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[chucken64]

I have a dell inspiron laptop with windows xp, it is about 2 years old and recently has become very slow. I put this down to lots of files being on it, however now my virtual memory is aparantly too full, and I keep having a message flash up saying that my lap top is increasing it. It appears however that for my lap top to do this, it stops anything else being done, it closes my msn, my start menu appears blank and nothing can be clicked. The only way I can open things such has the internet to post this question is by using the windows task manager and starting a new task, and even then I am limited as to what will open. I have tried downloading spyware etc can any one suggest anything that can be done before I send it some where for a costly repair?
Thanks

[gen2]

There are one or two things you can try first.

One possibility is that your 'C' drive has filled up with files and there is very little space left. Go to START menu and choose 'My Computer'. Then Right-Click on your 'C' Drive and from the menu that appears, choose 'Properties'. That should show you as a pie chart how much of your storage space you have used up. If it is showing as more than 90% full, that could be your problem.

If that is the case then there is really only one solution delete something that takes up a lot of space such as music or video files. Before deleting it of course, you will probably want to move it somewhere else. Many computers these days are coming woth a partitioned hard-drive with both a 'C' and 'D' partition. They don't normally save data to the extra partitionof their own accord so the 'D' drive stays virtually empty. Drag your datafiles to that drive, verify that they can still be read and then delete them from your 'C' drive.

Another possibility is that your folder of 'Temporary Internet files' has grown huge, so try deleting that as well.

[vehelpfulguy]

You are getting this problem because you do not have enough REAL memory (RAM).

Every time you start a program it is placed into REAL memory.

If your real memory fills up then Windows puts some of the data from REAL memory into VIRTUAL memory (which is on your hard disk).

The more Windows uses VIRTUAL memory the slower your computer gets.

If your hard disk fills up then Windows runs out of room in VIRTUAL memory and the computer grinds to a halt.

As gen2 says, a short term solution is to clear some space on your hard disk.

A better solution is to get more REAL memory, then your computer will not need to so much VIRTUAL memory.

If ypou are using Windows XP then you should try to get 1Gb of memory, if you are using Vista you should try to get 2Gb of memory.

Although XP and Vista will run with less memory than that having too little memory will slow them down.

[vehelpfulguy]

To add to my append above, with a slightly more technical explanation.

The reason your computer grinds to a halt is that it is "thrashing".

Thrashing occurs when Windows is having to spend so much time moving data from REAL memory to VIRTUAL memory and back again that it can do nothing else.

For a program to run it needs to be in REAL memory, but if Windows has placed it in VIRTUAL memory it needs to bring it back into REAL memory to run.

So it has to move something else out of REAL memory into VIRTUAL memory and so it goes on.

But if your REAL memory is small maybe it cannot get everythng it needs into REAL memory and so spends all its time swapping data back and forward between REAL and VIRTUAL memory.

Hence Windows is so busy doing that it canot find tme to let you do any other work.

Only long term solution is to get more REAL memory (RAM).