I figured out the reason for all the Crashes, Lags, failed Login, etc

Technical Support
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hi there,

I’ve been playing HotS since beta and did not have too much technical problems with it, but in the last 6 months or more, the game has been crashing, lagging, freezing and failing to login every day. it’s actually a miracle that I’m still trying to play. I bet you’ve lost several thousands users because you just won’t fix technical issues and assume that the users Computer is the problem, but it’s not.

I’ve tried everything. Searched the web, blizz forums, reddit, youtube, not only about fixing HotS but also about fixing Windows. Nothing helped.
And all I found here out is that people had reported about these problems since 7 months ago.

Now here is why this is happening:

  1. The main problem is slow or very full HDD drives. Both, HotS AND the Battlenet client occupy the HDD like crazy. Behaving like an Anti-Virus Scan or defrag… totally freezing everything and having 100% hard disk usage.
    This causes all the lags, freezes or even crashes, especially if you Alt+Tab or use your keyboard+mouse in other windows (having hots in the background). This happens no matter if you use normal Fullscreen or Windowed Fullscreen.

  2. This probably has to do with HotS AND the Battlenet client using the virtual memory INSTEAD of free Hardware RAM. Look, I’ve got 12 GB of RAM. and when I don’t have HotS opened up, I have like 3-4 GB in use. But when I try to play HotS it’s somehow abusing the virtual memory … the pagefile.sys on the HDD which is SUPER SLOW because my HDD is damn slow and full.

  3. Moving HotS to an SSD does NOT help at all! Yea that’s crazy isn’t it? I’ve moved it to a top notch fast and empty SSD and still it takes literally up to 5 Minutes to start the game and login, and the first login attempt usually files from time out.

Why is this? I found out. When you start HotS, the Battlenet executable will make the HDD 100% Busy. Yes the HDD, not the SSD. Because Battlenet executable creates tons of cache files in ProgramData Blizzard Entertainment

So obviously it will also access and write cache files while playing.
Now all of this HDD usage leads to freezes, and lags, and those lead to crashes.

  1. so possibly HotS or the Battlenet Client or both are even leaking Memory.
    In the Windows event log I found out that after a HotS crash it was using 4 GB of the virtual memory pagefile!
    At the same time I had the Task Manager opened with the hardware RAM graph - and found out that my RAM NEVER was full. not even close!

Perhaps this all somehow has to do with the old Starcraft 2 engine that was build for 32 Bit Systems. Perhaps it cannot use more RAM than 4 GB. I also never ever see more than 3 GB usuage of the Hots Client in the task manager. That might explain why it’s using the virtual memory pagefile instead of hardware RAM.

  1. Now fun thing. My simple solution would’ve been that I also move the Battlenet client to my SSD drive. So I uninstalled it, downloaded the newest version, tried to install it. But surprise, surprise, you cannot choose any options. It’s installing everything on Drive C.
    And you know what? This installing process, of ONLY the Battlenet Client with no games took more than 5 Minutes and my HDD was at 100% usage during that time, with a write/read speed of only about 1-2 MB/s.

  2. Now before you link me some random help page links/threads for inexperienced users, or logs, dxdiag, etc. please don’t. I’ve tried and checked everything and thousands of users have done the same.
    Your programmers have to fix this. Users can’t fix it. Only by buying a fast computer with SSD, AND installing Windows on that SSD drive.

  3. Now if you disabled the page file, the game will first run better. But after some time, or at least if you have a Music Player and a Browser open - that’s already enough to make it crash with “Core out of Memory”.
    Even if you have absolutely nothing open - after some time it will still crash with the Core out of Memory error.
    So it’s very likely that there’s some memory leaking going on.
    But then again even disabling virtual memory won’t make the game run fast, because it’s still using cache files on the HDD system drive, instead of the SSD drive.

  4. I have no technical problems, no out of memory errors, no crashes, no freezes on my system with ALL Non-Blizzard video games I ever tried.
    Currently for instance I Fortnite, Paladins, DotA2, Battlefield1, or several triple A single player titles… they all run with absolutely no problems at all.

