Clear PageFile on every Shutdown. 1

[bgauntt]

Start Regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > SessionManager > Memory Management
Select ClearPageFileAtShutdown from the list on the right.
Right click on it and select Modify.
Change the value to 1 to enable.
Reboot your computer.

 

[rjkrash]

Just a comment, :-V

I had this turned on for a while and since I didn't have a real security reason to do it I turned it off. I have 684Mb memory and my page file gets pretty big. Having it cleared added a good 20 - 30 seconds to any shutdown.
Just didn't seem worth it.

rjkrash ----
"eXPerience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." - annon

 

[bgauntt]

Yes, it does add some time to shutdown which I failed to mention. I should have been a little more clear that it is meant for security reasons. Just a tip for security purposes.

 

[BeckahC]

At the risk of sounding like a novice, what security benefit(s) does clearing the page file on shutdown offer? BeckahC

 

[bgauntt]

Some programs may store sensitive information in clear text format in memory (which in turn may be paged out to disk). You may wish to empty this file for security reasons, or to help speed a boot time defrag, or because you dual boot, and you don't want to share the file, or just as part of troubleshooting a problem.

 

[thefragile]

I may be paranoid but I do store importand documents on my hard drive which I would like no one but myself to see. Even though this does add a little time to shutdown, it makes me feel better about my computer, and it is not like I will be standing over my computer to wait for it to completely shutdown anyway.

I am out the door and on my way home then.

 

[rjkrash]

And really only a true non-novice could get into the saved (uncleared) page file and decipher anything from it.

If you are breaking the law while using your computer and don't want the authorites to find evidence when they confiscate your computer, one of the things you might do is to flush your page file on logoff.

In other words this setting is for the truely parinoid. ----
"eXPerience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." - annon

 

[bgauntt]

Also you may want to look at this article regarding the pagefile. It can also help keep the file from becoming fragmented, which there are other ways of doing this as well. I don't find it being paranoid when you are optimizing your virtual memory.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q314/4/82.ASP

 

[rjkrash]

I'll give you that. I was only funnin' a little about the paranoia stuff.

However, as a dissusion point, your linked article indicates to me, IMHO, that it would be optimum from a performance point of view to setup the paging file on its own seperate partition and to not clear the page file on exit. That would eliminate fragmentation and the delay on shutdown (which is a performace boost of a sort). ----
"eXPerience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." - annon