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I admit I have rather small free space available on my C:\ drive (only 3-4 GiBs usually, with a 4 GiB pagefile being around), but what really annoys me is this:

Windows sometimes does an operation(1) which supposedly requires more free space than available and thus, it shrinks my pagefile to 600-800 MiBs (or even less) and then allocates the space on my hard drive for that certain something.

After this (here comes the annoying part), it usually complains about running out of memory when I start a memory-heavy application or videogame (which is never a problem if the 4 GiB pagefile is a 4 GiB pagefile). And because the size is already allocated, I can't quickly set the pagefile back to its original size.

In system settings, the paging area has a fixed (hey, not so fixed, it seems afterall) size of 4096 MB. Windows is not supposed to shrink it, yet it does.

I started with a 45 GB partition, now I'm at 65 and it's not enough either.

I regularly clean my computer from stale temp files and other orphan or expired stuff (such as memory profiling reports), but seemingly the disk space is leaking away. Antivirus checks are regular too, so if it is a malware, it is a brand new never known one.

(1): I think it is the shadow copying for System Rescue, which is set to have 2 GB size available. But I never ran into this issue, all I see is that there is no space (few hundred MiBs) left on the partition, and the pagefile is yet again only a few MiBs large.

I'm thinking about recycling my Linux's swap partition (I have a dual-install setup on this drive) to become a Windows pagefile.sys hosting partition when Windows is booted, and turn back to a Linux swap when Linux is booted. If you could help me out about that, I have this other question here.

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    I'd tend to tell you to stop trying to fill your drive to the brink and to always make sure you always have a good 10 GB free on your OS drive. When you force an OS to squeeze its operations in too little space, I think that sort of thing should be expected. Move programs (with a symlink/junction) elsewhere if needed, but I don't think you should be playing with the space Windows needs. Or if you DO want to be stubborn about it, consider moving your pagefile.sys over to a data drive and linking it to its original location, but that'll likely slow things down assuming it even works.
    – Ariane
    Commented Oct 24, 2013 at 18:07
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    I hesitate to suggest this but when you say "fixed size" I hope you mean Initial and maximum size both set to 4096 MB? If you've only set the max to be 4096 and the initial to less than that... you'll see what is happening on your pc.
    – BeowulfNode42
    Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 23:36

1 Answer 1

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I've not experienced this myself, but the dialogue box does say Initial size and not minimum. I'm assuming based on what is happening with your setup is that Windows occasionally decides to shrink the pagefile down from its initial size due to the chronic shortage of disk space.

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