virtual memory

bootboy · Aug 22, 2009

hello i am new to this and was wondering if any body csn help me i am having problems with my virtal memory does any one know hom to fix or sort it or if there is a free program that i can use to sort it thanks:

satrow · Aug 22, 2009

Hi bootboy, welcome to the forum.

Can you tell us more about the problem you are having please?

Some details on your PC and perhaps an Everest log would help too

DavidGP · Aug 22, 2009

HI

What issues you having with VM? if you have error messages do please post them in full, also do also tell us what Windows version and Service Pack you using?

if posting a Everest log theh attach using these instructions HOW TO: Attach Items To Your Post

The Shadow · Aug 22, 2009

It's called "Virtual" memory for a reason..........
Actual Memory is computer chips,,,, it's Physical,
but Virtual Memory really does not exist. It's a space set aside on your hard drive for 'memory overflow' so to speak.
When you close down your PC, which you should be doing at least once a day, that Virtual Memory is basically null and void.

It's totally controlled by Windows and there is "Virtually" nothing you can do with it. The worse thing that can happen is that you don't have enough free space on your hard drive for your Virtual Memory file, called the "Pagefile.sys".

If you have enough physical ram in your PC, Virtual Memory use will be at a minimum. You should have at least 2 gig's of ram for Windows XP and 3+ gig's of actual ram for Vista or Win-7.

Good Luck,
The Shadow

~Q~ · Aug 22, 2009

The Shadow said: ↑

[...]

It's totally controlled by Windows and there is "Virtually" nothing you can do with it.[...]
Click to expand...

Sorry Shadow, but thats incorrect...

To increase your "virtual memory"...

In Windows XP
1.Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2.Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
3.On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.
4.On the Advanced tab, under Virtual memory, click Change.
5.Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file that you want to change.
6.Under Paging file size for selected drive, click to Custom size check box. You can enter the amount of memory you would like to reserve for Virtual memory by entering the initial and maximum size.
7.Click Set
When you are prompted to restart the computer, click Yes.
Special Note: You should choose the same amount for the initial size and maximum size. This will Stop your CPU from constantly changing the paging file.

Q

edit: btw i beleive his "problem" is the lil pop-up you get telling you that "you are running low on virtual memory and windows is increasing it"
tis a common problem on old 'puters and those with very little ram.

bootboy · Aug 22, 2009

hi there thanks for ur reply the problem is the pc is running slow and a pop up keeps coming up saying low on virtual memory on windows is up gradeing it have tryed to use a registry cleaner and its scanned it and it says i ave 1249 problems or errors i am on windows xp ave an 380 e-machine2.20ghz intel celeron processer 60 gb hard drive thanks very much

~Q~ · Aug 22, 2009

Have you followed my last post?

As for the registry cleaner, which one didi you use? some can be harmfull to your system if you dont know what your deleting.

bootboy · Aug 23, 2009

thanks 4 u help i am sorry dont know how much ram or what a service pack is but will try what u said thank u very much

bootboy · Aug 23, 2009

hi i looked for what u said but i dont ave a performance and maintance icon to clidk is it under something else thanks 4 ur help and time

bootboy · Aug 23, 2009

ms windows xp homw sp3 intel celeroncpu 2.20ghz,256mb ram nvidia gforce4 mx 440 thats what it says in the ccleaner window hope that helps so u can help me thanks very much 4 ur help and time

~Q~ · Aug 23, 2009

bootboy said: ↑

hi i looked for what u said but i dont ave a performance and maintance icon to click is it under something else thanks 4 ur help and time
Click to expand...

Hey bootboy,
Their is two ways the control panel displays, "normal" and "classic" on classic you will have to click an icon called "system" in normal view you have to click "peformance & maintenance"....

