virtual memory (1 Viewer)

[*hopeful*]

i got a message come up that my comp is low on virtual memory, what is that ? what needs to be done to pull it up

 

[phatic]

Eh... the easiest thing to do, if you have the money, is to buy more RAM.

 

[sunny]

i got a message come up that my comp is low on virtual memory, what is that ? what needs to be done to pull it up

Your computer has a limited amount of RAM...most of the time its not enough. What Windows will do is use some of your hard disk space as RAM, this is virtual memory.

Since RAM is much much faster than your hard disk/virtual memory, Windows tries to keep whatever is being used at the time in RAM and avoids using virtual memory when possible. But sometimes it can't really be done because theres too many things to keep in RAM. Sometimes your virtual memory can get full as well. Windows is meant to automatically adjust how much of your hard disk is used as virtual memory depending on its needs but only up to a certain point.

The error you get can be some culprit program eating up all your memory, or you're just trying to do too many things at the same time. The best thing as mentioned already would be to get more RAM. Adjusting the amount of virtual memory ("How to manually change the size of the virtual memory paging file") is only a temporary fix since the real problem is there is not enough RAM to do what you wanted at the time.

 

[*hopeful*]

so its not really cause i have lots of downloaded programs etc on it?
how do u buy ram, it is like a memory stick or something, normal prices ?

thanx guys i know nothing bout this stuff

 

[Serius]

Well yeah, it is... but the real problem is you dont have enough ram. If you had less shit crammed on your hard drive you could devote more space to virtual memory[iam guessing you are running out of space, otherwise you wouldnt get this error message]

Iam running 2GB of RAM which is abit excessive, but the absolute minimum you should have is 256MB, 512MB is better and 1GB is pretty stock standard for gaming computers these days.

depending on the type of motherboard you have, and the type of RAM you are currently using you will probably be able to just buy a stick and plug it in.

Prices are very variable as are quality and stock speeds... depending on what you are after 100-200$$ should be enough to buy a stick of memory that suits your needs.

For the quick fix though, just delete shit off your hdd.

 

[hYperTrOphY]

When that comes up for me I press Ctrl - Alt - Delete --> click on the processes tab --> click memory tab so that the processes using the most memory appear at the top --> right click on a process(es) and click end process.

This may not be ideal (I have no idea) but it seems to work.

 

[*hopeful*]

^hmmm its only ever come up once and it said something along the lines of what the comp was going to do but i accidently lost the msg
so yeah imma clean out some shit to begin with

 

[DeathB4Life]

if its been a while since your last reformat and your comp is cluttered with programs try:
start > run > "msconfig" > startup
and then just untick anything that sounds like you dont need it.

should free up a bit of RAM permanently

 

[withoutaface]

I wouldn't worry too much, it's probably just firefox leaking memory or something. Either way I get that message on a semi-regular basis, it's nothing to be overly concerned about.

 

[AntiHyper]

It can slow down your computer when windows is assigning more virtual memory, I used to get that after playing more than 1 hour because the game stores up all the images/textures & sounds (even unused ones) into vm.

Getting more memory fixed my problem.