  5. Perhaps the Battlenet client is spying the system, to check for cheating/botting software. That could explain some of the 100% disk usage…

  6. This is what I’ve tried:

[x] checked my hardware RAM for errors, offline
[x] tried the 32 Bit Client HotS client when it still existed, now only 64 bit exists
[x] freed 200 GB of space on my HDD drive, and perfectly defragged it
[x] scanned my HDD for errors
[x] scanned HotS for errors
[x] clean reinstalled Battlenet AND HotS
[x] tried several fixes for Windows 100% disk usage, like I disabled Superfetch, Search indexecutabler, etc. tried Registry hacks, like increasing the Desktop Heap Size
[x] offline defragged the pagefile
[x] disabled the page file, offline defragged it
[x] updated ALL drivers, including graphic cards
[x] uninstalled any security software, firewalls, etc.
[x] defragged and cleaned the registry
[x] updated Windows 10 64 bit btw

  1. These memory leak crashes also lead to most other desktop applications crashing, freezing, lagging. Especially Browsers, no matter if Chrome,Firefox,Opera … they all crash. I’ve lost a lot of data through this, and surely others users have too.

  2. I also have a Laptop with only an SSD, and I have no problems - EXCEPT that if I disable the virtual memory, HotS will even make that one crash with NOTHING opened except HotS+Battlenet. It has 8 GB RAM.
    I tried to disable virtual memory on my Laptop to save my SSD lifetime.
    Well, playing HotS and perhaps other blizz games will cost you a lot of SSD lifetime. Better move your virtual memory on a HDD or USB Drive to save it until this is fixed - if ever…

Apparently many Blizzard games have huge problems with slow hard drives and with Alt+Tabbing. Hearthstone had tons of bugs. Now checking back almost 5 years later, Hearthstone still has bugs regarding this.

So please Blizzard, please you must do something and finally fix all that stuff.
There is no official forum for the Battlenet client I think, and it concerns both, the client and HotS, so I’m posting this here.

I hope I could help.

P.S.
I also have some screenshots. But the forum doesn’t allow to post links. It even did not let me post my initial text, because I included BATTLE DOT NET in the text.

3 Likes
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Well when I am running up the game I certainly would hope it was using the drive I installed it on 100%… If not that would point towards a bottleneck somewhere else and mean loading times are not coupled to IO speed.

Virtual memory is kind of hardware RAM… I suggest you look it up but here is a brief statement about it.

To deal with memory segmentation, fragmentation and security hardware and OS designers came up with the concept of virtual memory. The idea being that applications are allocated a virtual memory space unique to themselves that is not shared implicitly by any other application. When an application access memory at a specific address the virtual memory system, which is hardware accelerated, uses a page table to translate this virtual memory address into a physical memory address and perform the lookup. This system allows many features such as memory mapped IO for more efficient file reads, a file cache to reduce how often data is re-read, page files to allow applications to allocate more virtual memory in total than physical memory, etc.

As such yes Heroes of the Storm is using virtual memory, like every other application you run on Windows does and has done for around 20 years.

That would point towards you not having enough memory if it is causing page faults. That said 12GB is more than enough to play with. Even 8GB should be fine.

I assume you moved your OS to the SSD as well? Seeing how the game requires interfacing with system libraries that are part of the OS to start up. Then again one would be a fool not to run their OS of a NVMe drive, which I assume is what you are referring to by top notch fast and empty SSD since SATA SSDs are bottlenecked by the SATA interface.

Your OS (C drive) is on the NVMe SSD so I do not see this being a problem. With a write speed of like 300MB/sec and read speed of over 1,000MB/sec this is not a problem for a NVMe SSD. I suspect you are overselling the SSD you tried and certainly did not install the OS on it which is kind of the most important thing to do for performance due to how much relies on it.

Yes HotS will regularly use 4GB of virtual memory. This is mostly due to it caching assets between sessions. That said most of this virtual memory will be allocated on RAM unless your system is running out of free memory. Additionally some of it is likely used by memory mapped IO which means it is mapping in pages from files other than the page file as a very efficient way to read files since the file cache will store those pages anyway.

It certainly can as it is built with large address aware and is 64bit. Without large address awareness it would be limited to 2GB and without 64bit limited to 4GB at best.

Either your HDD is about to die, or your file anti virus is set too strictly resulting in it bottlenecking IO. Try disabling or even uninstalling your anti virus to see if it makes a difference. That said I would strongly suggest reinstalling your OS onto your SSD since that is one of the main reasons to use a NVMe SSD.

