Should I defrag my pagefile?

[Cs342]

My desktop PC is normally very fast but once I leave it idling to go for a walk or something and come back after half an hour it is extremely slow and laggy nearly to the point of being unusable. I have tried many things include changing the power setting to High Performance and setting turn off hard drives to never but nothing is working and it always becomes laggy after idling, which means I have to restart it every time I come back. I am suspecting it is something to do with data in RAM being passed to the pagefile on my hard drive and then not being loaded back quick enough when I come back from idle. Is there any way to fix this> Should I defrag my pagefile to solve this issue?

[Godlygamer23]

How much RAM is being consumed when this happens? (You may have to just wait till it occurs again to get an accurate reading)

[Cs342]

How much RAM is being consumed when this happens? (You may have to just wait till it occurs again to get an accurate reading)

My RAM is never being fully used, so I would say around 50-60%.

[Godlygamer23]

How much RAM do you have?

[Cs342]

How much RAM do you have?

8GB

[Cs342]

I've noticed that I always have lots of tabs open when this happens, could Chrome be the culprit?

[orangecat]

If you have a HDD you shoudl always defragment your HDD anyways why is this even something you shoudl ask about. if you PC becomes slow after a while of being idle it might be power saving features or something running on your PC. like a virus.

[Cs342]

If you have a HDD you shoudl always defragment your HDD anyways why is this even something you shoudl ask about. if you PC becomes slow after a while of being idle it might be power saving features or something running on your PC. like a virus.

The pagefile cannot be defrag unless you use a special program as it is locked after booting into Windows.

[Godlygamer23]

Try defragging your page file with Puran Defrag. If you need help with the program, message me. I use it for my defragging needs.

[Cs342]

Try defragging your page file with Puran Defrag. If you need help with the program, message me. I use it for my defragging needs.

Do you think this would solve my problem?

[Godlygamer23]

Do you think this would solve my problem?

It may. When you do a boot time defrag, it'll attempt to defrag everything, including the page file and the registry.

[Cs342]

It may. When you do a boot time defrag, it'll attempt to defrag everything, including the page file and the registry.

Okay I'll try it out, thanks!

Btw I found a way to stop Chrome from using so much of my hard drive, and the solution is to disable phishing and malware detection. Is this safe.

[Godlygamer23]

It's not advised to disable those two. But if you already have antivirus, you should be fine, provided you understand the different methods of phishing.

[SubTract]

Wouldn't de-fragmenting a page file be pointless. Its only going to swap in and out, then be all fragmented again in a matter of minutes. I think the problem is probably related to something else.

[Flynn]

Pagefile is just that, a temporary holdover for when RAM is tasked beyond system resources.  I very highly doubt your pagefile has anything to do with this issue. 

[Cs342]

What could it be then?

[SubTract]

Well if it was your page file. It would be slow for a few seconds and then as data was swapped back into ram it would become fast again.

What A/V are you using?, What programs run on startup?

how long after being idle does the issue become prominent. I would suggest timing your increments and seeing what happens. Perhaps when you walk away start something like task manager or process explorer and leave it on the process tab sorted by most usage to least usage. See if anything is using a high amount of resources.

Update all your drivers.

 

Worst case scenario re-install windows.

[Cs342]

Well if it was your page file. It would be slow for a few seconds and then as data was swapped back into ram it would become fast again.

What A/V are you using?, What programs run on startup?

how long after being idle does the issue become prominent. I would suggest timing your increments and seeing what happens. Perhaps when you walk away start something like task manager or process explorer and leave it on the process tab sorted by most usage to least usage. See if anything is using a high amount of resources.

Update all your drivers.

 

Worst case scenario re-install windows.

I'm running Norton Internet Security 2013

[Godlygamer23]

In order to make your page file not get fragmented, you can try what's suggested at the bottom. It's the second to last answer on the first page. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/how-to-defrag-page-file-in-windows-7/37b74f26-3443-4482-842f-cf8b6ba70f2b?page=1

 

And yes, there are people that actually defrag their page file. It doesn't get removed when your system shuts down.

[Cs342]

Well if it was your page file. It would be slow for a few seconds and then as data was swapped back into ram it would become fast again.

What A/V are you using?, What programs run on startup?

how long after being idle does the issue become prominent. I would suggest timing your increments and seeing what happens. Perhaps when you walk away start something like task manager or process explorer and leave it on the process tab sorted by most usage to least usage. See if anything is using a high amount of resources.

Update all your drivers.

 

Worst case scenario re-install windows.

The issue also happens after I play BF3 for a long time, Chrome gets super laggy

[SubTract]

The issue also happens after I play BF3 for a long time, Chrome gets super laggy

Have you looked to see if any process is using a high amount of resources?

[xDLGx]

If you want to fix any problems with the pagefile (it can get corrupted) simply turn the pagefile off in Windows > reboot the machine > turn the pagefile back on > reboot the machine again.