My Dell keeps telling me that the virtual memory is low, please help.?

Question

A few months ago my Dell XP started telling me that the virtual memory was at a minimum low. It also said that it is increasing the size of it, but I don't think it is because every time I turn it on it says the same thing. It tells me to go to help for info, but there is nothing about virtual memory in help. Please help me, what is virtual memory for and how can I increase it?

Answer 1

Here is what happening when you have a warning sign showing " virtual memory is low warning". Your computer uses physical memory, aka RAM, and virtual memory. Virtual memory is used to simulate more RAM when your computer is reaching its maximum CPU and RAM usage. It very similar to a bucket filling up with water. If your CPU needs water you can bring this resources to it. But your bucket size is limited. The more programs you use and disk space the more water is needed. But you can only deliver the set amount of water because your bucket size is limited. The bucket is your RAM. However, you can use a spare bucket to quickly to help meet the demand. The virtual memory is that spare bucket.



You can change your virtual memory by altering amount of free resources for your computer to use for it, in a sense making the spare bucket bigger. Virtual memory uses free space as a resource. So you can change the the amount free space reserved for the Virtual memory.



1.Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

2.Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.

3.On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.

4.Under Virtual memory, click Change.

5.Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file that you want to change. In most computers its C:

6.Under Paging file size for selected drive, click to Custom size check box. You can enter the amount of memory you would like to reserve for Virtual memory by entering the initial and maximum size.

7.Click Set



Hope this helps!

http://www.delete-computer-history.com/increase-virtual-memory.html

Answer 2

To put it simply (at the risk of *over-simplifying*) virtual memory is the process by which your computer hard-drive space is utilized to "trick" your programs they are using large blocks of contiguous addresses. This helps your applications refresh and process functions quicker. It is highly likely that you are in serious need of increasing your RAM. If you have a laptop or a desktop, you probably have 2 slots that contain minimum memory. You can go to www.crucial.com and have them scan your computer for the current memory you have as well as determine what memory capacity to which you can increase.

Answer 3

I think that the virtual memory is referring to the portion of hard disk space that windows uses as an extension to physical memory (RAM). When Windows runs out of physical memory or wants to free up the faster physical memory for other apps, it might swap the memory taken up by some applications from physical to virtual memory.

The warnings that windows is giving you may indicate that you are running low of hard disk space. Try deleting unwanted files or applications. Windows should adjust the hard disk space allocated for virtual memory automatically in response to the available space. You might also want to consider increasing your physical RAM to improve overall performance.

Answer 4

go to my computer and check the disk space in local drive c by right clicking and clicking properties. it will show u a pie graph of memory used and left



To free disk space, go to control panel, add/remove programs and remove whatever programs you don't need.



1. Free up disk space

The Disk Cleanup tool helps you free up space on your hard disk. The utility identifies files that you can safely delete, and then enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files.



Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Cleanup. If several drives are available, you might be prompted to specify which drive you want to clean.



In the Disk Cleanup for dialog box, scroll through the content of the Files to delete list.





Choose the files that you want to delete.



Clear the check boxes for files that you don't want to delete, and then click OK.



When prompted to confirm that you want to delete the specified files, click Yes.



After a few minutes, the process completes and the Disk Cleanup dialog box closes, leaving your computer cleaner and performing better.

Answer 5

ok right click on my computer then click properties.

click advanced

click on settings in performance section

click on top advanced tab

on the bottom click change

now make sure the c: drive is selected on top and then select lower for system managed size OR if you know how much total ram your computer has you can make custom size and make the initial size 3 times as big as the total ram you have and max size make it 5 times the size of your ram. so if your computer has 512mb ram make the initial size about 1500mb and max 2500mb

Answer 6

go to start>Control Panel>add or uninstall a program>then delete some junk or things that you don't need no more that will increase your memory. if that still hasn't worked you can rebuild your computer from windows vista to XP or XP to vista XP to XP vista to vista this will delete all of your files and reset them all if you want to do that optionsearch it online or if you cant find any thing no it just message me on MSN [e-mail].i hope i helped =]