My Specs:
12900KF
Nvidia 3090 GTX
32 GB DDR5 4800 memory
2 x Samsung 980 Pro SSD’s.
I hope this is of some help to some. Given the above specs all the advice seemed to be you do not need a page file so i disabled it. Every hour or so, or when i switched view as regular as the sun rises MSFS would crash. Event viewer blaming lack of memory as the cause. Many fixes later i decided to reinstate the page file on Windows 11. That did not work and i was about to give up on MSFS.
Then it dawned on me MSFS is installed on my second SSD, so i set up a page file on that and hey presto many crash to desktop free hours later and i can actually fly a 3 hour flight or do more than one activity without constant crashes to desktop.
I am not saying those advising Windows 11 SSD, high end memory users, do not need a Page file are wrong but in my case MSFS certainly does.
In my particular case with 32 GB. of physical RAM I have an 8gb paging file configured on a M.2 nvme.
I have never had a problem with any app. Neither with MSFS in fact.
a common mistake… basic rule: never disable pagefile completely. Also users with 64 or 128GB RAM should not “disable” it. Instead set a low minimum / maximum value. But for users with “only” 32GB its known that the pagefile is necessary. I would recommend to set system-managed in case there is sufficent free disc space on your drive so that windows can increase the file as its needed. Otherwise use a manuall setting like minimum/maximum of 8192/32000 ( or in case there is really low disc space, increase the min value to 16GB to ensure that amount is allways present ).
I guess it worked since you setup the pagefile on a second drive. Most important is to know, that the pagefile-size which windows allocate depends strongly on the free disc space and there is a formula for that. Also note that you can have pagefile on many different drives at same time, so you can split the “needed spaces”. But here also the recommendation: allways set a emergency-pagefile on the system drive.
If you interessted to know more about, I linked the details in an old topic:
Further research now tells me yes, you should not need a page file on fast machines but like anything else Windows 11 is actually built on old code trying to keep up to date with new technology.
Windows 11 requires a page file, even a tiny one, on a high end PC, to provide storage space so it can give you a crash report etc.
