Problem: We had a Windows 2000 Server that wouldn't finish initializing due to lack of disk space. While the services were starting, Active Directory issued a message saying that it was unable to allocate enough disk space. Unfortunately, answering OK to that message took the system down and restarted the boot sequence.
Solution: We were able to bring the server up in Safe Mode to take a look at the disk space. The System drive has 5 GB of space. We ran the standard Disk Cleanup dialog and got rid of some junk and compressed some old files but didn't really get back much space. We noted that the directories and files at the root of the System drive only accounted for about 2.5 GB of the space. We then showed the hidden files but found that this didn't account for much more of the space. Finally we showed the hidden Operating System files and found that the pagefile.sys file was a whopping 2 GB in size!
This server had been used for an application that required a lot of paging space. Since it was no longer running that application, we determined that the server no longer needed a large page file, and adjusted it down: Control Panel ==> System Properties ==> Advanced tab ==> Performance Settings button ==> Performance Options Advanced tab ==> Virtual Memory Change button ==> Virtual Memory dialog. We noted that the Initial Size of the page file was set to 2000 MB and the Max was set to 3000 MB. We reset the Initial Size down to 500 MB and the Max to 1000 MB. And OH YES, we hit the Set button to impelment the change (easy to miss ... :o)
After a reboot we were back in business....
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