virtual memory

[tankerman24]

can anyone tell me what this means and what I can do, I was browsing the other day when my pc flashed up virtual memory low, creating more memory, never seen this before, any help appreciated , thanks

[buggalugs]

Usually means you're running short of real memory, how much have you got and what are you using the machine for?

[pdV6]

When you run out of space in real memory, your operating system swaps some data to disk to make room for what you're actually using at that exact moment in time. The 'virtual memory' is an area of disk space reserved for swapping this data (also called 'swap file' or 'paging file') and when this too is full, you're out of options.

Easy short-term fix is to increase the size of the reserved space on disk (In Windows XP: My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance -> Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory -> Change) but if you're getting this message quite often during normal day-to-day use then the true fix is to get more physical memory, as causing the o/s to swap data to and from disk hits your performance.

{edited to add:} From the message you describe, it sounds like Windows is configured to manage the swap file dynamically for you, so it's already increased the size of the swap file on your behalf. This is ok but it's more efficient to set a sensibly large fixed size for the file and tell Windows to just use that rather than continually monitoring and adjusting it.

Edited by pdV6 on Tuesday 22 January 11:40

[The_Burg]

Always set swapfile to recomended size, use the same for upper and lower limit. Do not set it larger as this will drastically slow the system down. This stops the file constantly resizing.
If XP needs a larger file temporarily it will adjust it anyway.

[Tycho]

The_Burg said:

Always set swapfile to recomended size, use the same for upper and lower limit. Do not set it larger as this will drastically slow the system down. This stops the file constantly resizing.
If XP needs a larger file temporarily it will adjust it anyway.

I usually set my swap file to 1.5 times my physical RAM.

[ginettag27]

It will slow down your PC, but at least it allows you to keep on working...

HDD gets used to swap RAM out, so that it can load it up with processes it believes need to reside in RAM...

RAM works in nano seconds (10 - 9)

HDD works in milli seconds (10 - 3)

So a lot slower.

Ideally check to see how much RAM you've got. Then when you've got the applications open that you mostly use check in Task Manager to see how much RAM you're using.. If it approaches that limit, you should really consider getting more..

Typically you'd like your normal processing to take up about 60-70% of your memory (RAM only) limit.. Ideally you've got 1Gig if not 2Gigs of memory..

Try to avoid having loads of processes going on in the background or applications pre-loaded, quite a few like to have an "accelerator" installed, to speed up initial use, although you might have only used that once.. Might be time to do a "tidy up"! To check this start the PC up and don't start using any Applications at all, bring Task Manager up, check memory usage (found on the Performance Tab).