If you will open your system drive (most probably it will be C:\ drive) from My Computer and unhide all hidden files you will notice a file called Pagefile.sys and its size will similar to the size of your RAM which you are using in that computer. Pagefile.sys is also known as Paging file, it basically creates a virtual memory using some space from your hard disk so that when your RAM can’t handle load of your computer anymore it transfer that load on that virtual memory.
As it is a system file you can’t delete it normally. So if you think you doesn’t need this file because you have enough RAM that you will not run out of memory and you think it is taking a lot of your space in your system then let me tell you how you can delete it:
- Right-click on My Computer icon (from your desktop or start menu) and select Properties
- Click on Advance (in Windows XP) tab or Advance system settings (in windows Vista and above)
- Under Performance, click on Settings button
- A popup will open their again select Advance tab and click on Change… button
- Now uncheck Automatically manage paging file size for all drives
- Then you will all the options below in that popup will get active
- Select your system drive (most probably it will be C: drive)
- And from below select No paging file radio button, then click on Set button
- Now you will notice that System managed changed to None
- Then click on OK button
It will take effect when you will restart your computer. But it is recommended that you should at least use any one of your drive for virtual memory. So if you want to keep then after step 8, again select one drive which you want to use for system manage then from down select System managed size radio button, then click on Set button and then OK button.
Now when you will restart your computer it will be no longer using any memory and that Pagefile.sys file also get deleted automatically from your system drive and it will create a new one and start using in the other drive which you have selected.