virtual

E

Eco

New Member
hi,

i keep getting a message that comes up saying "your system appears to be low on virtual memory. windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file. during this process, memory requests for some applications may be denied"

can someone tell me what this means?

thanks, eco
 
This is talking about your page file, also called your virtual ram(or under linux it's your swap file)

It's a section of your hard drive that your computer treats as a place to cache things like RAM. Your computer uses it as a less accessed/slow RAM.

You can changed it in XP by going to "Control Panel > system > Advanced > (Performance section at the top) Settings > Advanced (Tab) > (Virtual Memory section) Change" Or you could just let windows expand it.


More info: Here and Here...
 
ok the "change" part of virtual memory section has
"custom size: initial size(MB):336 and maximum size(MB):672" which is what its set to.

but under that you have the option of setting it to "system managed size" or "no paging file"

should i leave it or change it? and what effect would these have?

also, could you possibly tell me what you mean by "cache things?"

i looked at the articles but the language was a bit technical for me. i don't know much when it comes to computers.

thanks
 
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When it says Initial Size it is talking about the minimum size it starts at and the Max size it what it expands to. It's dynamic and will expand and contract as the system needs it. The issues is how much hard drive space you have as your page file takes space from your hard drive. Your most likely using system managed size as you didn't set it yourself. The "no pagings file" will give you that 672 MB of space back but at the cost of slowing your system down. IF you system is running low you could raise the MAX size of it assuming you have the hard drive space to do so.


Maybe "cache things" wasn't the best way to put it. It basically uses your hard drive as slow RAM. Removing it would make your system slower.
 
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