What is "virtual memory"? And how can I increase it on Windows XP?

Answer 1

virtual memory used hard drive space and pretends its ram. its used to store stuff thats just sitting aroudn your ram, not being used, but wasting space. so its plopped on the hard drive for later retrival.


go to my computer
right click on background
click properties
go to ADVANCED TAB
in performance group, click settings
in new window, click advanced tab, and its there
go to the bottom to Virtual Memory group, and click change
from there, you will want to make sure that every driver has atleast 20 or 30 mb, and you can make that user set size. however, you will want a good 1024mb or so on a drive with some space.

setting the min and max to 1024, or a good 1500 if you want, till stop that annoying virtual memory too low popup.

take a minute or 2 and look over that virtual memory settings window. dont rush things and good luck.

Answer 2

When all of your computer's real physical memory (RAM) is in use, Windows will try to create virtual memory by grabbing a chunk of hard drive space and treating it like real memory.

How to increase VMem:

Click Start, then open the Control Panel.

Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.

Click the Advanced tab.

Under Performance, click Settings.

Click the Advanced tab.

Under Virtual memory, click Change.

Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file (virtual memory) settings that you want to change. In almost every case, this will be your C: drive.

Click to select the "System managed size" option, then click Set.

Click OK three times and restart your computer.

The best choice is to add more real memory (RAM).

Best Wishes and have fun but be careful.

Answer 3

A program instruction on an Intel 386 or later CPU can address up to 4GB of memory, using its full 32 bits. This is normally far more than the RAM of the machine. (The 32nd exponent of 2 is exactly 4,294,967,296, or 4 GB. 32 binary digits allow the representation of 4,294,967,296 numbers — counting 0.) So the hardware provides for programs to operate in terms of as much as they wish of this full 4GB space as Virtual Memory, those parts of the program and data which are currently active being loaded into Physical Random Access Memory (RAM). The processor itself then translates (‘maps’) the virtual addresses from an instruction into the correct physical equivalents, doing this on the fly as the instruction is executed. The processor manages the mapping in terms of pages of 4 Kilobytes each - a size that has implications for managing virtual memory by the system.
Strictly speaking Virtual Memory is always in operation and cannot be “turned off.” What is meant by such wording is “set the system to use no page file space at all.”

Doing this would waste a lot of the RAM. The reason is that when programs ask for an allocation of Virtual memory space, they may ask for a great deal more than they ever actually bring into use — the total may easily run to hundreds of megabytes. These addresses have to be assigned to somewhere by the system. If there is a page file available, the system can assign them to it — if there is not, they have to be assigned to RAM, locking it out from any actual use.

To change the setting for Virtual Mem, follow this link to see how, complete with pictures so you can make sure your are.. where you are supposed to be. http://www.windowsnetworking.com/j_helmig/wxpvmem.htm

Answer 4

DO NOT touch the virtual memory of your computer, or else you will mess up your pc. Its best decided by the windows, automatically. Increasing virtual memory won't make your computer faster or increase RAM memory space. I don't have enough RAM but still I haven't increased the virtual memory. Better be careful,

Answer 5

Virtual memory is hard drive space reserved by the operating system to use as RAM

the easiest way to increase it is to reboot your computer.

You can also add additional RAM to your computer by making a purchase and installing some


Last you can change the size of the reservation by right clicking on My Computer and go to properties. Go to the advanced tab and click settings

there you will find the place to change the reservation for virtual memory

Answer 6

Virtual memory is the hard disk space that is used as RAM when physical RAM is full.

To increase it in windows, goto My Computer -> properties -> Advanced tab. performance options. There you specify the virtual memory.

If you have multiple partitions, specify virtual memory across all partitions.

Answer 7

Right click on "My Computer" Icon to get System Properties -> Advanced -> Performance -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory -> Change

Answer 8

Virtual memory is using the hard drive to substitute for ram your system needs but does not have. You can adjust the amount of disk assigned for this use under advanced computer properties performance tab.

Answer 9

RAM is your virtual memory u can increase it by buyin a new one of greater capacity or combining 2 or more

Answer 10

FOCUS, Pinky! Focus!

The magic of Virtual RAM is that the very much slower hard drive gives up varying amounts of user space to the system.

Poor choice, Pinky!!! Brain says to fix the size, of the space that can be committed, and, recognize the built-in limitations of that 8 year old Microsoft virus magnet!

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It is so good, that Microsoft.com, MSN.com, and Hotmail.com use it on 15,000 computers, EACH!!! Their dogfood got so stale, that they HAD to switch to something that is virus free, and hacker proof!

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http://livecdlist.com has 309
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