How can I clear the pagefile at shutdown?

John Savill

December 21, 1999

1 Min Read
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A. As you will be aware the pagefile contains areas of memory that were swapped out to disk, it may be in a secure environment you want this pagefile cleared when the machine is shutdown as parts of memory containing passwords/sensitive information may have been mapped out to the pagefile.

  1. Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)

  2. Move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management

  3. If the value ClearPageFileAtShutdown does not exist, from the Edit menu select New - DWORD value and enter a name of ClearPageFileAtShutdown

  4. Double click on ClearPageFileAtShutdown and set to 1

  5. Reboot the machine and next time you shutdown the pagefile will be cleared

About the Author

John Savill

John Savill

https://savilltech.net

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