Internal HDD Access Denied after Virtual Memory Change

[Scatterbrain]

Hey all! Long time since I posted here, hope everyone's good. My little bro plays RDR2 and he had crashes caused by memory limitations. He followed a youtube guide to change the virtual memory pool on his D drive where all of his games are installed.

After things not working still, he says he reverted the settings and the issue did go away somehow. However, now he cannot run updates or downloads from Steam, Epic, etc.

From WIndows 10 Explorer, we can't access owner permissions on the D drive. Disk Management shows the drive, but as a partition and no drive letter name. It also doesn't say Healthy.

We tried going to the properties of the drive > Security tab, where info that should show current owners is obscured, and going into advanced and pressing the CHANGE link for admin doesn't grant permission to actually change the owner.

He is the only user account in Windows and it says Administrator for his account.

We are running a CHKDSK in CMD right now and it'll be a couple hours. Curious if anything else can be done before we consider attempting to wipe the drive.

Thanks, everyone!

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes and for now I only have 500GB SSD as an OS Drive so that's why I did not lock in 32GB Min & Max; just 16GB Min and 32GB Max. 16GB min & max is probably plenty though. But when you set that manually, the PageFile physical size on your Drive is only going to take up whatever is set for the Minimum Size you've locked in. It would grow beyond that if it somehow ends up really using the PageFile to a point of going above 16GB, which is doubtful.

My Games are all on other Drives; but my OS Drive only has 100GB free space.

[Illusion of Progress]

Messaggio originale di ☥ - CJ -:

The difference between setting a static amount and letting it float is simply that.

That doesn't really say anything by itself though. What are the implications of this? You need to explain that.

I'm aware of what a "fixed" size is, yes. The result is that the page file will not, and can not, adapt (grow or shrink) to the needs of the current situation, yes. So you have to commit to a size that is both large enough to not be a concern, but also an amount you are willing to part with for constant reservation of the page file. And a fixed size of 8 GB can definitely be low (sometimes, very low) to be recommending as a broad suggestion without context.

If this is implying concern that page file expansion leads to "page file fragmentation" and that it is an issue, it is really not a concern.

Instead, you should be looking at the page file as a "free safety net". it's something it won't actively "use" unless it needs to, and then if it does, you'll be thankful it's there. And it goes beyond just "if you have to use it, you need more RAM" so Windows doesn't just deal in physical RAM. It deals in commit limit. And used RAM doesn't often equal committed memory. You can check this at any time in task manager or resource monitor. Your commit will almost always be higher (sometimes, substantially). And that is where the page file largely comes in.

Messaggio originale di ☥ - CJ -:

Ive actually considered upping it to 16GB from 8GB, which i think i'll do now n see how it goes. Never once had an issue with 8GB in all the years i had it set as such.

*shrugs* Leave it at 8GB if it's working? Up to you. I don't have any qualms with how you set your system. "Live and let live" and "you do you" and all that. I just don't like seeing it being given as an "optimization tip" without context. More than that, I've had to "clean up the mess" such advice results in; I've seen time and again where someone is asking why they are "out of memory while much memory is still available" which sounds like an oxymoron (I... I was also one of those people in that situation and asking that question not even long ago, which may be why this topic is one of the few I'm passionate about).

I do want to toss a consideration out there to you though, since you're mentioning being open to changing it. At some point, you might consider by raising it over time you're kicking the can down the road? Maybe you don't mind doing that though (and that's fine). But it's worth considering system managed can just do this for you on the fly, according to your needs at the moment, and you'll never have to worry about the concerns of the cap to begin with?

Or maybe this is a consideration[learn.microsoft.com] (which I can only presume is what was resulting in Bad Motha's prior issues, if not a self imposed low commit limit...), and that probably is the one legitimate concern with the default behavior. Modern Windows sets an initial page file size that is perhaps too small for some scenarios. But again, I would suggest trying it on system managed first and then only changing it IF you have such issues.

If the above is a concern (and/or you're just worried enough to skip trying system managed), leave the initial size on 8 GB like you have it now, since that's clearly been enough for you so far (or use your new 16 GB value), but set a cap of 32GB/64GB+ or something. It mimics system managed in that the cap can greatly expand if needed, but forces a larger initial size than system managed usually gives. I still think this is a bit "worse" than just leaving it on system managed, and would try that first, but IF you have issues with system managed, then this is sort of the next best alternative you're forced into.

Messaggio originale di ☥ - CJ -:

So heres what im thinking
The OPs friend set the amount too high for the amount of free space he had on the drive, and that potentially messed things up. Though i could be wrong. Or he just set it too high in general.

To be honest, I don't think the virtual memory settings changes that were made enter into this at all anyway. It sound really far fetched that ANY changes to virtual memory would render a drive inaccessible and be showing something other than "healthy" in device manager, which makes me wonder if the file system is even properly intact. There's something seriously more involved here.

OP wasn't clear on everything that was changed (probably because this is a third person retelling of what someone else did) and never got back to us after checking the drive either.