With over five years of experience in the tech industry, Kazim excels at simplifying complex topics, making them accessible to tech enthusiasts and general readers alike. He has extensively covered the Windows ecosystem, from Windows 7 to Windows 11.
When he’s not writing, you’ll find Kazim planning weekend getaways or diving into tech verticals beyond his expertise.
If your Windows PC is running low on storage and you search the web for ways to reclaim some of that space, disabling the page file is a common piece of advice. Some even suggest the tweak can improve performance, since the page file, or pagefile.sys, is slower than physical memory. Frankly, the idea makes sense in theory, especially if your PC has enough RAM and doesn't need to fall back on virtual memory. So, I, too, gave it a try. But the role of pagefile.sys isn't as straightforward as you think, and disabling the page file can introduce instability, as I soon found out.
I will get straight to it. The first few hours after disabling the page file went by smoothly. But as I had several active browser tabs and a couple of apps running, the difference became noticeable. Initially, a couple of browser tabs crashed out of the blue, which I naively dismissed. Next, I had trouble launching apps, even though Task Manager showed memory usage within a reasonable range. So, it wasn't as if my system was suddenly out of memory. And then it hit me that this instability could be tied to the recent changes. As I read more about the page file, it became evident why those guides and tutorials were all wrong.
Disabling the page file has theoretical benefits
In the real world, none of that really matters
I agree, disabling the page file has theoretical advantages, and it's not limited to freeing up storage space. Although for some users, that alone may seem like a good enough reason. More importantly, the page file also affects your storage drive's lifespan. By default, Windows dynamically adjusts the page file size, and constant resizing adds to background writes, which can ultimately cause your SSD to fail sooner. Additionally, a common belief, which I also came across, is that disabling the page file forces Windows to store everything in physical RAM, and since it's faster than your storage drive, system performance improves.
However, it doesn't work that way in the real world. Your SSD is already designed to handle those constant reads and writes, the same as hiberfil.sys, or the hibernation file. And there are far better ways to improve your SSD's lifespan. Similarly, disabling the page file will not make your computer any faster. On the contrary, it will be much less stable, and you may even encounter low-memory errors despite having sufficient physical RAM. That's because the page file isn't just a fallback when the computer runs low on RAM. It has other functions too.
The page file is important to Windows
It isn't simply backup memory
Most users believe the page file, or virtual memory, has a simple purpose: to act as buffer memory that kicks in when RAM usage increases. While that's true, it's only one role, not the file's entire purpose. Several apps also rely on the page file even when you aren't actively running them, and if the file is missing, they may fail to launch or freeze soon after. Windows also uses the page file for crash dumps when your system encounters an error.
Unlike other large files that you can delete on Windows, the page file is critical to the system and should best be left untouched. Ideally, you should let Windows manage the page file size — that's the safest approach for the average user — but if it takes too much space and your system is running low on storage, you can reduce the configured virtual memory size.
You can manually adjust its size, though
Finding the middle ground between storage and stability
To adjust the page file size, search for View advanced system settings, click Settings under Performance, navigate to the Advanced tab, click Change under Virtual memory, uncheck Automatically manage paging file size for all drives, select Custom size, and then enter your preferred page file size. It should ideally be in the 4–8GB range. Finally, save the changes and restart the system.
The age-old advice is to set the "Initial size" and "Final size" to 1.5x and 3x the physical RAM, respectively. However, modern PCs already have decent RAM, so you could go with a lower number. For instance, when Windows was managing the paging file size on my system (which has 24GB RAM), it reserved just 1536MB for virtual memory. And that worked. Don't go with something as low as this, but anything between 4–8GB should work out fine if your computer already has 16–32GB RAM.
Disabling the page file isn't the smartest decision
By now, you have a fair idea why you shouldn't disable the page file, but I've lived through it, and those extra few GBs aren't worth what you'd put your system through. No one wants random app crashes, memory-related errors, or a freezing system, and that's exactly what happens in many cases. So, the next time someone tells you to disable the page file, you will know better. If you want to free up storage on your PC, there are several safer ways to do it. Just avoid tinkering with anything that Windows hides by default.