System freezes !

[maximo]

Hello ! for the past two days, my laptop has been freezing, and today, I got a message saying that my virtual memory was too low and windows was attempting to correct it. It apparently happens when I have left it for some time, still on, and go back to it. I cannot change window, get a white screen and cannot close the window either ( a window pops up with "not responding" ). I have XP,a 2.6 Ghz processor, with a 40GB hardrive and 528 MB of RAM. Any idea what could be causing this ? And what does "low virtual memory" mean ? I only have about 4 IE windows opened, and am not using any other program at the time, so I would think that 512 MB could cope with that...Everything goes back to normal after a while, but I'm a bit worried...thanks in advance !

[rojash]

Virtual memory is just a file on your hard disk. When windows runs out of real memory, it starts swapping stuff out to the file (the page file), and swaps it back in as required. This slows the system down somewhat.

However if you are really only running IE, Windows shouldn't need to be swapping out at all, so there is something a bit weird going on here.

The first thing to do is:
Right-click the "My Computer" icon on your desk top and choose "properties" from the menu
Click on the Advanced tab and click the Settings button in the Performance section.
Click the Advanced tab, and then click the Change button near the bottom.
Check that the paging file is set to "System managed size", and if it's not change it, then click set, then OK everything.

If it is already set to system managed, follow these instructions:
Change it to "No paging file" click set, then ok everthing. shut down and restart the computer,
Repeat the above process, this sime setting it back to "System managed size"
(This wipes the original paging file and creates a new one )

If you still experience problems:

Hold down the Ctrl, Alt and Delete keys, and then choose "Task Manager" from the menu that appears.

Go to the Performance tab and look at the section Physical Memory, Total memory should be around 528000, compare it with available memory - you should find that at least half of this is available - if not, then you probably have some nasty stuff going on! post your findings back here

[maximo]

Thank you ! I'm at work now, so I will have a look at this tonight and post my findings. Cheers !

[maximo]

Hi again ! I have changed the setting to "system managed ", it was set to " custom size"...I restarted the computer, then checked the physical memory. It says around 458 224, and available says 116 880....Is that a bad sign then ??

[rojash]

Well, it's not a *bad* sign as such, but it would seem to indicate that you are running more programs than you realise!

Have you done a spyware check?

Have you got a load of stuff in the startup folder?

After installing MS Office, I always remove Office fast start from the startup folder