Low memory ?

I have an older dell laptop (inspiron e1505) and I just had a window pop up that said low virtual memory ? This has been messed up in the past and had XP home reinstalled a few times. Is there other copies on here that may need removed? As far as add ons or games there's hardly any at all?

Thank you for any help Scott

 

Read this:
http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/maintenance/pcproblems.aspx

 

Lonewolf Thank you so much for the link..

 

Does these numbers look bad ?

Total Physical memory 512.00MB
Available Physical Memory 256.48MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96GB
Page File Space 1.20GB

Im not very computer smart and can never thank all of you for helping me. Scott

 

From what i can see they ain`t to bad.But what i would advice is perhaps upgrading your actual physical memory/RAM.
Do you know how many slots for ram it has and how many it can take(how many are currently occupied?
You could try using the crucial scanner to detect what ram you have got,and it`ll tell you whats memory is compatible.:
http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/?click=true

 

Try Treesize Free to see where your space is going.

 

CleanMem may help in your situation as well as the other suggestions. I'd look at more RAM if it's affordable.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/CleanMem_d5993.html

 

Note:
Just spent half an hour trying to find my old post on this subject to link to, but can't find it. :banghead


With Windows XP, the simplest solution is to set virtual memory to:
System Managed Size

To get there follow this path:

Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory

Control Panel -> System -> Advanced Tab -> Performance box Settings button ->
Advanced tab -> Virtual Memory box click Change button
Then click System Managed size and click the Set button and then OK.

This may result in a large paging file, but at least it should get rid of the error message.
If the problem persists after making this change, then it may be caused by a corrupt
paging file. If that is the case, then the paging file will have to be deleted so that
the system will create a new one. This is a more involved process, so hopefully you won't
have to do that.

Thers is a good article about virtual memory settings at aumha.org:
Virual Memory in Windows XP
Look at the 'Problems with Virtual Memory' section at the bottom of the page.

This article also explains how to manually set the paging file size to what is
appropriate for your computer based on how much RAM you have installed.

 

Thank you all for the help. Im trying the virtual memory deal to see how it works.