I have 1024 MB of RAM and depending on what I'm doing, my page file is still somewhere around 200-300 MB.  I don't really worry about it.

Does "Task Manager" show  Physical Memory , Total : of about  512 MB.?
It might not be recognising new memory.?

You can also check by using "Run" & type
winver   , then click OK or press "Enter" key.

 

For reasons I no longer remenber pgae file will be usedregardless of available memory.  The only exception is if you page file to zero.  I have 1024 Mbytes RAM and PF usage is 200 to 400 Mbytes

I don't think so, since it is possible to run with a zero swap size, no swap file.

This might not be pertinent, but years ago when I was working on IBM main frame installations, whenever I executed a program, that program was read off the hard disk, then IMMEDIATELY written to the virtual memory. All subsequent references the the program software were made to the VM. Could that be what's happening here??

As I (roughly) understand it, Prefetch puts some app pages into VM for faster loading of the app; also, Windows XP loads much of itself on startup, first in RAM, then moves bits of itself to VM, to release RAM as you open apps.

This link might be of aid:

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

Herman

Hm, I forgot this one:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/paging_file.htm