Which is entirely the point of using a SSD…

That said I run HotS off a RAID1 array consisting of 2 separate 8 year old 280GB raptor mechanical drives. It runs perfectly… Sure loading times are not super fast, but I still load as fast as most people (hardly hold everyone back in game). Read speed around the 100MB/sec range for reasonably sequential. HotS starts in around 15-20 seconds, about 5 second to login and 10 seconds to start BattleNet application. In game load times are usually not too much slower than everyone else.

I know someone who runs off a normal more modern 1TB mechanical drive shared by the OS. Again no problems with excessively long load times.

That is a stupid thing for anyone to do. The page file is there to act as a buffer to prevent out of memory errors at the cost of lower performance.

It is not possible to disable virtual memory. It is a core part of all modern OS, and has been for nearly 20 years.

And this is what you have not tried…

  • Checked S.M.A.R.T. status of mechanical HDD in case failure warning signs are present.
  • Clean installed OS on proper SSD. Even SATA one is better than mechanical drive if it is a proper SSD and not a flash card or stick.

Whatever you did you clearly did not disable virtual memory. It is not possible on modern OSes. You likely turned off the page file which, as mentioned above, is a stupid thing to ever consider as it will lead to system stability problems.

You are probably referring to the page file. Unless your laptop is thrashing the page file a lot, it will likely not degrade the SSD life time enough that it will wear out any time close to it being replaced by newer hardware.

To put it in perspective a 256GB Samsung SSD has a mean time between failure (no writes) of 200 years (we are likely long dead before this). Samsung would also guarantee it for up to 10 years, or 150TB written. Even with substantial page trashing you might go through 10GB writes per day. At that rate it would take 41 years to fail. Chances are you will have moved to a better drive long before then. Oh and this is just the 256GB model, the 512GB and higher models effectively increase the write guarantee as appropriate!

SSDs are much more suitable for page files than flash sticks/cards. This is because flash sticks/cards are very slow for random read/write and also their memory is even less durable than the SSD so they will wear out a lot faster.

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hi, sorry for replying late. I had too much to do IRL and I also tested the game on my Laptop with SSD as the only drive - even there it crashes.
The only thing both systems, my PC and my Laptop have in common is Win10, Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU.

I’ve disabled and even uninstalled every anti-virus and firewall software, and even Windows Defender, which is almost impossible in Win10 - I had to do registry hacks to do so. Anyways, now with disabled Windows Defender and also Superfetch and Windows Search, my whole system runs much faster, and not so much 100% HDD usage anymore. However, HotS still keeps crashing from memory leaks.
When I have HotS closed I have like 3/12 GB full only. If I run HotS for a longer time it fills up to 10/12 GB. However it’s not shown as memory in the HotS process. I guess it might use virtual video memory, which is then classified as “System” in the task manager.

  1. ya terrible that the game is not running completely on the drive that you install HotS on, but on your system drive, thanks to the terrible battle net client
  2. ya I know what virtual memory is, I’m a programmer myself. However I don’t see the purpose of why a OS or Software would force to write data into virtual memory when I have 9 GB of free, unused RAM? virtual memory only has disadvantages over hardware memory. except of course data loss on power loss
  3. no I haven’t moved my OS to the SSD, because ya had no time yet. However as I said before, on my Laptop I have my system on a SSD and it also crashes.
    and apart from that, it ruins the SSD drive by using virtual memory, you know that SSD often only have a maximum of about 75 terabytes written until they start to make errors. so hm even though hots is free2play, it kinda costs you money by decreasing the life of your drives, by abusing virtual memory, when lots of free RAM is there.
    my SSD is about 500/500 read/write and 80-100k IOPS. as said before, any other games run super perfectly even at extreme settings. on my laptop I even have a 2 cards as SLI.
  4. even though HotS has a 64 bit version, it seems to never use more than 4 GB. I’ve opened my task manager every single time. and once it goes close to 4 GB of RAM, it’s soon gonna crash, and indeed it does.
    HotS is based on the terrible old SC2 engine, which does not even support dual or multiple cores, it’s running single core even if you have a octocore CPU
  5. I think I already told in my start post, that I’ve checked the SMART values of my HDD. it’s all fine. I’ve used HDD Tune and Scandisk to check if there are any bad sectors - no there are not. My HDD is just damn slow and full, but that’s it. And again all other games work perfectly, except HotS.
  6. when I mean disable “virtual memory” I mean the pagefile. I disabled that and everything runs much faster and smoother, since Windows no longer caches things there by using my slow HDD
  7. I know SSD are much faster, but they don’t live forever. so if you wanna use your pagefile on them do so for max speed, but if you care for your SSD life put the pagefile somewhere else. there are already super fast USB sticks, and there are very fast HDDs. well I might buy myself a damn cheap like 64-128 GB SSD to use it as a pagefile and trash drive.

