How to delete pagefile.sys in Windows 7,8 and 8.1?

This article is about the pagefile.sys and as the extension says, it is a system file. There are two types of memories present in a computer system. One is physical memory i.e your RAM and the other one is virtual memory. The use of both is considered to speed up your computer system and provides you support to ease your work in a speedy way. If you are using more than the recommended memory limit of the ram in a computer, then it gets memory from the virtual memory. Hence, virtual memory is also very important as physical memory. So, we can’t stop this setting in our Windows 7, 8, and 8.1

The pagefile.sys is also a virtual memory file that gets stored on the Hard disk of the computer or laptop. There is also a general rule for the capacity of the Virtual memory. A system must have virtual memory twice as the physical memory. So, if you have enough hard disk space and there is no do or die situation to preserve your system space, then you should not delete your pagefile.sys file.

Not everyone is using Windows 7 nowadays and they may need to know the deletion of the file in Windows 8 or 8.1. For that follow these steps with images –

1. As usual, click on the start button because this will always be the first step.

2. You will have a window which is different from the original desktop, this was the biggest change Microsoft had done while upgrading from Windows 7 to 8 or 8.1. Click on the Search icon on the top right corner.

3. After clicking on the Search icon, you have to type “Control Panel”. And then in Search Results, click on the Control Panel option.

4. By default, Control Panel is sorted by Category, and it will be like the image shown. Then, you have to click on System and Security.

5. After that, you will have many options but you have to click on “System”

6. Then at the left side panel, you have click on the last option i.e “Advanced System Settings”

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7. Now under the performance option, click on Settings.

8. Switch to Advanced Tab, and then click on the Change as shown below-

9. Untick the option “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives”.

10. Select the No paging file radio button and then click Set with desired lesser values and then press OK.

11. Restart your system.

After this step, you will be free from your pagefile.sys taking a large amount of space in the system.

Now, if you want to delete the pagefile.sys in Windows 7. There is a slight change in the steps while selecting the Control panel. Otherwise, all the steps are the same. Check it here.

Here are the steps for “how to delete the pagefile.sys in Windows 7” –

1. Click on Start at the left corner bottom of the window. And then click on “Control Panel”.
   
2. If you have sorted by Category, then click on System and Security.
3. Click on System Link OR if you have sorted by small or large icons, then without clicking on System and Security, you can click on the “System” as shown below.
4. In the left side panel, click on the last option i.e. “Advanced System Settings”.
5. Then you will have a box in which there will be 3 options and each tagged with a settings option. You have to select settings under the “performance” tab.
6. Then, go to the Advanced tab in the opened dialog box.
7. Here, at last, you will get the option to set the virtual memory of the system. Click on the change button
8. Uncheck Automatically manage paging file size for all drives. Check No paging file and click on Set.
9. Click on OK and reboot your system.

These are the same step for “How to Delete pagefile.sys in Windows 8. Check the above images for the reference.

The pagefile.sys file now has been deleted without manually deleting it. And it will be according to your system Virtual Ram.