What is Windows Commit Charge ?

[Ebadaah]

hello...,

What is the meaning of the term "commit charge" in Windows operating system. Does anybody have an information regarding this....please share

thanks

[Solomon]

In Microsoft Windows operating systems, commit charge is a term used to describe the total amount of virtual address space for which the backing store is the pagefile. It may be thought of as the maximum potential pagefile usage.

You can check for commit charge in the Performance tab under Windows task Manager . It shows 3 counters for commit charge:

Total - the amount of pagefile-backed virtual address space in use.
Limit - the maximum possible value for Total; it is the sum of the current pagefile size plus the physical memory available for paging (this excludes RAM that is assigned to non-pageable areas).
Peak - the highest amount that the total commit charge has reached since the computer was last rebooted.

[MrChris-]

The Commit Charge is the amount of virtual memory Windows is currently using, as reported in the Task Manager dialog under the Performance tab. The commit charge fluctuates as applications are opened and closed. It shows three things, total, peak and limit. Total shows the current amount of virtual memory used, which is comprised of main memory (RAM) and disk (pagefile). Total is also graphed in real time on the Page File Usage History chart. Peak is the maximum amount this session, while Limit is the maximum amount available unless the pagefile is expanded by Windows.

[Calvin K]

The commit charge increases when any program is opened and used, and decreases when a program is closed.

It will also change when already-running programs allocate or free private virtual memory; for e.g., with the VirtualAlloc and VirtualFree APIs.