free system memory

[Guest]

I have a Dell Dimension 4600 Pentium 4. Windows XP Professional. 160 GB Hard
Drive. 1024 MB Ram. When I am working on a program a message comes on screen,
There is not enough Free System Memory to continue the current task.
What is Free System Memory?- Can I increase it ans how?

 

[Ted Zieglar]

The message means that, between the RAM installed on your computer and the
virtual memory created by Windows on your hard disk, there is not sufficient
memory for you to do whatever you are trying to do on the computer. This
typically happens for two reasons:

1. You have too many programs open at the same time.
2. You have a virus or spyware, or maybe both.

 

[Guest]

Hi William,
With that amount of RAM I'm surprised at your error message unless you have
a lot of programs running.

Try checking your paging/virtual memory and memory usage, you can use Task
Monitor for this, look at your computer settings while it is open.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314482 "How to
configure paging files for optimization and recovery in Windows XP" also
gives a reasonable guide to this.

Cheers,
petecee

 

[Guest]

Thanks to all who replied. I am no further ahead. I have tried altering the
virtual memory from the original settings of 3500MB Max. and1536 Min. to
minium settings
ranging up to 2000 MB but to no effect so have reverted to original
settings.On the
Error Log I get a notice- CDrom-The Device has a bad block and Atapi-The
Device
did not respond within the time out period. Could this have anything to do
with the
problem? I am new to computing so please bear with me.
william.