Control Panel>System>Advanced>Performance Options>Change?

Question

This is the path for changing virtual memory. What exactly is "virtual memory" and p"age file?" Thanks!

Answer 1

In laymans terms, virtual memory is hard drive space that Windows allocates to use as RAM. When your computer runs low on RAM Windows will automatically move programs that are running in the background to the virtual memory or Page file. Then when you start using that program again it will read it from the harddrive to RAM and dump another program to the page file. If your computer is doing a lot of reading and writing to the harddrive when you are not saving files, then you need to add more memory (RAM). I hope this helps.

Answer 2

Virtual memory is an addressing scheme implemented in hardware and software that allows non-contiguous memory to be addressed as if it is contiguous. The technique used by all current implementations provides two major capabilities to the system:

Memory can be addressed that does not currently reside in main memory and the hardware and operating system will load the required memory from auxiliary storage automatically, without any knowledge of the program addressing the memory, thus allowing a program to reference more memory than actually exists in the computer.
In multi tasking systems, total memory isolation, otherwise referred to as a discrete address space, can be provided to every task except the lowest level operating system. This greatly increases reliability by isolating program problems within a specific task and allowing unrelated tasks to continue to process.

Virtual memory has been a feature of Microsoft Windows since Windows 3.0 in 1990; it was done in an attempt to slash the system requirements for the operating system in response to the failures of Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0. 386SPART.PAR or WIN386.SWP is a hidden file created by Windows 3.x for use as a virtual memory swap file. It is generally found in the root directory, but it may appear elsewhere (typically in the WINDOWS directory). Its size depends on how much swap space the system has set up under Control Panel - Enhanced under "Virtual Memory". If a user moves or deletes this file, Windows will blue screen the next time it is started with "The permanent swap file is corrupt" and will ask the user if he wants to delete the file (It asks this question whether or not the file exists).

Windows 95 uses a similar file and the controls for it are located under Control Panel - System - Performance tab - Virtual Memory. Windows automatically sets the page file to start at 1.5× the size of physical memory, and expand up to 3× physical memory if necessary. If a user runs memory intensive applications on a low physical memory system, it is preferable to manually set these sizes to a value higher than default.

In NT-based versions of Windows (such as Windows 2000 and Windows XP), the swap file is named pagefile.sys. The default location of the page file is in the root directory of the partition where Windows is installed. Windows can be configured to use free space on any available drives for page files.

Answer 3

Rather than "copy & paste" from a technical definition I will try to put it in clearer context.

Most all program data & files accessed on your PC are immediately stored in RAM for quick access (or at least the logical addresses of the data).

As the RAM keeps receiving newer,more recently accessed data the previous data ges tempoarily stored on the hard disk file called the pagefile or "virtual" memory.

Although it is no longer in RAM for quickest access this data is still logged and addressed by RAM on the hard drive for easier & more efficient access.

Analogy:
You are sitting at your desk & have to keep getting up to go to the file cabinet across the room to retrieve ceratin folders. Instead of putting them back in the file cabinet each time you need a new one ...you keep tem "temporarily" on your desk in case you need to refer to any of them again.

In a nutshell ..... this is what virtual memory does. It keeps the frequently accessed data in a designated area of your hard drive for quicker access.

regards,
Philip T