Edit:
Also I don’t understand what you’re saying about virtual memory.
Windows indeed calls it this. And I indeed can completely disabled it.
I’m using the German localized version of Windows, maybe in yours it’s called differently. Often it’s referred to as the pagefile, or in Linux the swap file.

Just right-click your system -> properties, advanced tab -> visual effects … virtual memory -> settings -> advanced
virtual memory section
select your drives, select "no pagefile) on every drive, click set, click ok, reboot your system. done.
enjoy your much faster PC - if you have enough hardware RAM.

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As far as I am aware it has no memory leaks. Its memory usage grows due to the slightly impractical caching model used.

That would be because your discrete GPU clacks enough discrete GPU memory so the graphic driver is having to page in/out buffers. Set texture quality to medium for a massive reduction in GPU memory usage.

You seem to be confused what virtual memory is referring to…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory
Virtual memory is what all applications use as memory. There is no way in modern OS to not use virtual memory for an application and all virtual memory operations are hardware accelerated with translation lookaside buffers and such. As a result all modern PC games use virtual memory. I believe all modern smart phones use virtual memory as well. I would not be surprised if all current gen game consoles also use virtual memory. I know a sort of pseudo virtual memory was supported by the GameCube/Wii, but this was not its default operation mode due to its limited memory and processor resources.

Virtual memory can be backed by files in 2 ways.

  1. Memory mapped file IO which maps pages of a file to pages of an applications virtual memory. Depending on copy mode, these can be entirely backed up by the file, which will need to be re-read on next access if the pages get evicted from physical memory.
  2. Page file backed memory. If one runs out of or low on physical memory then pages get evicted from the physical memory into the page file. This only happens if a system is low on physical memory or if the OS is ordered to sleep (which gains from backing all memory content to non volatile storage).

If any IO is done when using either type of file backed virtual memory space is entirely up to the OS. Memory mapped file pages may already be in the file cache and hence be accessed with a comparatively fast remapping operation. Page file backed memory will only be written to the page file if the system is out of free physical memory and the file cache is already mostly depleted of file pages or if the OS is set to sleep. Application programmers cannot explicitly write out memory to the page file, unless some very OS specific APIs exist and are used which have no place in games.

All applications use virtual memory…

If you are encountering the situation of page thrashing that means your system lacks physical memory. You can use the free Process Explorer from Microsoft system internals to monitor application page fault count, disc IO usage and pretty much everything performance related.

I ran up HotS and it runs up to a massive 6GB virtual memory space fast with many page faults. However the peek physical size of it remained under 1.9GB. Also practically no disk IO occurs. This points towards extensive use of memory mapping and so these page faults can be ignored as they are being used to replace conventional read/write file system calls. These page faults might be soft page faults if the file data is in the file cache and just needs to be remapped.

If that is giving you performance gains then something else is clearly wrong with your system. One should never disable the page file as it is critical for system stability. You can expect stuff to crash with it off.

USB sticks are not really suitable for page files. Not only do they have even worse life expectancy than normal SSDs but they are also not optimized for random access as they have very poor memory controllers. There is a reason they are so cheap.

This is not at all recommended. It almost certainly will not give performance gains and will make the system prone to crashing in the case of memory usage spikes.

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If Medinet, who seems to know what he’s talking about, can’t figure out why his computer can’t run the game it’s probably because the game has problems to be fixed. I just got a new PC and was desperate to play the game until I installed it and it just wasn’t payable. And the problems that I have are the same as many other users. The people that play your game shouldn’t have to fiddle around like I did and Medinet did to figure out what is wrong with their computer when every other game runs perfectly. Fix your game please, thank you!

2 Likes
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You might want to post your system specifications. The game runs perfectly on very old hardware so anything reasonably modern and intended for some kind of gaming use will run it fine.

I suspect most performance problems people have fall into 2 categories.

