Question : Paging File Settings

My laptop has 80GB of Hard Disk space and 3.5 GB of RAM. I noticed that that Paging file setting is set to "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" & the currently allocated paging file size is set to 3873 MB. Basically 3.5GB of hard disk space is being utilised. If I want to reduce this, what should the correct setting be and how should the calculation be done for this setting?

If the paging file size is reduced, what would the implications be?

Answer : Paging File Settings

sorry about that Ben1211,
What rindi was saying about smaller dump files is related to the above statement about "System Recover Memory Dump" file size you have asked about.

Here, do this.

Right click 'My Computer"
Click Properties
Click Advanced tab
Look for Startup and Recovery section click Setting.
At the bottom of that windows is the System Failure section with Write Debuggin Information settings. This has 3 or 4 settings.  (3 in your case)  Kernal, Small (like what rindi refered to),  and none. (Complete is the fourth depending on system memory size, 2G MAX)

Depending on which one of these you chose you will require a certain sized paging file.

An article that goes into some detail on this can be found here. As a matter of fact, it looks like it has most everything we have talked about so far.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307973

In an excerpt,  Microsoft has this  listed page file size requirements for a Complete Dump scenario.
"
RAM size Paging file should be no smaller than
256 MB1,373 MB 1.5 times the RAM size
1,374 MB or greater 32-bit system: 2 GB plus 16 MB
64-bit system: size of the RAM plus 128 MB
"
Does that help? What have you done so far?