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Difficulty: HardTroubleshooting Windows Performance and Application Crashes

A technician is troubleshooting a Windows 11 workstation hosting a localized database service that experiences severe responsiveness degradation during peak data processing hours. Using Resource Monitor, the technician observes that the hard faults per second for `dbengine.exe` frequently exceed 800/sec, and the Average Disk Queue Length on the primary storage volume (C:C:) remains continuously above 12. However, Task Manager indicates total physical RAM utilization is at only 60%. Further inspection reveals that an automated script recently disabled `pagefile.sys` on the primary drive. Which of the following actions will best resolve the performance degradation and high disk latency?

  1. Re-enable a system-managed virtual memory paging file on the primary SSD drive.Answer
  2. B
    Execute `sfc /scannow` from an elevated command prompt to repair corrupted system memory management binaries.
  3. C
    Use Performance Monitor to add a custom Data Collector Set that dynamically forces additional physical RAM allocation to `dbengine.exe`.
  4. D
    Modify the application properties of `dbengine.exe` to run under Windows 10 compatibility mode with administrator privileges.

Answer

Re-enable a system-managed virtual memory paging file on the primary SSD drive.
High hard faults/sec combined with excessive disk queue length indicate severe virtual memory paging pressure on the storage subsystem. Disabling `pagefile.sys` forces the Windows Memory Manager to discard executable code pages from memory and repeatedly reload them from disk when needed, generating continuous disk reads and thrashing. Re-enabling a system-managed paging file on the primary SSD restores proper virtual memory mapping, drastically reducing hard fault latency.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the observed diagnostic metrics in Resource Monitor.
High hard faults/sec (>800/sec) combined with a high Average Disk Queue Length (>12) on drive C:C: indicates heavy thrashing between physical RAM and storage due to missing virtual memory space.
Hard faults occur when a process requests data from memory that is not present in RAM and must be fetched from disk. Completely disabling the paging file causes Windows to repeatedly discard and re-read code pages from disk under active load.
2
Evaluate root cause based on configuration findings.
The disabled `pagefile.sys` prevents the OS memory manager from properly backing modified pages and virtual allocation structures.
Windows requires a paging file for optimal memory management, crash dump creation, and backing virtual addresses regardless of available physical RAM size.
3
Determine the appropriate remediation step.
Re-enabling a system-managed pagefile on the fast primary SSD allows proper paging operations and clears the disk queue bottleneck.
Allowing Windows to manage the pagefile size automatically provides sufficient virtual memory space dynamically scaled to system demand.

Key Concept

Windows Virtual Memory and Pagefile Misconfiguration
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Topics

Troubleshooting Windows Performance and Application Crashes

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