications (Here: Acad 2005) with many Icons fail to display the icons. They are all black.

This tweak is only recommended if you have low memory (< 192 MB). Which XP-machine in our days has such a low amount of RAM ?

So I dont think you should use this tweak.

Anonymous said...

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bloggerdigest said...

Thank you very much for your positive feedback.

Anonymous said...

The author has clearly misunderstood the function of this value. He also appears to have little understanding of how Windows manages memory.

First of all, XP manages memory very well without user intervention. It will fully utilize whatever memory is available. Many people think otherwise because the do not understand what Task Manager is telling them. "Available Memory" does not mean this memory is free, in most cases the majority is actually in use for caching, etc. Also, "PF Usage" does not mean that this data has been written to the pagefile. It is only potential useage.

DisablePagingExecutive does not disable paging as many people believe. It actually has no effect on the pagefile usage at all. This setting effects only "ntoskrnl.exe", nothing more. Because of it's importance XP will try to keep it in memory whenever possible. Only in the case of heavy memory load will it be paged out. If you have sufficient memory this will rarely occur. If memory is not adequate you will be restricting Windows options to deal with the problem.

Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA

Anonymous said...

Guys listen to Larry, who posted above me: he's quite right!
DO not apply this hack it is useless only in some very specific cases, some weird games etc, will it do any good to Temporarily disable this.

Anonymous said...

See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757875.aspx

Quote from MS:
"It also improves performance on machines with a lot of memory, because it prevents disk reads to get code or data."

"This tweak is only recommended if you have low memory (< 192 MB)."

Incorrect. MS only recommends this tweak for systems that have vastly MORE memory than 192 MB.

"This setting effects only "ntoskrnl.exe", nothing more"

More precisely, this setting specifies whether kernel-mode drivers and kernel-mode system code can be paged to disk when not in use.

General consensus is that this tweak is safe. However, results are varied: some see significant perf increase, others do not.

Anonymous said...

See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757875.aspx

...

"This tweak is only recommended if you have low memory (< 192 MB)."

You are making things up. There's nothing in that link that says what you have quoted.

Anonymous said...

Ignore the above post. This person did not bother to read and understand all of the posts before making his/her post.

Slugbait was quoting a previous post, not the web site. He could have made that a little clearer but didn't need to since you are supposed to read all the posts if you intend to make statements like, "You are making things up."

So, to make things clear, every point that Slugbait made is valid and can be found on Microsoft's website. Whether Microsoft's info can be relied upon is another question.

Also keep in mind that Larry might be a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA), but that does not mean he works for Microsoft, nor does it mean he is an authority that trumps Microsoft's Support/Technet website.

To everyone else who posted - stop telling people they shouldn't try this. Microsoft's own website recommends this for systems with large amounts of memory. People should be free to try this without someone trying to scare them out of it. If it works, great, if it doesn't, change it back!

Anonymous said...

Most users now have 3 or more GB or RAM.

Pagefiles are justified only when "RAM runs out".

For your typical user this will NEVER happen. Therefore pagefiles are as relevant as dialup modems today.

While software makers like Superspeed are loading drives onto RAM for massive performance boosts, XP still goes the other way, choosing a 40MB/s medium to serve running apps when a 1GB/s medium is idle and waiting.

Pathetic! Yes, XP came out back in 2001, but they should have coded in a clause to NEVER use pagefile if ram>2gb.