A. When you change your pagefile settings in Win2K, sometimes they aren't restored (this happened to me today!). The correct way to set the pagefile size is to use Start, Settings, Control Panel, System, Advanced, Performance Options, Change. Select the drive whose settings you want to modify, and enter values in the Initial Size and Maximum Size boxes. Click Set, then click OK three times.

To avoid pagefile fragmentation as a page grows, you should set the Initial Size and Maximum Size values to the same value. A minimum value of your RAM x 1.5 is recommended. If you don't set these values to the same value, as a page grows and shrinks, it becomes scattered all over the hard disk.

Even when you set the values properly, some systems don't retain your settings. If this happens, perform the following steps:

1. Start regedt32.exe (not regedit.exe).
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ControlSession Manager\Memory Management
3. Double-click PagingFiles. The entry will appear as
   D:\pagefile.sys 700 700

   The first value is the location; the second is the minimum size; and the third is the maximum size.

4. Ensure the values are correct and click OK.
5. Reboot the machine.

Reader Comments

I experienced this problem immediately after installing SP1. I get an error message when I boot saying that I have no paging file or that it is too small and I should create a larger one. I've done this about 5 times and I've tried editing the registry as you suggested but it hasn't made any difference.

OK...they are correct...now what? I reboot and I still get the message "your system has no page file or is too small". By the way...Celeron 466 with 128MB ram running win2000pro.

Be sure that the SYSTEM account has FULL rights to the drive that the pagefile is on. I discovered this while locking down access to a new laptop, tried the registry fix listed but I kept getting the same error. Giving SYSTEM full rights to the drive fixed the problem.

what do you mean by system account ? I have exactly the same problem and over and over again I check the settings (they look ok) but when restarting the system. I receive the same error again. No paging file found set to 20MB. I couldn't find anything on the microsoft site, of course. I even re-installed w2k, but the same problem. I checked for a system account, but didn't find any build-in account. can you be more specific ? Thanks for the help.

i have this problem, however it appears after i try log into the system, then it won't let me log on, the login window just pops up again!

i have the same problem here, im working with a pentium 4 machine and every time i reboot it is set back to 20, i dont realy know what to do either

I have the same problem after upgrading from win2k to XP and then install SP2.