Virtual memory low... :(

[Pimped Out 4 LYF]

My computers goin slow as fu***K and it takes forever to load the image on some exe files.. it keeps poppin up with a low virtual memmory thing.. i have a 1.3 AMD duron..or athlon i4get lol.. HP computer with 2 hard drives, the main having 2gb left outa 35! I dont know where all the space went i mean i had like 10gb left like last week??? And my other hard drive has 10gb left but i jus use that one as storage. Anywho i got 256mb ram that came with the computer.. i dont get what my computers up to. First loosing hard drive space and now low on memmory? Do i have to buy a new memmory stick or does that not help.. is virtual something else i dono. Not really good with memory on computers thats why im asking you guys

[YogsVR4]

Aside from this being in the wrong forum... My guess is your machine has several bugs in it. If you do not have an up to date virus checker - get one. If you have Norton Utilities - run it. Your machine should not be nearly that slow. If you have 8 gig unaccounted for over the last week, you may want to do a file search for files greater then 10meg and see what you have out there.

Virtual memory and memory are not the same thing. 256meg is then adequate for home usage.

What operating system are you running?

Have you installed anything lately?

Go here http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html and get a list of what your machine has. If you post that on here I might be able to help some. Perhaps someone else will have the bullet you need already, but I can't tell much from your description.

[audi&benz]

if nothing else works then just reformat it. take everything off of it and reinstall your OS. you should be set then

[Pimped Out 4 LYF]

I have XP

[Webmaster_Zeus]

In a memory heirarchy system, there's levels of memory (fastest to slowest) which they adhere to to improve the throughput of the pc.

Virtual memory is memory on the hard drive which have been allocated by the pc so it "swaps" unused data from the ram to the hard drive. By swapping redundant or unused data from RAM -> hard drive (there's a huge difference in speed here), we free more ram for other software for it to use the RAM.

Now there could be a few possibilities that your running low on Virtual memory, it is either that u have almost maxed out the virtual memory size (shouldn't matter, windows xp should manage it well as its based on the NT kernel), it could also mean that the allocated amount for virtual memory (set somewhere in systems) is set to x amount, but your hard drive actually have <x amount free, hence the clash.

A solution would be to empty the recycling bin if you haven't already, and to empty the norton protected files if you havent (if u'd installed norton antivirus software or something similar).

Also, clear out any internet caches which could be taking up valuable resources, and also turn off system restore, I find this to be of useless and no use at all, of course, backup regularly or have an image of your drive.

Also, if documents such as ms based office products crash, u'd find they have temp files lying around, chewing up hard drive and even after u recover them, they're still around, delete them, they're useless. Also, if your pc have crashed before, and a scandisk have been run after reboot, u'd find there's chk files lying around on your pc, unless u know how to manipulate these files to get lost data from, delete them, they'll stay there forever.

Hope this helps, if not you'd have some serious virus problem or that something/someone is chewing up your hard drive as they have access and use your pc. HTH as there's not enough info to go on by.

[High Octane]

delete all your porn
haha

[Webmaster_Zeus]

Originally posted by High Octane
delete all your porn
haha

LMAO

0wn3d

[spooleffect]

Originally posted by audi&benz
if nothing else works then just reformat it. take everything off of it and reinstall your OS. you should be set then

Best option.... But make sure you back-up your porn!

[LayDee]

Try to uninstall and delete unnecessary files/progs. Maybe you got some programs or movies that take up the space?

[TorinoGT69]

This usually happens when you have too many programs running in the background taking up too much of you physical memory so windows has to use your hard drive as memory. This slows down your system and can give an error message like you are describing. The most important thing to do is stop all the junk that is starting up. There are multiple ways to do this. You can disable each program from starting when you start windows from inside the program. Windows 98, Me, and some versions of XP have a command you can type at the run line - "msconfig" this opens a dialog box where you can uncheck items you do not want to startup with windows. Be sure to disable things like office startup and ad programs. Do this first, then clean off the unused junk on your hard drive. You may also want to download ad-aware or a program such as this, lately I have seen a lot of problems being caused by spyware and adware programs so be sure to get rid of those. Then defragment your hard drive to help the performance there.

[Plastic_Fork]

A good rule of thumb is to reserve 10% of your hard drive for virtual memory. Anything less than that could potentially cause your O/S some issues. If your primary hard drive which runs your O/S is 35gb, try to maintain a minimum of 3.5gb free at all times to allow the page file and virtual memory to funtion correctly.

The virtual memory and page file sizes can be adjusted manually in WinXP, but do so at your own risk. Windows XP is also a physical memory hog, so I would run a minimum of 512mb of RAM.

Also, you can disable Windows Messenger from "msconfig" utility as well as disabling it from the Services manager from within Administrative Tools in Control Panel. I have found Messenger to slow my PC down considerably. Aside from that, clearing out your temp directories, internet caches, recycle bin, and running defrag should help improve system performance.