System is low on virtual memory

[Paul Koluvek]

Problem: Get message that says"Your system is low on
virtual memory"

My grandson has a HP Notebook Pavilion Model zt1000b that
he uses for email and IM, listen to music, play dvd's,
internet research and term paper writing. Then just
recently, the icons suddenly went missing, background
images changed, programs would not work (MSWorks,
RealPlayer) and music files were missing. My daughter
reinstalled Windows XP Home Edition with the HP Recovery
Disk. She also installed Corel 9, some music files, and
Norton SystemWorks 2004 and ran Norton AntiVirus, with no
detection of any viruses.
All was good. For one week. Now it's back to where it was
before, with the background changing, icons missing,
programs not working and the computer does not have enough
memory to run anything. At startup the following message
is displayed: "Your system is 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. For more information, see
help". When help is clicked on, the following message is
displayed: "application failed to initiate properly. Click
on OK to terminate."It seems one can open folders, but can
not use any programs.
Does anyone out there know what is causing this problem and
has a solution??

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Paul Koluvek (a grandfather with some computer knowledge,
but not enough to solve this problem)

HP Notebook info
from above the mousepad: HP Pavillion ZT 1235
from the laptop underside:
Pavilion Model zt1000b
PZ339/2001
Serial Number TW24002333
F5553h
Has 128MB memory -- which is minimum, but worked with WinXP
for over 2 years, before this problem
Loaded with WinXP
Notebook is 2 years, 8 months old, 8 months beyond warranty.

 

[davexnet02]

Problem: Get message that says"Your system is low on
virtual memory"

My grandson has a HP Notebook Pavilion Model zt1000b that
he uses for email and IM, listen to music, play dvd's,
internet research and term paper writing. Then just
recently, the icons suddenly went missing, background
images changed, programs would not work (MSWorks,
RealPlayer) and music files were missing. My daughter
reinstalled Windows XP Home Edition with the HP Recovery
Disk. She also installed Corel 9, some music files, and
Norton SystemWorks 2004 and ran Norton AntiVirus, with no
detection of any viruses.
All was good. For one week. Now it's back to where it was
before, with the background changing, icons missing,
programs not working and the computer does not have enough
memory to run anything. At startup the following message
is displayed: "Your system is 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. For more information, see
help". When help is clicked on, the following message is
displayed: "application failed to initiate properly. Click
on OK to terminate."It seems one can open folders, but can
not use any programs.
Does anyone out there know what is causing this problem and
has a solution??

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Paul Koluvek (a grandfather with some computer knowledge,
but not enough to solve this problem)

HP Notebook info
from above the mousepad: HP Pavillion ZT 1235
from the laptop underside:
Pavilion Model zt1000b
PZ339/2001
Serial Number TW24002333
F5553h
Has 128MB memory -- which is minimum, but worked with WinXP
for over 2 years, before this problem
Loaded with WinXP
Notebook is 2 years, 8 months old, 8 months beyond warranty.

128 MB does work, but the cost is extra delays as stuff is
swapped in and out. Have you checked the virtual memory settings
to make sure it's reasonable and not too small?
Have you opened task manager when it seems low on memory
and identified the application that's using all the memory?
That's the first level troubleshooting.

Dave

 

[Guest]

you probably need to create a respectable page file, also make it static.
unless you are short on disk space, set it at 1000 mb.

 

[two.dogs]

Problem: Get message that says"Your system is low on
virtual memory"

My grandson has a HP Notebook Pavilion Model zt1000b that
he uses for email and IM, listen to music, play dvd's,
internet research and term paper writing. Then just
recently, the icons suddenly went missing, background
images changed, programs would not work (MSWorks,
RealPlayer) and music files were missing. My daughter
reinstalled Windows XP Home Edition with the HP Recovery
Disk. She also installed Corel 9, some music files, and
Norton SystemWorks 2004 and ran Norton AntiVirus, with no
detection of any viruses.
All was good. For one week. Now it's back to where it was
before, with the background changing, icons missing,
programs not working and the computer does not have enough
memory to run anything. At startup the following message
is displayed: "Your system is 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. For more information, see
help". When help is clicked on, the following message is
displayed: "application failed to initiate properly. Click
on OK to terminate."It seems one can open folders, but can
not use any programs.
Does anyone out there know what is causing this problem and
has a solution??

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Paul Koluvek (a grandfather with some computer knowledge,
but not enough to solve this problem)

HP Notebook info
from above the mousepad: HP Pavillion ZT 1235
from the laptop underside:
Pavilion Model zt1000b
PZ339/2001
Serial Number TW24002333
F5553h
Has 128MB memory -- which is minimum, but worked with WinXP
for over 2 years, before this problem
Loaded with WinXP
Notebook is 2 years, 8 months old, 8 months beyond warranty.

Have you checked for spyware / adware?

 

[Alex Nichol]

"Your system is 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. For more information, see
help". When help is clicked on, the following message is
displayed: "application failed to initiate properly. Click
on OK to terminate."It seems one can open folders, but can
not use any programs.
Does anyone out there know what is causing this problem and
has a solution??

See my page www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm and the Problems section.
Also make sure that you are free of spyware.

 

[Richard Veber]

Paul
My daughter has had exactly the same problem, and last night I fixed
it - I uninstalled Norton Antivirus 2004, all messages like "Virtual
memory minimum too low", and heaps of applications being unable to
start went away.
all is now well.
I have installed AVG antivirus for her instead.
Her environment is 128MB (yes I know its marginal for XP Home, but its
worked well for 18 months), settings I changed up to Virt Mem initial
384MB, max 600MB (recommended says 189MB), but now should work fine
with less.
no viruses.
the way I fixed it was too boot into safe mode (F8 at boot), ran NAV
all clean, disabled NAV by setting everything to off, then rebooted
normally, and all was working again!
So I promptly uninstalled NAV2004 and installed AVG and ran its virus
check.
All now perfect again.
will post a message on Symantec site when I get time
and will probably buy her another 128MB when I get time
Richard Veber

 

[Alex Nichol]

My daughter has had exactly the same problem, and last night I fixed
it - I uninstalled Norton Antivirus 2004, all messages like "Virtual
memory minimum too low", and heaps of applications being unable to
start went away.

Norton AV is a known culprit. Glad to have another confirmation

 

[Richard Veber]

Alex
actually it was partly your earlier comment that alerted me to it, for
some reason I had been thinking that Symantec would have done a good
job of testing on a 128MB XP system, or at least have a notice on
their site about it, so until I saw your suspicion I had not focussed
on it.
At least they have a 60 day refund option
Richard

 

[nymphadora]

Anivirus and Virtual Memory

In my experience, I have found that Norton, McAfee, and AVG are the worst anti-virus software solutions on the market. Norton and McAfee have too many conflicts with commonly used software and AVG is the biggest memory hog I have ever seen. What upsets me is that these companies know about these problems, yet continue to charge people money for their inferior products.

I have used Avast Home Edition (which is FREE) for the past three years on all five of my home computers. My grandmother uses it and I have all of my friends using it. We have never had an issue. When I worked in IT at the Four Points by Sheraton I installed Avast Professional (which is not free) on all of our computers because AVG had a major conflict with the sales software, Delphi. We never had a conflict again.

If you are worried about spy ware, I highly recommend SpyBot Search and Destroy. This is another free application you can find on Cnet.com.