Pagefile (virtual memory)
Also searched as: pagefile · page file · virtual memory · swap file
What it means
A reserved chunk of your drive that Windows uses as overflow when it needs more memory than your RAM holds. It's a safety valve, not a speed setting.
More detail
A popular tweak says to disable it or hard-cap it to a tiny size — don't. Games that commit more memory than you have RAM will hard-crash without it, and "I have 32 GB, that's plenty" isn't how memory reservation works. Leave it system-managed and forget it exists.
The Compy Blackbook holds 174 graded entries like this one, judged against your hardware — and every change it does make is reversible, with the receipt to prove it.
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