I recently formatted/rebuilt a Dell laptop having 256Mb physical RAM withXP
Pro SP3. I noticed the Virtual Memory Low bubble pop up once or twice while
I was working on the computer. I tried to go into the Advanced Performance
Settings to increase the virtual memory. It is "fixed" on a custom level:
384Mb initial size and 768Mb maximum size. It will not let me increasethe
upper level or set it to system managed size. It's fixed where it's at.. No
matter what I do in there, it reverts back to the above numbers when I hit OK
to close the box. Does anyone know why it won't let me change it?
Thanks,
M Ridzon
Changing it may help and you should be able to, but System Managed is
usually a good choice unless somebody thinks they know about how to
manage virtual memory on an XP system than XP does. What would you
increase it to if you could and why?
I have been running 256M for a long time and used to see those
warnings letting me know that Windows is doing it's job (they are
informational messages not error messages). Haven't see one in years
since I figure out what it was trying to tell me. I did not add RAM
and my paging file is System managed.
It depends of course on how many things you are running at the same
time which will vary from time to time. If you only see them
sometimes, you may be okay with the occasional information message.
Some first suggestions will be "add more RAM". but I didn't add more
RAM. I figured it out.
You can add the view the Virtual Memory column in Task Manager to see
just who is taking up the most VM and then make decisions about what
to do about it instead of guessing at what to do about it.
Figure out what is using your VM and how much.
Right click the Taskbar, choose to open Task Manager.
Click View, Select Columns, check the box that says: Virtual Memory
Size. Expand the width of the Task Manager
box so you can see all the columns.
Click the VM Size column heading once or twice to sort by VM Size
biggest to smallest, top to bottom.
Who are the to 5 heavy hitters?
Then provide more information about your system:
Click Start, Run and in the box enter:
msinfo32
Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select
All, Copy and then paste the info back here.
There will be some personal information (like System Name and User
Name), and whatever appears to
be private information to you, just delete from the pasted information.
