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Windows requires some swap to work correctly. Unlike Linux, it doesn't ever overcommit. IIRC, too little swap can make some parts of Windows work incorrectly.

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Do you have an example of which "parts of Windows work incorrectly"? Windows runs just fine without a pagefile. Of course if you have a piece of software which then tries to use more memory than is physically available those allocations will fail, which in 99.99% of software results in termination or a crash, but the OS itself works just fine (as does all the software as long as you're not hitting your physical memory limits).

I don't remember exactly what it was, but I do remember you needed about 200-300MB page file to avoid it.

Of course, due to Windows no-overcommit policy, it's better to have a large page file almost always. That ensures your RAM is going to be used efficiently and not as a simple backing store that's never actually referenced.

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