  • GPU performance problems. Almost certainly caused by the game getting confused which GPU to use and choosing an integrated one over a discrete one. This is especially common with Intel processors because every modern consumer targeted Intel processor has an integrated GPU in it. This is made worse by HotS actually supporting integrated graphics so it can be played on lower end systems without discrete graphics on low visual settings. Usually this is fixed by reinstalling both integrated and discrete graphic drivers and making sure the system is not in some sort of high power saving mode. If on a desktop where energy saving is not a concern then one can try disabling the integrated graphics so the game has no choice but to use the discrete GPU.
  • Internet connectivity issues causing the game to stutter while waiting for the server. Common modern games like RPGs and FPSs uses a different synchronization model from RTSs like StarCraft II which Heroes of the Storm is based on. This makes them very prone to stutter if there is any sort of unreliable packet delivery. If this stutter happens enough, eg due to a very bad connection with Blizzard, the game will be as good as unplayable. The problem is less apparent in StarCraft II since the server will pause or slow all clients if one falls behind, but in HotS it does not do this meaning the lagged client needs to fast forward to catch up which causes low frame rates.

Competitor product League of Legends suffered similar network connectivity related issues in the USA but they manifested in the form of missed or delayed actions due to its FPS style synchronization model rather than stutter and low frame rates. The cause was the bad state of the USA backbone internet infrastructure having overcapacity nodes resulting in a lot of UDP packet loss due to UDP drop prioritization. Blizzard games mostly use TCP for state synchronization and hence do not suffer from UDP drop prioritization but that is still not enough to prevent bad delivery reliability problems when traversing some extremely over capacity nodes. To get around this the LoL developers created their own backbone nodes in the USA to deliver LoL’s UDP traffic reliably around the country.

1 Like
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Yeah i have the same problem… Reinstalling the game as we speak… Only battle.net or at least Hots that screws up my computer in several ways… both crashes, (blue screens and freezes) and that the game is crashing or can’t run or play… It’s extremely annoying and Blizz is gonna loose even more players than they already have if they are not bothering to fix this soon after 5 years…

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This would be caused by an incompatible driver or malfunctioning hardware. I suggest running a CPU and GPU stress test, both those should run reliably and would rule out the cause being malfunctioning hardware.

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How do i do that? strange that is only happen and HAVE only happen with Hots, and not a single other game ever

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Also, should not have to since it’s clearly a game problem. Time to fix it after 5 years

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Different games load hardware in different ways. HotS is based on StarCraft II and that game is notorious for pushing parts of GPUs very hard. If the GPU is working properly it handles it perfectly, but if it is starting to fail or was badly designed (cough GeForce 8 8800 cough) it could easily become highly unstable and even damaged.

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Hi.
I’m having similar issues as stated by Mr Medinet.

I’m using a brand new laptop dell inspiron 5000, i7 core, windows 10.
I’m having an issue here that i wasn’t having on my much older, low performance laptop, which was an older dell with i5 core and windows 10. For this reason, it is impossible that my computer lacks the minimum capability to run hots.

Here’s what is happening: HOTS has zero lag, but crashes instantly when i hit Loot tab. Also game crashes within 1 minute of starting any match. I get the message that HOTS was unable to access Graphics hardware. I’m seeing this exact behavior reported often on some comments in this forum.

I’m no programmer, but I can say I’ve given enough benefit of doubt to the available help guides on this forum and their various steps. They all blame my computer for the crashes. However, all the suggested diagnosis are stating that computer is configured perfectly, updated, and working properly. Many hours have been spent trying those solutions. Also note that dozen high graphics video games work perfectly right now on my machine, except hots.

And Regardless whether the issue is with the computer or the game…The suggested solutions are too technically involved to be useful for the average non programmer player. I’ve taken many undue liberties and screwed with my computer because of the solutions offered here. And their results were inconclusive, they say everything is working fine and cannot explain the crash.

My point is that even if I made some mistake, this shouldn’t be happening regardless! A game shouldn’t be that difficult to run and troubleshoot! It should work properly, and if there is a computer configuring issue, a quick change of settings should be enough for a fix! I’m sorry for my words, but after realizing even these^ full fledged programmers are unable to make these crashes stop, I have completely given up hope on being able to ‘fix it’ myself.

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HotS engine has “power virus” like properties to it. This means that it loads the GPU in such a way to maximize computation throughput capabilities but in doing so it also maximizes GPU current draw to the point older GPUs might end up beyond operating specification. Now this should not be a problem with modern GPUs as they are designed to work like this by altering their dynamic clock if required, however laptops might still run into thermal management issues due to their form factor.

