Windows 7 pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys are deletable?

[BigBingo]

Hi All,

The files pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys are 8GB and 6GB accordingly.
Are they important? Can I delete them or at least reduce them?

Thanks

Shaul

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

You can't delete them but you can decide to not have a page file, but it's not recommended.

The Page File temporarily stores data when Windows is processing it.
If you don't have one all the temporary storage will be forced into your ram.

You can opt to either have Windows Manage the Page File, or set a fixed size.
It's usually considered better to set a fixed size that is about 1.5 times the amount of ram you have.
Though that's not as big a factor as it was when people had much smaller amounts of ram.

I have my Page File set to a permanent size of 12 Gigabytes, or 1.5 times the amount of ram I have.

You can access your Page File handling by going to System, Advanced System Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory and click on change.

You can not delete Hiberfil.sys it stores the setting in you computer so that when it goes into sleep mode it knows what your settings are when it wakes up again.

I should say that if you don't want to use sleep, hibernate mode it can be turned off.

Open an administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking on the command prompt in the start menu, and then choosing Run as Administrator.

Type in the command: powercfg -h off

The hibernate command will disappear from the menu.

Mike

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[BigBingo]

Thank you for the good explanation.