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    That's not completely true - modern memory managers virtualize ALL the system memory. This is what allows for process separation - each process can only touch its own memory. The memory manager is responsible for mapping these virtual pages to the real storage, and optionally to a fixed disk.
    – Anthony Giorgio
    Commented Sep 17, 2009 at 19:31
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    "Windows does NOT defrag this part of your hard drive." simply nuke pagefile.sys, reboot, defrag the disk and re-enable paging, voilá, a fresh and contigeous pagefile! however, Sysinternals' PageDefrag does a better job as it will also place the pagefile at the beginning of the drive/partition for better performance.
    – Molly7244
    Commented Sep 17, 2009 at 19:34
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    If this answer were correct, then a Windows system with no page files configured couldn't provide any virtual memory support. But this is obviously wrong. Such a system could still, for example, map files into process address space in excess of physical RAM, which is an example of virtual memory.
    – David Schwartz
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 22:12