what does it mean when your computer says windows virtual memory is low ?

Question

How do you fixx it. Could this be why my internet is ruuning slow?

Answer 1

Yes this can make your internet run slow. If you are running low on virtual memory then your computer is more than likely out of space on your hard drive and you don't have enough RAM to run all the things you are running. You can check by going into Control Panel > Perfomance and Maintanence (may be skipped if not using XP) > System > in the system window click Advanced > In performance click the settings button > then advanced tab > then click change under virtual memory > then click the radio button to allow windows to manage your page file(should be system managed size) then click Set > click ok to get out of everything then restart your computer.

If this does not fix the problem you may want to check your hard drive space and make sure that it has plenty of free space you can check this in my computer by right clicking your hard drive and selecting properties if it is full then you need to start deleting things such as programs and temorary files. You more than likely would also need to upgrade your RAM. Good Luck HTH.

Answer 2

The hard drive in the computer is where all the information is stored. When the computer is switched on Windows and the various programs load up into the RAM memory. They do this because this memory is a lot faster than the hard disk. Windows and these other programs use up a certain amount of memory. When you start opening programs more memory is used up. If the amount of memory you have is full then the slower hard drive is used as "virtual memory". A certain amount of space on the hard drive is allocated to this function. If this virtual memory is then also nearly used the computer will alert you to virtual memory being low.
Generally it means that you would be better off getting more memory (RAM) installed in the PC.
Another possibility for this message to arise isif you had viruses or spyware on the PC which may be eating up the memory resources.

Answer 3

Virtual memory is hard drive space that is used in addition to your ram (hence "virtual"). Normally it is set at 1 1/2 times the size of your ram. If this has just started happening you may have too many things (like malware) running. 2 free programs to clean out a lot of the junk are spybot and adawarese. If you always had the problem then you need to add additional memory and up the page file (virtual memory). Don't just change the virtual memory without also changing the ram - you could end up running even slower.

Answer 4

First - fix it by simply rebooting your machine.

Now that you know how to fix it...
It's partially the fault of your Windows operating system, and partially due to how some programs deal with files. I just opened my PSP right after turning my system ON for the day. I loaded a LOT of photos to shrink and copy for my hubby and the last 3 photos would not load into PSP due to "low virtual memory".
If you load a lot of large files (my photos are 3.5MB each) into RAM your o/s will run out of virtual memory.

I closed most of the photos and had no problem, but other times I have had to reboot my machine as Windows lost track of where it had put things.

A more permanent solution is if you can add more RAM & video memory to your machine!

Answer 5

Yes, it could. You need to add more ram (random access memory) to speed it up and free up more virtual memory. Either add ram, or delete a bunch of stuff you may not be using, or, you need a new computer.

Answer 6

this is a pretty common error on computers that have very little memory... Windows in most cases will deal with this itself by increasing the swap file... but, the only real way to get it to stop is to buy more RAM (recommend a minimum 512MB for Windows XP, 1GB for Windows Vista)

Answer 7

You are running out of space on your hard drive. Run Disk cleanup.

Answer 8

Buy more RAM!!