Take a look at these pic's...i have circled the icons you need to click...
http://www.picvalley.net/v.php?p=u/1909/96961352014151862081251033579dJjkK8k59jeGsLJ0r5YV.BMP

http://www.picvalley.net/v.php?p=u/2469/14343702926673346851251034046wF0bXXVVY4X8t5O4DUHw.BMP

http://www.picvalley.net/v.php?p=u/2469/14343702926673346851251034046wF0bXXVVY4X8t5O4DUHw.BMP

The Shadow · Aug 23, 2009

In my own defense, , , I know how to surgically remove my own appendix too, but I will leave that stuff to the experts.
No amount of cute little pictures will ever convince me to try it.

On the same line, the program developers at MS know a lot more about setting up a Virtual memory than any of us do.

If any PC has enough Real RAM to properly support the OS and programs, then the Pagefile will be of the proper size to complement it.

I just worked on a Compaq desktop today that came out with only 512 megs of ram, minus the 128 for the Video circuit.
It's running XP Home, and very slowly at that. A real dog!

So I showed my friend/customer how to take the Memory Scan at 'www.crucial.com' and he decided to order two one gig sticks of DDR ram to increase the performance of his little PC.
When the new ram comes in, by USMail, I'll go back and remove the one 512 stick and install the two 1 gig sticks and he'll have a much nicer running PC.

You can futz with Virtual Memory till the cows come home and if you don't have enough real RAM, you're just wasting your time and not doing your system performance any good at all. And if you make the wrong changes, you can seriously degrade your system performance.

"A word to the wise..............."

Shadow :cool

~Q~ · Aug 23, 2009

Yes installing more ram would be great for his performance but as the OP stated he just wants to stop the pop-up, [which happens because the genius' at MS thought it would be a good idea to warn you every time windows is increasing the page file[aka, virtual memory] when setting it at 2500MB is a fair amount not to big, not to small [unless your desperate for space] and can do no harm by reserving this space but if you do need any more than that, windows will just "increase the virtual memory" anyway, and you will get the pop-up telling you so.

So in short doing as i and many others on the net advise has no adverse effects other than consuming 2500MB of space on the HDD as it is reserved.

I can cite many sources if anyone would like me to.

Q

TimW · Aug 23, 2009

How big should the page file be?

There is a great deal of myth surrounding this question. Two big fallacies are:

The file should be a fixed size so that it does not get fragmented, with minimum and maximum set the same

The file should be 2.5 times the size of RAM (or some other multiple)

Both are wrong in a modern, single-user system. A machine using Fast User switching is a special case, discussed below.)
Windows will expand a file that starts out too small and may shrink it again if it is larger than necessary, so it pays to set the initial size as large enough to handle the normal needs of your system to avoid constant changes of size. This will give all the benefits claimed for a ‘fixed’ page file. But no restriction should be placed on its further growth. As well as providing for contingencies, like unexpectedly opening a very large file, in XP this potential file space can be used as a place to assign those virtual memory pages that programs have asked for, but never brought into use. Until they get used — probably never — the file need not come into being. There is no downside in having potential space available.
For any given workload, the total need for virtual addresses will not depend on the size of RAM alone. It will be met by the sum of RAM and the page file. Therefore in a machine with small RAM, the extra amount represented by page file will need to be larger — not smaller — than that needed in a machine with big RAM. Unfortunately the default settings for system management of the file have not caught up with this: it will assign an initial amount that may be quite excessive for a large machine, while at the same leaving too little for contingencies on a small one.
How big a file will turn out to be needed depends very much on your work-load. Simple word processing and e-mail may need very little — large graphics and movie making may need a great deal. For a general workload, with only small dumps provided for (see note to ‘Should the file be left on Drive C:?’ above), it is suggested that a sensible start point for the initial size would be the greater of (a) 100 MB or (b) enough to bring RAM plus file to about 500 MB. EXAMPLE: Set the Initial page file size to 400 MB on a computer with 128 MB RAM; 250 on a 256 MB computer; or 100 MB for larger sizes.
But have a high Maximum size — 700 or 800 MB or even more if there is plenty of disk space. Having this high will do no harm. Then if you find the actual pagefile.sys gets larger (as seen in Explorer), adjust the initial size up accordingly. Such a need for more than a minimal initial page file is the best indicator of benefit from adding RAM: if an initial size set, for a trial, at 50MB never grows, then more RAM will do nothing for the machine's performance.
Bill James MS MVP has a convenient tool, ‘WinXP-2K_Pagefile’, for monitoring the actual usage of the Page file, which can be downloaded here. A compiled Visual Basic version is available from Doug Knox's site which may be more convenient for some users. The value seen for ‘Peak Usage’ over several days makes a good guide for setting the Initial size economically.
Note that these aspects of Windows XP have changed significantly from earlier Windows NT versions, and practices that have been common there may no longer be appropriate. Also, the ‘PF Usage’ (Page File in Use) measurement in Task Manager | Performance for ‘Page File in Use’ include those potential uses by pages that have not been taken up. It makes a good indicator of the adequacy of the ‘Maximum’ size setting, but not for the ‘Initial’ one, let alone for any need for more RAM.
Click to expand...

