SpinRite the cause of Error:Your System Has No Paging File, or the Paging File is Too Small- and howto change the location and name of your page file
I recenly ran Spinrite v6.0 to try to correct some problems that a PC was having. The Windows XP SP2 PC was slow in responding requests to acces the hard drive. I'd hear a 'tic' 'tic' 'tick' then access... about at 5 second delay - every time I wanted to view the contents of the C: drive. Spinrite found some problems with the drive at what looked like the beginning of the drive. (sorry i should have written down the sectors). Upon my next boot up, I got the error message: Your System Has No Paging File, or the Paging File is Too Small. uh oh. Well I continued on to boot to the desktop and the disk delay problem was now gone, but still I had the pagefile problem.
I figured since parts of the hard drive were bad, I should remove any big chunky files I could think of to clear more areas of the drive; giving the page file more room to access different areas on the disk. So I turned off System Restore, and I also went into system advanced properties and changed the size of the page file, thinking that if the size changed, the original page file would be wiped and the location on the disk would change (moving it to possibly an undamaged area of the disk). So I rebooted, even into safe mode a couple times and still received the same error. I read a few forums and could only find a few suggestions: uninstall Intel Application Accelerator (not installed) and give the Administrator and System accounts full rights to the hard drive (they already did). So I flashed the bios, and installed the intel chipset drivers for the HP/Compaq dc5000 sff machine I was on. Still no luck. I was running out of options (didn't want to rewipe and didn't have a spare HD) so I decided to see what was up with pagefile.sys. I chose under file properties to view all files (including hidden and system files), and looked under the root of C:. No pagefile.sys to be found!? So I went ahead and tried to create one by creating a new text document and changed the name to Pagefile.sys - beep - error - A file with this name already exists. Uh, no, it doesn't exist, I'd see it right here next to ntldr and msdos.sys. Well if it didn't like that I would make a second. I created a new file called Pagefile2.sys (it let me do this) Hmm, the registry must contain a location for the pagefile because the gui sure doesn't in system properties or in enviornment variables. I opened regedit and did a search for pagefile.sys . There are several locations within the registry to tell the OS where the pagefile resides: (i hope these keys are correct - be sure to double-check and backup your registry first)
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup\Memory Page File - I changed the value from \Pagefile.sys to \Pagefile2.sys
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manger\Memory Management\PagingFiles - I changed the value from c:\pagefile.sys 1538 2050 to c:\pagefile2.sys 1538 2050
3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup\Memory Page File - I changed the value from \Pagefile.sys to \Pagefile2.sys
4. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Session Manger\Memory Management\PagingFiles - I changed the value from c:\pagefile.sys 1538 2050 to c:\pagefile2.sys 1538 2050
5. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup\Memory Page File Memory Page File - I changed the value from \Pagefile.sys to \Pagefile2.sys
6. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PagingFiles - I changed c:\pagefile.sys 1538 2050 to c:\pagefile2.sys 1538 2050.
I rebooted the machine, and no more error message! (raised arms high above head).
I looked under the root of the C: drive and saw that pagefile2.sys now exists and is about 1.5gb in size. So hopefully, problem solved ( I say hopefully because I'm worried applications may have the location c:\pagefile.sys hard coded into them). Spinrite corrected the disk access time and I (yes, me) fixed the pagefile problem. Okay so now back to the real reason I even visited this machine, install Great Plains and FRx - blech -
I figured since parts of the hard drive were bad, I should remove any big chunky files I could think of to clear more areas of the drive; giving the page file more room to access different areas on the disk. So I turned off System Restore, and I also went into system advanced properties and changed the size of the page file, thinking that if the size changed, the original page file would be wiped and the location on the disk would change (moving it to possibly an undamaged area of the disk). So I rebooted, even into safe mode a couple times and still received the same error. I read a few forums and could only find a few suggestions: uninstall Intel Application Accelerator (not installed) and give the Administrator and System accounts full rights to the hard drive (they already did). So I flashed the bios, and installed the intel chipset drivers for the HP/Compaq dc5000 sff machine I was on. Still no luck. I was running out of options (didn't want to rewipe and didn't have a spare HD) so I decided to see what was up with pagefile.sys. I chose under file properties to view all files (including hidden and system files), and looked under the root of C:. No pagefile.sys to be found!? So I went ahead and tried to create one by creating a new text document and changed the name to Pagefile.sys - beep - error - A file with this name already exists. Uh, no, it doesn't exist, I'd see it right here next to ntldr and msdos.sys. Well if it didn't like that I would make a second. I created a new file called Pagefile2.sys (it let me do this) Hmm, the registry must contain a location for the pagefile because the gui sure doesn't in system properties or in enviornment variables. I opened regedit and did a search for pagefile.sys . There are several locations within the registry to tell the OS where the pagefile resides: (i hope these keys are correct - be sure to double-check and backup your registry first)
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup\Memory Page File - I changed the value from \Pagefile.sys to \Pagefile2.sys
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manger\Memory Management\PagingFiles - I changed the value from c:\pagefile.sys 1538 2050 to c:\pagefile2.sys 1538 2050
3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup\Memory Page File - I changed the value from \Pagefile.sys to \Pagefile2.sys
4. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Session Manger\Memory Management\PagingFiles - I changed the value from c:\pagefile.sys 1538 2050 to c:\pagefile2.sys 1538 2050
5. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup\Memory Page File Memory Page File - I changed the value from \Pagefile.sys to \Pagefile2.sys
6. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PagingFiles - I changed c:\pagefile.sys 1538 2050 to c:\pagefile2.sys 1538 2050.
I rebooted the machine, and no more error message! (raised arms high above head).
I looked under the root of the C: drive and saw that pagefile2.sys now exists and is about 1.5gb in size. So hopefully, problem solved ( I say hopefully because I'm worried applications may have the location c:\pagefile.sys hard coded into them). Spinrite corrected the disk access time and I (yes, me) fixed the pagefile problem. Okay so now back to the real reason I even visited this machine, install Great Plains and FRx - blech -
posted by PlanckScale at
4:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home