what is virtual memory in a computer? When it's low what does it mean?

Answer 1

Virtual memory is the amount of hard drive space your PC sets aside to use as if it were RAM, or random access memory. If you fill up your hard drive, there is less room for the OS to set aside to use as memory and the computers performance will suffer.

Answer 2

Virtual memory isn't really memory in the traditional sense. What most computers do is allocate an amount of hard drive space that can be used like ram. Virtual memory is mainly used for applications that need to keep large chunks of data in memory that isn't read or used very often.

Virtual memory is much much slower than traditional ram so as you start to get low on ram it eats more virtual memory. Once you start to eat more of your virtual memory your computer will slow down considerably.

Answer 3

RAM is your checkbook, then you go to virtual memory for an overdraft, then you have to see the bank. Your computer will tell you when you are low, and has to get more virtual memory from the hard drive or dump files. A good way to preclude this problem is more RAM, and barring that, increase your virtual memory to at least twice the amount of RAM. For example, if you have 512MB installed, you should have at least 1000GB of virtual memory if your hard drive can support that much.

Answer 4

Virtual memory is a location on your harddrive where data from your RAM is temporary stored. Basically your RAM becomes close to full because your system has alot of applications opens, or you do not have much RAM. Data in the RAM that is not in use is then copied to your hardrive (Virtual Memory) to free up your RAM for other applications as RAM is much faster. If it is low, then install more RAM, and/or got to Control Panel - System - Performance tab - Virtual Memory and increase the size allocated to virtual memory.

Answer 5

here's the simple explanation...when you run out of ram you computer uses the hard drive to store bits of info

here's the complete definition:
Virtual memory or virtual memory addressing is a memory management technique, used by computer operating systems, more common in multitasking OSes, wherein non-contiguous memory is presented to a software (aka process) as contiguous memory. This contiguous memory is referred to as the virtual address space.

Virtual memory addressing is typically used in paged memory systems. This in turn is often combined with memory swapping (also known as anonymous memory paging), whereby memory pages stored in primary storage are written to secondary storage (often to a swap file or swap partition), thus freeing faster primary storage for other processes to use.

In technical terms, virtual memory allows software to run in a memory address space whose size and addressing are not necessarily tied to the computer's physical memory. To properly implement virtual memory the CPU (or a device attached to it) must provide a way for the operating system to map virtual memory to physical memory and for it to detect when an address is required that does not currently relate to main memory so that the needed data can be swapped in. While it would certainly be possible to provide virtual memory without the CPU's assistance it would essentially require emulating a CPU that did provide the needed features.

Answer 6

its your ram like how much memory u can use at a time and if it gets low it means ur doing to much stuff and close some windows or get a bigger ram card