Solved Explorer Page Faults

[Gnosis]

My Task Manager is showing more than 20,000,000 page faults for explorer.exe. Is that a cause for concern?

 

[Guest28]

Will you please, Elaborate the issue more? I'm not sure on what your trying to say by * My Task Manager is showing more than 20,000,000 page faults for explorer.exe* Are you trying to say that it's using to much mem use-age?

 

[Gnosis]

The memory usage is 13,302k which is fine. It is the page fault number that seems fouled up.

 

[iPanik]

What does the CPU time say? A number like that seem like it would take some CPU power.

 

[HeffeD]

Page faults aren't cause for concern, although the name makes you think it's some sort of error condition. All a page fault means is that the OS has had to increase the amount of virtual memory required for an application.

 

[Tweak]

If it helps I checked mine and it is showing 71,172K (Memory PWS) and 2,444,591 Page Faults. This is not actually a problem at all though it is typical and personally I think poorly named. Technically it isn't an error like you may be thinking, the "Page Faults" should be considered a measure of how many times the OS attempts to load a block of "Virtual" Memory from the hard drive back into the RAM. Best thing to do is make sure you have enough memory, adjust your page file for YOUR specific needs to best suit YOUR PC, and then remove that column from your Task Manager (View>Select Columns) and forget it is/was there. Enjoy!

EDIT: Didn't finish this post in time to beat Heffe, was on the phone, going to go ahead and post my reply anyways though.

 

[Gnosis]

CPU is normal as far as I can tell.

 

[Tweak]

It's both typical and fine buddy, no worries!

 

[Gnosis]

Cool. Thanks to all.

 

[bogdan]

Hard to say why this is happening. For example if you open Process Hacker (or Process Explorer and even Task Manager) you'll notice the Page Faults number for Explorer.exe increments every second. Disable the tray icon (View -> Tray Icons) and the number doesn't increase anymore. So the soft page-fault (since there is no I/O) occurs every time the window manager redraws the tray icon. (more info)

 

[Tweak]

If I am not mistaken and as was detailed briefly above this would only point to one of the causes of such an occurrence bogdan, not the only reason. While this is certainly what appears to be a factor it is not the source of things and from what I have read it is common as well as even expected. The same can be observed with pretty much everything listed but that which is explained above tells the story of why some are showing with considerably larger numbers.

 

[bogdan]

Yes, it was just an example of what can cause soft page faults.

 

[Tweak]

Yes, it was just an example of what can cause soft page faults.

I see, I suppose I took it to be meant as this is why it happens rather than this is how you might see it as it happens, my apologies.