Page File Performance Monitoring

The article XP Paging File examined why XP has a paging file, how it's set up and ways to modify the default parameters to yield better performance.

When changes are made, good practice dictates monitoring to assess a positive, negative, or no impact result. Numerous methods can be employed to monitor performance. One monitoring tool is built into Windows XP in the form of Microsoft Management Console. If you are unfamiliar with consoles, it might be useful to read over this article on creating custom Microsoft Management Consoles. This article describes how to build a console specifically for monitoring the paging file. If you don't want to go to the effort of building a console, Task Manager still provides some very solid information related to the paging file.

Creating the Page File Console

Since I want a single purpose console to monitor only the paging file, rather than modify an existing console, I'm creating a new console that contains only the desired elements. If you prefer to make page file monitoring part of an existing console, open the desired console and follow the instructions below from the second line onward.

Click [Start] [Run], type mmc and click [OK] to create a MMC with no snap-in.
Click [File] [Add/Remove Snap-In...]
or
Use the [Ctrl+M]  key combination to open the Add/Remove Snap-In Property Sheet.
Click [Add] to open the Add Standalone Snap-In window.
Click [ActiveX Control] and click [Add] to open the ActiveX Control Wizard and click [Next]
Set the Control Category dropdown to All Categories
Under Control Type, scroll down and select System Monitor Control and click [Next]
Name the control Paging File Monitor or a name of your choice.
Click [Finish] [Close] [OK] to return to the console.
In the right hand pane, click the plus (+) sign to open the Add Counters dialog box shown below.

Set the radio buttons as shown. The name of your computer will be displayed in the top drop down box.
Once the selections are made, click [Add] and [Close] to return to the console.

Note: There are many other counters available that you can add to the ones shown above. Explore each of the different categories, especially the ones related to memory and disk usage.

It should look similar to the console shown below.

To get a good reading on your paging file the console needs to run for a day or two. As the file is accessed the counters will track the current and peak usage. If you have a period of heavy usage which then tapers off, the blue line would remain substantially higher than the red line because the blue tracks peak usage while the red is current usage. In the example above I've changed the scale to show only to 5% simply to separate the usage lines. Clicking on the View Report icon to the left of the plus (+) sign will change the display as shown below.

This view is much easier to use than the Graph View. As the paging file is heavily used the % Usage Peak will climb. If it approaches 90% or above you might want to increase the size of the paging file. In the view above the usage is less than 1%. After a few days of monitoring, if it remained this low I'd drastically reduce the size of the paging file. The ideal situation would be to have the % Usage Peak top out at about 80% so a cushion remains for extra heavy usage.

The last step is to save the console. From the Menu Bar, click [File] [Save As] and type a name for the console. Bear in mind that the name you use here will appear in the title bar of the console, so unless you like "I Finally Made A Damn Console" as its name, I'd suggest something a bit more descriptive of its intended purpose or use.

Page File Articles Series

[ Paging File ] [Locating the Page File ] [ Sizing the Page File ] [ Physically Setting Page File Size ]
 [ Page Files and Fragmentation ] [ Defragmenting the Page File ] [ Paging File Performance Monitoring ]