RE: paging file

wethree wrote on 6/18/2003, 11:12 PM
About that paging file. I read an XP tweak on videoguys.com that suggested assigning 2x your RAM to the paging file-- then splitting that across two drives (one being not your system drive) I got the bright idea of assigning a page file of about a gig to my system drive, AND my two media drives thinking spreading between three drives might be cool-- shortly thereafter one of my media drives (of course its the critical Western Digital 200G drive, not its smaller 80 gig brother) returns the error -- disk cannot start. I'm trying to understand how having assigned a paging file to this third disk could cause this kind of error AND how I might go about recovering my data....

Thanks for your help in advance.

bt

Comments

rebel44 wrote on 6/18/2003, 11:54 PM
The only way I see that the swap file overvwrite the boot sector.Boot from flopy with dos and transfer critical files to other drive.
BillyBoy wrote on 6/19/2003, 8:21 AM
You know what... just about everybody that is or thinks he is a computer guru has an opinion on how to set up the paging file. In earlier versions of Windows not only was it fashionable, but of some benefit under some condtions to tinker with the size of the then always called Swap file. Today the best advice is let Windows do its thing... if you're using one of the later versions of Windows like XP. Moving the location of paging file like I do is fine, but trying to tinker with the size or other things is mostly foolish.
Windows' paging file is by default is designed to expand and shrink all by itself. So the "trick" is to give it as much room as you can spare (seperate partition) then simply forgot about it.

Others may have different views. Like I said, its one of those topics everyone has an opinion on <wink>
mikkie wrote on 6/19/2003, 9:04 AM
"AND how I might go about recovering my data...."

I haven't come across the error message "disk cannot start" (& hopefully won't), but it sounds as if some sort of process starting up - not what I'd expect. Perhaps the disk got turned into a virtual volume or similar acidentally?

If nothing looks obviously amiss in the control panel -> admin tools -> computer management, I think I'd try removing the drive and/or IDE channel in device mgr., let windows reinstall it on reboot, hoping it lost whatever settings were screwing things up.

About the only strange thing I've had happen is win xp pro turned off drives in the bios! But that gave a whole bunch of different errors on attempted booting.
BillyBoy wrote on 6/19/2003, 11:00 AM
If you want to tinker a little... (for XP)

Try Control Panel/administrative tools/computer management/disk management

Windows will bring up some details about the "health" of your drives. They all should show "healthy". If they don't, exit that window, go to Windows Explorer, right click on the "sick" drive, then properties/error checking and click the check now button. A checkdisk session will be scheduled for the next boot. Best to shut down immediately, let the system reboot, you'll see a pale blue screen as Windows attempts to fix itself. It may, then again it may not be able to. It should at least fix the common disk errors like cross linked files and so on. If or not it will solve your paging file problem I don't know, never seen that one.
JJKizak wrote on 6/19/2003, 12:38 PM
Somehow Windows fixing itself goes into one ear and out the other. I have problems
trying to force it to fix itself. Usually it takes a reinstall--last time it was "cannot
find the hive files" and found out if you don't have the hive files or they are
corrupted the fat lady already sang.

JJK
Bill Ravens wrote on 6/19/2003, 1:32 PM
To save your data.....install a whole new version of windoze xp on a different partition. use it to access and reset your pagefile options in the main XP installation. This works if you've got the extra disk space. Another way to fix things, much easier, is to just boot into SAFE mode and reset your pagefile settings. XP is pretty forgiving, even with zero pagefile.

As far as moving, resizing your pagefile goes....BillyBoy, I agree that one should not tinker, however, moving it off the boot partition is a good thing. So, is setting the size to ONE min/max size. Don't let the system set the size or you'll end up with fragmented pagefiles...never a good thing if you're concerned with access speed.