Comment by anonymars

You're right that the file handle protects from such a mixed read (which is why replacing an in-use loaded file is not super straightforward) so that wasn't phrased well. I point out that there also exists a race condition of loading multiple dlls.

But in fact it is true that the pages that are mapped to a file on disk will not be redundantly written to the page file. Some pages might if they were modified by relocation fixups.

More info: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170119-00/?p=95...

That links to this which is also salient: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/larryosterma...

And in case you're wondering how this plays with ASLR: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20160413-00/?p=93...