virtual memory

[fairfax]

windows keeps saying it is increasing my virtual memory as it is to small . what causes this to happen?

[ChuckFickens]

it means that the current amount of hard drive space allocated to be virtual memory is too small.

if you have a very small (less then 512mb) of ram installed in your computer then that is probably the cause of the problem. if you don't know how much ram you have right click on my computer and it will tell you.

if it's not low ram, then you possibly are running some software with what's called a memory leak, which means it will use up all the memory and virtual memory.

[ChuckFickens]

*right click on my computer and select properties!

[VHG]

Windows tries to put all the programs you are running (including itself) into real memory (RAM). If you have enough real memory then normally it can manage.

But if your PC has not got enough real memory (or you start a lot of programs) your real memory can fill up, and Windows needs to do something about it.

What it does is create an area of your hard disk called Virtual Memory and then copies some data from your REAL memory to your VIRTUAL memory.

When it needs it again it copies it back from VIRTUAL memory back into REAL memory. It will continue swapping data if REAL memory is full up.

This swaping process (in computer terms) is a very slow process and can really slow your computer down.

When Windows needs the area of hard disk (virtual memory) it "grabs" as much as it needs, but if your hard disk is nearly full then it has not got enough space, and so you may start getting these errors.

Two things you can do

1) Simple solution, free up some space on your hard disk

2) Add some more REAL memory (or RAM)

In the long term you probably need to add more real memory.