Turning off the paging file is not a good idea. There are a lot of good reasons why this is so (which convinced me that I shouldn't do it, because I was previously skeptical).
Turning off your paging file forces every application (and Windows) to keep every bit of their working set in RAM. Every device driver, every Windows service, everything. Windows can be quite clever in unloading parts of itself when an app or game is asking to use a lot of RAM, but that cleverness can only extend so far.
With a pagefile, Windows can dump not only big chunks of its own tasks (and their datasets) to disk, but anything else you might be running that isn't the foreground application.
This is easily visible when you quit a RAM-hungry program like Crysis because disk activity peaks whilst Windows reloads some common tasks back from the pagefile (it's better to do it in one big burst rather than just-in-time as you use Windows).
Also with no pagefile, you're reducing Windows' ability to cache data from disk. XP and Vista both silently cache just about everything read from HD as you work. This is why Excel loads much faster on the second try (a small example, but it illustrates the point). Lack of RAM for the cache will slow your overall Windows experience.
2GB is a pretty hefty amount of RAM, but you're not helping overall performance by denying Windows the use of a pagefile. Windows may not be regarded as a good piece of software by many, but its memory management, caching concept and pagefile usage are actually quite intelligent. Windows will only use the pagefile when the alternative (keeping stuff in RAM) would actually hurt performance.
It's exactly the same with Linux and its swapfile. Deny it the use of one, and you end up with performance penalties.
The only potential argument for removing the pagefile is for PC's used for single tasks, such as a media center, internet kiosk or MAME cabinet. Even then, the only advantage of removing the pagefile is the freeing up of 1GB or so of HD space.
Turning off your paging file forces every application (and Windows) to keep every bit of their working set in RAM. Every device driver, every Windows service, everything. Windows can be quite clever in unloading parts of itself when an app or game is asking to use a lot of RAM, but that cleverness can only extend so far.
With a pagefile, Windows can dump not only big chunks of its own tasks (and their datasets) to disk, but anything else you might be running that isn't the foreground application.
This is easily visible when you quit a RAM-hungry program like Crysis because disk activity peaks whilst Windows reloads some common tasks back from the pagefile (it's better to do it in one big burst rather than just-in-time as you use Windows).
Also with no pagefile, you're reducing Windows' ability to cache data from disk. XP and Vista both silently cache just about everything read from HD as you work. This is why Excel loads much faster on the second try (a small example, but it illustrates the point). Lack of RAM for the cache will slow your overall Windows experience.
2GB is a pretty hefty amount of RAM, but you're not helping overall performance by denying Windows the use of a pagefile. Windows may not be regarded as a good piece of software by many, but its memory management, caching concept and pagefile usage are actually quite intelligent. Windows will only use the pagefile when the alternative (keeping stuff in RAM) would actually hurt performance.
It's exactly the same with Linux and its swapfile. Deny it the use of one, and you end up with performance penalties.
The only potential argument for removing the pagefile is for PC's used for single tasks, such as a media center, internet kiosk or MAME cabinet. Even then, the only advantage of removing the pagefile is the freeing up of 1GB or so of HD space.