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

~Q~ · Aug 23, 2009

Fair play some good points, although i disagree with the fragmentation issue.

Anyhoo, about the V-memory, like i said in my last post even though it is set to "maximum" that is not a real limit, as windows [XP anyway] will automaticly increase it as needs, which it must do because i have and pretty much every 'puter i have ever worked on has got a page file set to 2500MB [or similar] as must millions of other people yet we are able to manage and process files much larger than 2500MB without hassle,

It just prevents the space reserved going up and down while it is using less than that, which is probably 99% of the time.
And the general consensus i got from that article, is although a lower amount is advised than my recomendation, too much can't do no harm it is just redundancy really.

Q

edit: i would like to add this apply more to older and or low RAM computers, like the OP has, if you have got gigs of ram then it is a different matter.

plodr · Aug 24, 2009

I just upped the virtual memory on a computer because she kept seeing warnings about virtual memory is low.
It's a Dell that had only 256MB RAM installed and running XP! That's almost criminal. Dell sold lots of computers with XP and 256MB RAM, knowing that it just wasn't going to be a great computing experience.
The computer only accepts 1GB total, in two slots so I installed two-512MB sticks and upped the virtual memory as well because there was tons of room on the hard drive. I always set the max and min the same so the hd doesn't waste time resizing the virtual memory.
For an older computer that only has a 1GB cap on the memory that can be installed, I feel, if there is space on the hd, then increase the virtual memory so the user has the benefit.

~Q~ · Aug 24, 2009

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457057.aspx

Microsoft recommends that computers running Windows XP have at least 128 megabytes (MB) of random access memory (RAM) installed. For this memory size, Windows XP has shown itself to be consistently superior to previous versions of Windows. Performance only gets better with additional resources, particularly when you run memory-intensive multimedia applications. Many users will want to expand their computer's memory to take advantage of multimedia applications and to achieve even better performance.
Click to expand...

Now he could spend money and upgrade his RAM, which, granted would be best, as it would for for every computer in the world with less than a 1GB or he could just fix the issue of windows resizing the VM and slowing stuff down while it does so and get rid of the pop-up.

I guess it's up to the OP.

BTW, if you think 2500MB is a bit too much to be "wasting" on your HDD try different sizes, maybe start at 1000 and see if that stops the resizing slow down and warnings, it is entirely flexible so feel free to have a good plasy with it.

Q

bootboy · Aug 25, 2009

yes i did tHANKS BUT THE pc is still running really really slow i think christmas will come quicker than this so really i need to up grade my ram hard drive then thats what would b bwest so thanks again 4 ur time and help and that goes 4 all of u that ave tryed to help me thanks

hrlow2 · Aug 25, 2009

If it is still slow after altering your Virtual Memory, have you looked at the startup list to see what all is running in the background?

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