Yes, you can disable virtual memory.
Yes, you can disable virtual memory.
I'm new to using a PC and not sure about virtual memory. With 32GB RAM, do I really need it? Can I turn it off because I never run out of RAM while gaming? If I have 64GB RAM, is virtual memory still necessary? Also, virtual memory uses the HDD when RAM is full and an app needs more memory.
You're talking about pagefile (not virtual memory and technically they are not the same thing).
Anyway ...
No - you can not disable pagefile. This will cause memory subsystem errors.
Set pagefile to custom size, 1GB initial, 16GB max.
If your system has plenty of physical ram, then pagefile will be used minimally and will remain at initial size.
It's usually not wise to turn off paging since a poorly designed program like MS Office can reserve a lot of memory that will never be needed, making the best location the pagefile so as not to waste RAM. I don't see any program type that is consistently worse than games in this regard. You can't really disable the pagefile completely either, because Windows will create a temporary one in the Windows folder when you run out of memory and no other pagefile is available. By then, your poorly designed program might already have crashed or failed to start.
When you enable auto, the pagefile usually expands to enormous sizes and fails to reset upon restarting. Follow the instructions from post #2.
It might vary based on your computer and what you're running.
Make sure you have a full backup and give it a try.
I don't rely on a page file—I'm fine without it.
Windows consistently uses Virtual Memory; disabling the Page File simply creates a direct link between memory and physical RAM. You can disable it if needed, but once an app requests more memory than available, you'll experience unpredictable crashes and BSODs.