Virtual Memory?

Question

Aaarggh. My PC keeps coming up with a little icon in the desktop window - 'Virtual memory full - more being created' or something along those lines. Does this mean I have too much shiz on my hard drive? I know I have nearly 4GBs of precious, precious music on my hard drive, but when I right-click (C:) > Properties it says I'm using 24.5 GBs and have 47.8 GBs. It says in the little system thing I have 1.67GHz, 224 MB of RAM. I don't really know what this all really means, so I need someone to translate it al for me and basically tell me if I have too much crap on my hard drive? Much apreciated.

Answer 1

Well I think you have all the info you need from the previous answers, but I thought I would sum it up for you. You are short on RAM, which means your system is depending too much on the less efficient virtual memory, and hence is asking for more virtual memory. The best solution would be to add more RAM.

Answer 2

This has nothing to do with how much stuff is on your hard drive, but how much memory you have. You say you have 224mb of RAM, and that probably isn't enough to run the programs that you are running. Memory modules aren't cheap, and most computers come with 256mb or 512mb or 1gig of RAM. But even 1 gig is not enough to run Windows and applications. The Windows operating system knows this so it makes "Virtual memory". This is really just a hidden file on your hard drive called pagefile.sys. This is kind of a scratch pad sort of. Let's say you have several applications running. Windows will take some of that stuff out if the RAM and put it on the hard drive for use later and concentrate on the stuff that needs the memory at that immediate time. When it needs the other stuff it will take it off the hard drive and put it into RAM and take other not needed right now and put that on the hard drive for the time being. When you first install Windows, Windows will decide how much space your virtual memory needs on the hard drive. But let's say all of a sudden you open an application that takes up a lot of memory, and it doesn't fit in RAM, and it doesn't fit in the pagefile.sys file on the hard drive either. Well, Windows will tell you that it has to make the pagefile.sys file bigger to cover this memory hungry application you are using. This is a little process for Windows and it slows everything down for a second or two while it makes the pagefile.sys bigger and a message pops up on the screen telling you that it's doing that. So if your having this problem often you don't need a bigger hard drive, you need more RAM memory. If you computer has an empty slot on the mother board you might be able to add another memory module and double the RAM you have and this might alleviate the problem.

Answer 3

"Physical memory is the amount of random access memory in your workstation, whereas virtual memory is the amount of memory than can be written to your system's hard disk" (it's names pagefile.sys).
Now here is how to optimize this file:
Go to System Properties from Control Panel, choose Advanced and under performance click settings.
Now go to Advanced and under Virtual memory click on Change.
The pagefile is stored for every partition you have which windows recognizes. Now choose a partition, starting with C and System managed size. You can do this for all others partitions if you prefer.
If after this you still receive this message your pc probably has some memory leaks which needs to be fixed. Read this:
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11-5255099.html

By the way you can also manually edit the size you want the pagefile to be. For XP be sure it isn't below 400 Mb! (i would recommend 512 at least).

Answer 4

Memory is where the computers store open stuff, ex in word you type somehting up it goes to the memory or ram. It get cleared when u shutdown. That's why u save it to an unvolitile storage unit, like a hard drive. Memory and hard drive space are two different things. There are unvolitle memory, like in MP3 plater, camera, Memory cards, etc..

The message means you are using more than u have, so it makes "Virtual Memory" which uses yur hard drive space as if it were ram [though it's not!!] I think there are advantages and disadvantages of Virtual Memory, it may go slower??

Answer 5

Go to Control Panel,
click System,
click Advanced Tab,
the Performance Section,
click Settings Tab,
under Performance Options,
click Advanced Tab

You can change page file size there under virtual memory settings in Windows XP Home Edition.

I usually increase size by 300 on my own pc.

Answer 6

You need more RAM. I don't know how much you have but I had 256mb and kept getting that message so I finally bought 512 more and installed it. (easy to do), and the message doesn't come on anymore.

Good Luck