finally got a machine up & running yesterday. thing is, now every time i boot up, the pagefile has disappeared. i get the, "your paging file is too small, & a temp one has been created" error msg every time. then, every time, i go & fix the problem, & the pagefiles are created (1 per partition). i check to see that they're all there, & reboot, & the same prob happens again.

i've done the emergency repair console to no avail. i'm thinking this is a hware problem? anyone seen this before & fixed it (w/out re-install)?

this is sp2. after installation of all my apps/drivers, i defragged each of the fragmented partitions:

c:\ system & drivers only
d:\ applications
e:\ storage

each partition (supposedly) has a 384-768 pagefile. this is a ecs k7s5a board w/an xp1600, 256mb crucial ddr, & a 40gb 60gxp.

wasn't sure which forum to post to....

It sounds quite strange your problem. The only thing i can think of right now is right-click on MyComputer-->Properties and then go to Advanced tab.Click Performance options and check the details of the page file there. If you have 256MB memory then the page file should be around 380MB size.Once you're there, click also the "Change" button and see if it's assigned on the correct drive(should be C or you can change it to whatever you want, altough C is recommended since you use the other partitions for other stuff).In my system the minimum and maximum value of PF is 384-768(I also have 256MB mem).

I know that what i told you here is the obvious but give it a try you never know, something might be screwed suddently.

i'm still getting the, "your paging file is too small, & a temporary one has been created" error message every time. then, every time, i go & fix the problem, & the pagefile is created. i check to see that they're all there, & reboot, & the same problem happens again. the values for the pagefile are still displayed both in the "performance options" window, & in the registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager|MemoryManagement|\PagingFiles

it seems that windows will simply not read them. this is windows 2000 service pack 2. this problem happened on my initial install, & i have since re-installed windows 2000 two more times with the same result. all memory timings are set to default, & all drivers and the bios are the updated versions. on my latest installation, no problems occurred until after i ran the sisoft sandra drive benchmark. this is probably because it was the first time since the installation that the entire pagefile was used.
i have tried placing the memory in both memory slots & using 2 different sticks of memory. one 128MB, one 256MB, both DDR, both crucial RAM. i have tried other venues for obtaining help, to no avail. see the thread on this forum that i started:
http://www.amdmb.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=101880

I am having the exact same problem with XP home. Any ideas?

Could be a number of problems...

Set your page file options to System Managed (dynamic)
Defragment your hard drive (the page file may need continous free space)
Check your memory modules for errors with Memtest86