PageMania

PageMania is a tool designed act as a badly behaved application that:

• Allocates a lot of memory,
• Reduces it's working set, also called a trimming operation, causing the memory to be flushed out to the page file,
• Modifies a byte in each memory page to cause page faults and bring it back into it's working set. In most cases, the memory will be retrieved from the standby lists cache so a disk read from the page file will not occur unless memory is in demand. Note that by modifying each page, this will cause the next trimming operation to re-write to the page file again.

This tool is useful for testing other tools that should detect such behavior, or as an example of such a program so that you can know what to look for in non-automated tools like the Task Manager.

The tool has a simple controls for adjusting the amount of memory, the trimming schedule, and the touching schedule.

Download links are at the bottom of this page.

How does PageMania Work?

A very simple program design with some timers, and hooks into some private kernel interfaces to manipulate the working set list.

What does PageMania cost?

TMurgent believes in giving back to the community.   PageMania is free for for use by all.

What OSs will it run on?

The tool will run on Windows 2000 through Vista and Windows 7. At the time of this writing, the Windows 8 Beta version is the latest tested. Only the 32-bit version will work on 32-bit operating systems, the 64-bit versions is needed on an x64 OS.

How do I install it?

No installer. Just download, unzip and copy the exe somewhere convenient.

Are there more free tools?

TMurgent has a bunch of tools on this page. Usually they are free, unless you are a Software Vendor. Tools for performance have a segregated list here.

Where Can I download it?

Here is the ZIP package:    PageMania (110KB )