Can someone tell me how to fix the following. (see added details below)?

Question

I keep getting the following error message:
Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file. During this process, memory request for some applications may be denied. For more information, see help.

Answer 1

I'm going to assume you're running Windows XP, and seeing a message stating "Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file." Unless you have very little physical memory (RAM) in your system, this message is indicative of a buggy application with a memory leak.

A memory leak is a common problem caused by poorly written or poorly debugged applications where they continually use more and more memory until you shut down the program, end the process manually or restart Microsoft Windows.

Virtual memory, also known as a page file or swap file, is a file on your hard drive (C:\pagefile.sys by default) that Windows and applications use in addition to physical memory (RAM) as needed. The default and recommended size of this file is 1.5 times the amount of physical memory. Virtual memory is the sum of physical memory and the page file. So if your computer has 512 MB RAM, it will have a 768 MB page file by default, for a total of 1.25 GB of physical + virtual memory.

Finding the source of the problem

First you need to determine which application is causing the problem.

Hit Control-Alt-Delete to bring up Task Manager (on certain XP Professional configurations you'll need to click the Task Manager button after hitting Control-Alt-Delete). You can also access Task Manager by holding down Control and Shift and pressing Escape.

Go to the Processes tab in Task Manager. Here you will see a list of all the processes (applications or parts thereof) that are running on your system. You will see the memory usage here, but in my experience this very rarely has anything to do with problems running low on virtual memory.

Click View, Select Columns.
Windows Task Manager View Menu

Check the Virtual Memory Size box, and click OK.
Windows Task Manager Virtual Memory Size

Now you have a VM Size column in your Processes tab. Click the top of the VM Size column twice to arrange the processes by their VM Size from largest to smallest.
Windows Task Manager: Processes

You'll see in this Task Manager shot that "certain application" is taking up the most virtual memory at about 237 MB, with "certain Application" the next biggest at about 81 MB. (the number of KB divided by 1024 equals MB) For both, this is the consequence of leaving them open for more than a week straight. Almost every application will use more memory the longer you keep it open, though some are worse than others. This is one reason that Windows becomes more and more unresponsive the longer you keep it running, and why you end up eeding to restart your computer periodically.

Once you determine which process is using more virtual memory than it should, you need to determine what the process is. Some are pretty obvious, like winword.exe is Microsoft Word, iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer, and so on. Others aren't so obvious. The best way to determine the source of a specific process is to use a search engine to search for the Image Name as shown in Task Manager.

Resolution

Now that you know which application is causing the problem, let's resolve it.

One common thing to try is to uninstall and reinstall the offending application if possible. Searching the Internet, and checking the support site of the software vendor would be the next two steps I would try. Without knowing which application is at fault, it's difficult to recommend a specific solution.

Answer 2

Vitual Memory is the lack of RAM (Random Access Memory) What you computer does is stall and Downloads files from RAM when you are out of RAM onto your hard drive and the space is called (Vitual Memory). When this space is not big enough your computer lets you know.
So thing like Defrag of your hard drive is just a patch to a bigger problem. What you need to do is get more RAM. Here a URL to a site that will tell you what your system can use.
http://www.4allmemory.com/

Answer 3

Do you have a lot of programs running? Background programs can cause thta error message. If you have programs such as Quicktime player, MSN, a music P2P program, browsers, and maybe a program that eats up RAm running at the same time, it's not a good thing.

Look down at the bottom right corner or your computer (I assume you're using a PC) and look at all the programs that are running. Close all the ones that you aren't actually using. Also, go into the preferences of these programs and deselect the option "run at startup".

Answer 4

This is a good sign that you need to defrag your hard drive. Also another good sign that you need to add more ram to your systmen. If you are using XP, you really need at least 512 megs of ram to run it descent. 1 gig to really enjoy a speedy PC.

This is just to run XP, not to mention other apps. So..

1) uninstall programs you do not use
2) Run a virus scan (since you should already do this once a week)
3) Run a spyware program such as spybot
4) Defrag your hard drive
5) Install more RAM! At least try to have 1 gig if you are running XP.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

Answer 5

I used to see it so much that it irritated me. My computer never crashed or anything because of it though. My system had 128MB of memory. I added 1GB of memory and boot up time dropped from 5 minutes to 30 seconds. My computer now surfs the web 2-3 times faster. You can get a great deal on memory from Micron's factory direct website. They can scan your PC and tell you what you can buy.

http://www.crucial.com/

Answer 6

omg the same thing happnes to me and i dont kno y ..sorry this isnt an ansewr ...just a comment i quess ,idk