Hard Faults Per Second Explained: Meaning, Causes, and Fixes

What Is Hard Faults Per Second in Windows?

Hard faults per second measure the number of times the computer’s CPU requests data that is not in physical RAM per second, forcing the operating system to read the data from a slower storage drive.

So, is a high hard faults per second a glitch or a problem?

Not necessarily. In many cases, it’s normal system behavior, especially when applications start or tasks switch.

However, if it remains consistently high for an extended period (thousands of times per second), it can lead to severe performance degradation.

This will be accompanied by stuttering, latency, and unresponsive programs.

What Causes Hard Faults?

The following are the most common triggers:

• Insufficient memory: The main reason for the increased number of hard failures is insufficient memory.
• Too many background processes: This problem occurs when multiple applications run simultaneously, consuming a large amount of memory.
• Application memory address change: A hard faults occurs if the application’s memory address is not in the main memory slot but is moved to the main page file.

How to Reduce Hard Faults Per Second?

How to reduce the problem of a large number of memory hard faults per second? Here are some possible troubleshooting methods.

Method 1: Close Background Programs

When system memory is low, Windows moves some data to the disk. Hard faults occur when programs access this data again.

Therefore, reducing the number of background programs can decrease disk reads, thus reducing Hard Faults Per Second.

Method 2: Add More RAM

Increasing RAM is the most effective way to reduce hard faults per second. This is because a larger memory capacity allows more program data to reside directly in RAM, without the need for frequent writes to or reads from the paging file or virtual memory.

Also read: How to Install RAM in Your PC – Here’s a Complete Guide.

Method 3: Disable and Re-enable the Pagefile.sys

Generally speaking, the more RAM you set up, the fewer memory hard faults per second you will have. You can reduce the number of hard faults/sec by disabling and re-enabling the pagefile.sys file. Here’s how to do that:

Step 1. Press Win + E keys to open your Windows File Explorer, and then right-click This PC on the left pane and select Properties.

Step 2. Click on Advanced system settings option and navigate to the Advanced tab in the pop-up window.

Step 3. Click on the Settings menu under the Performance section and navigate to the Advanced tab.

Step 4. Click on the Changes menu under the Virtual Memory section. Then unselect the checkbox for Automatically manage paging file size for all drives.

Step 5. Select the drive that you want to disable the pagefile.sys file and click on No paging file.

Step 6. Click on Set and OK buttons to save these changes.

Step 7. Restart your computer to take its effect.

After that, you can enable the pagefile.sys file by the above steps. You just need to specify the custom size in Step 6 and click on OK.

Method 4: End Task Using Resource Monitor

In addition to the insufficient memory, you should check if a certain process is increasing the hard faults/sec. Resource Monitor can help you identify resource hogger. Then you can fix the issue by ending this process.

Step 1. Press the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog, and then type resmon in it and hit Enter.

Step 2. Navigate to the Memory tab and click on the Hard Faults column. Then you should see which one process is slowing down your computer.

Step 3. Right-click the process that’s showing excessive hard faults per second (over 100) and select End Process Tree option, which will close the process and all the related processes. If this program is not important for you, you can uninstall it.

Method 5: Upgrade to an SSD

If you’re still using an HDD, consider upgrading to an SSD.

Because SSDs offer significantly faster read speeds and random access performance than HDDs, Windows can load data from the disk much faster, even in the event of a Hard Fault.

This reduces program lag, system latency, and game frame drops.

Bottom Line

Hard faults per second don’t necessarily indicate a system malfunction. However, if this value remains consistently high, it usually suggests insufficient memory or excessive background program usage.

Closing unnecessary applications, increasing RAM, or disabling and re-enabling the Pagefile.sys file can effectively improve system performance.