Virtual memory, how and how much?
 

I've occasionally had my PC tell me my virtual memory is low and that it has increased it. I suspect this is a symptom of another problem or perhaps contributing to other glitches. So, how much should I have and how do I manually increase it?

What type of system, how much RAM and how large is the hard drive and how much free space?

JoeA

In XP. Control panel, system, advanced, performance, advanced, vitual memory. Make the inial size and the maximum size the same. It should be 1.5 times the amount of ram you have, or if you are not sure make it 512.

More ram makes a healthy PC.

My system is kinda old here at work, it is:

P4 at 1.3Mhz
256k RAM
running Win2K professional

My current Virtual memory is at 768K!!!!

Get a new pc with XP on it = no more stupid messages from an operating system with stupid bugs in it.

You need more physical ram. Or to run fewer apps at one time. Windows is supposed to adjust the virtual RAM based on need. It uses hard drive space. When it run low on physical ram it needs to use more hard drive space.

I agree with above, you should have at least 512MB of RAM, more if you can manage.

A trick that some tweakers use is to figure how much virtual ram they are likely to need and then set it as the max and min, but unless you know specifically I'd probably just let Windows keep managing it.

Thanks guys, I'm thinking new PC during the holiday sales anyway.

In Windows, set the virtual memory size min and max to both be 2x the amount of ram you have. Then defrag your drive. Your swapfile won't be scattered all over, and you'll have enough.

StevoRocket - XP still gives the same error. On the other hand, on my Linux systems with more than 256mb of RAM I've only used 100mb swap files and the only time I can get the swap to be needed is when compiling a kernel and playing Quake3 at the same time (gotta love dual cpu boxes)

If you get the message frequently, you would benefit from adding more RAM to your system. 256MB is the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM I would attempt to run just about any operating system on nowadays.

Your system performance will increase noticeably with more RAM given your situation, more than likely. It wouldn't cost too much to double your RAM nowadays.


If you pick up a new machine over the holidays, get yourself at least 512MB of RAM. I'd personally go for at least 1GB, but that's me. How useful it will be depends greatly on what OS, and what software you're running, and how much of it you run simultaneously.

You mean 256Mb RAM, right? I don't know that DOS would even boot in 256k.

Nevertheless, 256MB is not very much. You're OS is swapping to disk quite a bit under these conditions, thus causing your comptuer to run slower. If you bump it up to even 512MB you'll see significant performance gains. But I would try to get a gig of ram in there. I would also set your virtual memory to a fixed size rather than letting the OS dynamically allocate it. Oh...I second the motion to upgrade to xp(professional).

Cheers!

These days I don't think you could run a GameBoy on 256Mb of RAM. Step up and fill all slots with the biggest sticks you can use, then set swap to 2x that.

Ok, how do Ifind out what kind of RAM I need? Friggen DIMMs and SIMMS and blah blah.

Unless you know off the top of your head what mobo you have, it's time to break out the screwdriver. Once you know that, then you can find out from the mfg site what RAM configs are supported, and from there it's a trip to Fry's.

If its a pre-built system (i.e. dell, gateway, etc.) you can goto http://www.crucial.com/ and see what kind of RAM you need. They have an advisor tool on their homepage, and you can buy the memory there, or just use the info to buy it somewhere else. There also plenty of software out there that can tell you what kind of memory you have, or just check the manufactor's website.

Thanks, I'll just order from there. Also I occassionally get a PC LOADLETTER error, what the fukc does that mean? :)

Your printer is out of paper.

Dood, you do not want to use virtual memory, it's a bad and slooooow thing. Rather than using the RAM, it reads/writes to the hard drive. Yes, crucial.com is the way to go if you have an "off the shelf" system and not some no-name deal. When you find out what it uses, let me know, I have some older memory laying around.

Thanks,
Crucial does not carry my memory as it is RDRAM. The computer is a Dell Dimension 8100 @ 1.3

len - on the back of the dell, there is a sticker with an alpha-numeric code. That's your service tag number - it tells you exactly what your computer left the factory with, what it takes, warranty, etc.

newegg.com probably has what you need, but there are variations on the rdram that only your service tag will tell you about and you should match what you have or toss what you have and get all new.