How to defragment your pagefile in Vista

How to defragment your pagefile in Vista

By opening a Command Prompt session with administrative privileges, you can use the defragmentation program with various command-line options. (For details, type defrag /? at the command prompt.).

In addition to enabling scripts to incorporate defragmentation tasks, the command-line approach offers an option to analyze and report on the fragmentation status of a disk without actually carrying out the defrag operation. Type defrag c: –a –v, for example, to generate a verbose report on the condition of drive C. (You can add >%temp%\report.txt to the end of that command string to funnel the report into a text file saved in the Temp folder.). The last line of the report will recommend a defrag run if the system thinks you need it.

Using Disk Defragmenter's Analysis Report, you can determine whether your page file is fragmented. Although page file fragmentation is normally not a serious issue, a severely fragmented page file can reduce your system's performance. Disk Defragmenter cannot consolidate your page file, because Windows holds it open while you work. However, if you have more than one volume available (even if the second volume is on the same physical hard disk as your system drive), you can work around the problem as follows:

1. Open Control Panel and double-click the System icon (in the System and Maintenance category).

2. In the task pane on the left side of the window, click Advanced System Settings.

3. On the Advanced tab of the System Properties dialog box, click the Settings button under Performance.

4. On the Advanced tab of the Performance Options dialog box, click Change under Virtual Memory.

5. From the list of available drives, choose a volume other than the one that holds your current page file. This drive will hold your temporary page file.

6. Choose the Custom Size option, choose System Managed Size, and click Set.

7. Select the drive that contains the fragmented page file, choose the Paging File option, and then click Set.

8. Close open dialog boxes to save your settings, and restart the computer to allow it to stop using the old page file and begin using the new one.

9. Defragment the drive that previously held your page file. This consolidates the free space on that volume so that your new page file will be stored in contiguous space.

10. Repeat steps 1 through 8, this time creating a page file on the original disk and eliminating the temporary page file you created. Then reboot to allow the new, defragmented page file to take over.