Virtual Memory

[BJS]

Have been getting lots of messages lately about Vitual Memory being low.I did a site search and found very useful answers to this problem and how to increase the size of the VM. However have had to increase it twice now, as after a while the message would reappear. What is the maximum I can increase it too. At the moment have the VM set to 1500MB. Ihave Windows XP with a capacity of 180 Gbytes.

[Wak]

I believe the popular suggestion is to make the VM Min and Max figures to be the same value which is either one and a half or twice the size of your RAM.
Having a fixed area of VM saves the system from constantly shuffling about either making or reclaiming storage space.

[ChuckFickens]

You almost certainly need to increase the amount of real memory in your computer. Windows used virtual memory when it runs out of real memory.

Right click on your My Computer Icon and select properties and it will say how much RAM you have, if its less than 512MB you really need to add more memory. (if it's less than 1GB (1024MB) you should consider adding more)

[ChuckFickens]

Used virtual memory????

Don't know why I went to the past tense then... I meant uses virtual memory.

[ChuckFickens]

oh, and 180GB is the size of your hard drive, that is totally different to the amount of RAM you have in the computer.

[AlBags]

And check ALL the processes going on, too.
May be something dragging it down.
Scan.

[VHG]

Is your hard disk full or nearly full?

It does not matter how big you make your Virtual Memory, if there is no space on your hard disk to HOLD the Virtual Memory.

Make sure you have PLENTY of space on your hard drive.

[BJS]

When I right click on My Computer-Properties it says on the General Tab 448MB of RAM. When clicking on the Advanced Tab-Performance Settings-Advanced-VM it shows that 1500 is set for upper and lower (set by me) from the recommended figure of 669 MB and space advailable on C as 171401MB All this doble Dutch to this wrinklie, but all I can say is the couple of times I have increased the size to its present level of 1500 the speed of switching from web page to another has been very rapid but obviously there is a upper limit . Any help is relly apreciated.

[ChuckFickens]

"448MB of RAM"

Buy more memory. you only have 512MB installed at the moment (64MB is being used by your graphics card, leaving 448 for the rest of the system)

adding another 1GB should be cheap and will solve your problem and will also make your computer a lot faster responding to everything.

if you run the system scanner on the link below it will tell you what type you need.

http://www.crucial.co...emscanner/?click=true

[BJS]

Confused by "Buy mor Memory" and the cost. When you get older it makes you feel vunerable to doing downloads that you do not understand like clickinon your recommended link.you read so much or hear about these scams. Also why, when I have increased the VM does everything feel good for a while

[deggers316]

have you got any nephews etc that know about comps as you seem to have little idea. they could sort out what your after

[ChuckFickens]

Maybe a monkey with a gun isn't the best avatar to install confidence in people :)

OK, your computer has two types of what people generally call memory. the one you stated is 180Gbytes is your hard drive, this is where your computer stores everything permanently on your computer such as all your pictures, videos, documents and also all the parts of windows required to make your computer run. when you turn your computer off everything on the hard drive is retained ready for when you turn the computer on next time.

You also have the RAM in your computer, the size of this is much smaller than your hard drive and it's only temporary storage, it's where your computer stores the information it is actually working on at any given time.

In your situation you do not have enough RAM in your computer to store everything it is working on at any one time so your computer is using some of your hard drive to offload some of the information it needs, this information on your hard drive is the virtual memory.

The main problem with virtual memory on your hard drive is it's 100s of times slower than your real memory so a lot of programes that run in the background on your computer insist on using a bit of your real memory, this makes you need for virtual memory increase. you can keep increasing your virtual memory but it will only slow your computer down as it needs to read info from the slow hard drive rather than the fast RAM.

The link I provided is from one of the largest memory manufacturers in the world and is perfectly safe. you don't need to buy from them, but you do need to know the correct sort of memory to buy if you want to solve your problem and that scanner will tell you that. (if you don't understand the result someone here will help you)

[BJS]

Thanks once again ChuckFickens that made things a bit plainer for me. One thing that sprung to mind is that I use a ttb download meter and my Norton always flashes up each day I connect to the web a waning that ttb is a high memory user so on what you have said could be a contribution to the problem as AlBags suggested..

[ChuckFickens]

Your download manager may be badly written so it has a memory leak (I've never heard of ttb download manager) which could cause your problem. if that's what you think then uninstall it from add remove programs in control panel and see if it helps

But 512MB memory still needs increasing.