I suggest running a GPU stress test like Furmark on the discrete GPU for 15 minutes odd and checking for stability. If no issues occur when running this test this should rule out the cause being the GPU hardware.

In that case there must be a problem with the hybrid graphic solution. Use a third party program to fully uninstall both Intel and discrete (NVidia?) graphic drivers. Then clean install both of them with the latest supported driver version. After that make sure that the discrete GPU is being used for HotS and that the computer is set to operating in a high power mode when playing.

For any more help dxdiag listings an such would be required.

Unfortunately this cannot be helped. As far as programming is concerned the game is doing stuff mostly correctly. It cannot be expected to operate when system calls that should never fail suddenly return error codes. For example it would say “unable to access Graphics hardware” if system calls involving the graphic hardware return error codes or there is no graphic hardware to access.

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thats not technically true. the pagefile is a holdover of older times when memory was a major limiting factor. now its not at all uncommon for PCs to have 8GB just as a minimum amount of memory since its so cheap. the midrange and high end computers can see 16-32GB memory and that is plenty to run without a paging file unless you are doing some serious tasks. maybe like high definition movie rendering.

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It is also not uncommon for games to use over 6GB of memory and browsers with many tabs open to consume many megabytes. Having the extra buffer is always good from a system stability point of view.

Some software also requires a page file to work correctly because it was written with one in mind. Although the only examples I could find are server orientated software.

In any case one should at least set page file to minimum settings. Automatic is recommended.

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yes there is nothing wrong with having it on and this is why Windows is still maintaining it as a thing. in fact one the things i like to do on windows systems instead of turning it off is making it static. it does take up a larger amount constantly, but with larger disk drives now it really doesnt matter much. a static pagefile gives it a higher stability imo because the system doesnt have to worry about resizing the file lower or higher with demand. it keeps it one size. thats just my opinion, but its something i have always done with pagefiles.

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Thank you very much for this thread. I found the virtual memory theory very useful for tracking down and solving my own HOTS crashing issues.

For a very long time my system had been hard crashing consistently at match start on hero spawn. Upon system restart and reconnect to the game I could complete the game just fine so clearly there were no graphics driver or peak memory usage issues. Also there is likely a difference in how asset memory is allocated between starting a new game and reconnecting to an existing game.

On the theory that the crash was related to disk contention due to virtual memory - and specifically in a sudden spike in virtual memory usage causing a reallocation of the windows page file - I modified the minimum size of my windows page file to be 4GB, so that the page file would not need to be resized due to a sudden spike from HOTS asset loading.

My HOTS now runs in Extreme Graphics with no start-of-game crash. Thank you very much for the pointer.

For those not familiar, good instructions on setting windows virtual memory settings can be found by searching the web for “geeksinphoenix windows virtual memory”

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Just wanted to put in my 2 cents for all the years I’ve played on bnet. Good comments and bad ones so the good ones is I’ll never stop playing diablo 2 offline because its the best game ever the bad news is I have to turn off my firewall on both computers offline to even transfer my gear from one toon to the other and wow is awesome but the bugs are getting bad and my brother got his ticket removed without and answer so goodbye blizzard from a loyal customer since you gave destiny 2 to steam. I had a blast and I’ll miss you all but not the lag. Cya.

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I had huge freeze spikes in game and when opening chests and stuff and I actually managed to fix it by moving the game on the Samsung 970 EVO SSD i bought 2 days ago.

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The ssd only gives benefit to games by slightly speeding the launch. You also need all games on the HDD because filling the SSD will ruin it eventually as it is not an actual physical drive, it isnt meant for storage and wont do anything really to help your problem. the os can be on ssd because the boot time

I always have bnet open i cant do that with twitch or steam for a while without seeing glitches

The pagefile prevents the direct drain and rapid usage causing system problems by using the hardware ram.

Turning off the virtual memory doesnt really do any good. the ram the pagefile consisted of in order to function and all the remaining ram returns and you think its fixed but hardware ram drains like thick liquid and the frequent crashes by it harm the system. the pagefyle virtual memory utilities and has a bit of balance to keep your ram % down. I had a problem where wow being the only program running would black screen my computer and it would shut off. I ran memory diagnostics and my memory report said there were many issues, i fixed it and i kept getting crashes. then i figured out that i never touched virtual memory settings, i added a pagefile to my bigger drive and all was fine. Think on that next time you got memory issues and suggestive “likely fixes” would make it much worse.