Virtual memory - What is it?

Jake'sGran

I was having problems with my computer again tonight. Turned out to be that my wireless keyboard needed new batteries. Think I was better off with the original one. Whilst I was trying to get answers there was a little pop up from Microsoft to say that I was running low on virtual memory and they were going to add some. What does this mean? I have had the message before but only when there is something else wrong.

joshm_2

Virtual Memory is Hard Disk space used by your machine as a substitute for RAM when your computer is low on resources (i.e. RAM). If you run low on VM and you have more disk space to spare, the operating system will allocate more.
There's nothing to be too alarmed about but there might be a memory hog running on your machine. Assuming you're running XP, you can look in task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del & click Task Manager) to see the processes run and the amount of memory they are using (sort by memory). If you see anything suspicious, try Googling it to find out whether it should be there or not. Watch out since killing some processes can have some bad effects (e.g. log you out!).

DCFC79

joshm wrote: »

Virtual Memory is Hard Disk space used by your machine as a substitute for RAM when your computer is low on resources (i.e. RAM). If you run low on VM and you have more disk space to spare, the operating system will allocate more.
There's nothing to be too alarmed about but there might be a memory hog running on your machine. Assuming you're running XP, you can look in task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del & click Task Manager) to see the processes run and the amount of memory they are using (sort by memory). If you see anything suspicious, try Googling it to find out whether it should be there or not. Watch out since killing some processes can have some bad effects (e.g. log you out!).

what he said

isofa

VM is a lot more complex that just a substitute for RAM when it's low on resources. It's an integral part of Windows, and efficiently manages resources.

If you are "running out", then it's highly likely your hard disc is filling up and there isn't enough free space available for allocation, or if you have a fixed VM allocation, as joshm says, something is filling it up.

Paul_Herring

joshm wrote: »

you can look in task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del & click Task Manager

For those techies that don't know about this, and want a quicker way to explain how to get task manager up, Ctrl-Shift-Escape will do the same thing.

TechTerry

When all of your computer's real physical memory (RAM) is in use, Windows will try to create virtual memory by grabbing a chunk of hard drive space and treating it like real memory. Your software can't tell the difference between real and virtual memory, but you might because virtual memory access is much slower, due to the hard drive activity it requires.

If you encounter the low virtual memory error message, then you have used the maximum amount of real plus virtual memory that is supported on your system. Sometimes programs that crash or ones that are poorly designed will not return their working memory space to the operating system when they're done using it. Other programs that need a large amount of memory to run may fail because Windows cannot "see" the available memory. In most cases, a shutdown and restart will resolve this problem.

Redmikee

Funny but in the last few days this message has popped up on my destop PC and my daughters laptop, both running Vista, the desktop has 2GB of ram and the laptop has 1GB, both have plenty of free disk space,maybe something more sinister like a virus or spyware perhaps?

Jake'sGran wrote: »

I was having problems with my computer again tonight. Turned out to be that my wireless keyboard needed new batteries. Think I was better off with the original one. Whilst I was trying to get answers there was a little pop up from Microsoft to say that I was running low on virtual memory and they were going to add some. What does this mean? I have had the message before but only when there is something else wrong.

TechTerry

Redmikee wrote: »

Funny but in the last few days this message has popped up on my destop PC and my daughters laptop, both running Vista, the desktop has 2GB of ram and the laptop has 1GB, both have plenty of free disk space,maybe something more sinister like a virus or spyware perhaps?

Defo do a spyware and adware scan. :money:

ormus

the vista OS is very memory hungry itself.
1gb ram is the minimum spec for a vista pc. so any prog like say an adobe app can soon cause problems.
so with just 1gb of ram you can see why some have problems. never mind any virus etc...

[Deleted User]

ormus wrote: »

the vista OS is very memory hungry itself.
1gb ram is the minimum spec for a vista pc. so any prog like say an adobe app can soon cause problems.
so with just 1gb of ram you can see why some have problems. never mind any virus etc...

Vista is not memory hungry, it handles memory allocation in a very different and more efficient way to what previous versions of Windows have done in the past, but to the untrained eye seeing maybe 8% of the physical memory free could give the impression it is 'hogging' it.

You can do a lot on any machine by removing what you don't need from starting up in the system tray, running in the background and getting rid of programs that are notorious for being demanding on resources, such as Norton, McAffee, over zealous spyware scanners etc.

A virus scanner, even when scanning should only ever occupy about 50-60MB of RAM, hardly enough to bring a machine to it's knees. There's a serious problem somewhere else.

TechTerry

anewhope wrote: »

Vista is not memory hungry, it handles memory allocation in a very different and more efficient way to what previous versions of Windows have done in the past, but to the untrained eye seeing maybe 8% of the physical memory free could give the impression it is 'hogging' it.

You can do a lot on any machine by removing what you don't need from starting up in the system tray, running in the background and getting rid of programs that are notorious for being demanding on resources, such as Norton, McAffee, over zealous spyware scanners etc.

A virus scanner, even when scanning should only ever occupy about 50-60MB of RAM, hardly enough to bring a machine to it's knees. There's a serious problem somewhere else.

+1 Vista looks like its using a lot of RAM but its not most of the time, it just uses the RAM in a diffrent way. I have been running vista home premium on an old P4 machine with 1GB RAM and its been running fine with all the aero effects and everything enabled.