Final answer:
The state of the interrupted process when a page fault occurs is saved. The operating system handles the page fault by retrieving the needed page from the disk and then resumes the process.
Step-by-step explanation:
When a page fault occurs, the state of the interrupted process is saved. A page fault is an event that occurs when a program tries to access a section of memory that is not currently mapped to the physical memory. What happens in such a case is that the operating system saves the state of the process, including the program counter, registers, and other process-related data, allowing the process to resume properly after the page fault has been handled.
The operating system retrieves the missing page from the disk and maps it into the process's address space. Once the required data is in memory, the process is said to be in a state where it can continue its execution as if no page fault had occurred. This ability to handle page faults is a key feature of modern memory management in operating systems.