Virtual Memory

Greetings. I don't know if i am in the right place to be asking this question -and i am not very computer literate either, but anyway; over the last week or so i have had a pop-up from the task tray with a yellow triangle with an exclamtion mark in it saying my virtual memory is too low come up about three times. Then it goes on to say it is topping up the virtual memory and that i will not be able to access some functions while it is doing this.

I have never had this happen before and i am wondering what it could be. I am a little wary of what's going on with my computer at the moment as it has been extremely slow and not always doing what i want.

If anyone can shed some light on this i would be most grateful. Many thanks in advance.

 

You are probably using all of your computer's physical memory, your computer is telling you that you need more memory for what you have running - hold the ctrl/alt/del keys at the same time, go to the processes tab and see how many processes you have running. Go to the performance tab, toward the bottom it should tell you how much available physical memory you have.
If all your memory is taken up, go to your start menu>run>type msconfig - check the box for seletive startup, and go to the startup tab and see how many programs are scheduled to startup. You can uncheck what you think you don't need (If you have Windows XP, if another versoin let us know, you need to be more careful what you uncheck with earlier Windows OS's)(If you're not sure what it is leave it checked for now).
Restart, and post how it turns out.

 

Thanks for your reply ElectricNacho (great name ),

I did all you said - i am running Windows XP by the way. There are eleven things checked to run at startup on the msconfig thing and to be honest i do not know what they all are and would not uncheck anything in case i stuffed up. As i said, i am not computer savvy at all.
When i went into the Task Manager the first time, i had 117732 available memory, the second time after a restart it was 32116.

Is that all okay? When i get the popup saying it is loading more memory is that usual? I have never had that before and have not done anything out of the ordinary lately.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards

 

Hi,

IMHO Virtual memory problems occur because you are either running out of disk space on your harddrive, or the page file setting are too low.

Check your disk first: Open "My Computer" and check the properties of the C: drive. It'll show you how big it is and how much space you have left.

If less than 10% you should try cleaning up the drive. There is a "Disk Cleanup" button on the properties page. Deleting old documents etc. may help too. (Don't remove anything that you don't recognise as yours).

 

Thanks for your reply krebbin,

I have heaps of disk space left; 30.6 gbs in fact, so it wont be that .

I don't know what the page file settings are .

Regards

 

Thanks TimW for your input,

I have 224 MB of RAM and the page file size is 336 MB of RAM; should i change it?

Regards

 

The Elder Geek has a great article on the 'page file', it might help you understand what's going on.

Windows will adjust the size of paging file needed if you check 'system managed size' on the virtual memory page.

Have you -
Defragmented recently?
Run a virus scan recently?
Installed anything new within the time frame of your computer acting sluggish, and not acting sluggish?

I would have to agree adding RAM will always help, but if it didn't run slow before and now it does something has happened, software-wise to make it do so.

And question for TimW - where did the 32 MB for video card come from? I ask for my own info.

 

Not to hijack the thread, but I was under the impression that video cards had RAM on them so they wouldn't take up system RAM storing video info, etc. I need to do some reading....

 

Thanks all,

hell, just got the bejesus scared out of me; ElectricNacho i did what you suggested - checked the 'system managed size' and after rebooting i couldn't get online. Just couldn't make a connection and my isp dialup page was different to what it usually is and i couldn't use that either. I did a system restore and it is okay again . Don't know why that happened.

I defrag regularly, done a few days ago; i run an antivirus check every day and use AdAware every day too. I use the disc cleanup regularly and also regularly delete cookies and files and clear the history on my Internet Options thing.

I thought a video card was used mainly for playing lots of games, which i dont. The most i do is play Solitaire or a set of games i installed three years ago called AfterDark which i would say are pretty harmless.
I mainly use my computer for surfing the net, email and doing assignments on. And i have not installed any new software recently.

I will read the article you recommende ElectricNacho, thanks.

Oh and he is a she