What exactly is a Page Fault?

Published on August 20, 2003 By Koasati In Stardock Software

I did a little reading on the subject, and came away no more the wiser (I don't speak geekaneze) ......... would someone please explain in simple terms, what a page fault is, and why every app has so many, when viewing Task Manager? I have one program that has racked up over 32 million page faults, and is growing by 300 or so, per second. And another that has over 15 million, growing at 200 or so per second.

Enlighten me, please.

Comments

yrag2

on Aug 20, 2003

When a program requests data that is not currently in real memory the interrupt triggers the operating system to fetch the data from virtual memory (page file) and load it into RAM. A page fault error occurs when the operating system cannot find the data in virtual memory.

Styl-X Design

on Aug 20, 2003

thats clear

Koasati

on Aug 20, 2003

Thanx yrag...... that, I can understand.

yrag2

on Aug 20, 2003

No problem Randy

Styl - this is for you.....Program = ram/virtual ram/hard disk......if it doesn't find it in any of those three places, your computer will ask you to empty your pockets. Clear enough?

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