Thread: "your system is too low on virtual memory"-what is this?

"your system is too low on virtual memory"-i am constantly getting this message from past few days.
what is this?
does it cause any harm to my system?
what should i do to get rid of the prob?
in my pc:-512MB RAM,AMD 64athlon processor and 160gb harddisk......

Virtual memory is from your Hard disk ...

Increase the amount of virtual memory you have allocated from your hard disk .... that should solve your problem

Virtual memory is simulated RAM. When you have used up all your RAM, your computer will shift data to an empty space on the hard drive. The computer swaps data to the hard disk and back to your RAM as needed. When you increase your virtual memory you are increasing the empty space that is reserved for your RAM overflow.

To Increase Virtual memory in Windows XP

● Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
● Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
● On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.
● On the Advanced tab, under Virtual memory, click Change.
● Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file that you want to change.
● Under Paging file size for selected drive, click to Custom size
● Click Set
When you are prompted to restart the computer, click Yes. check box. You can enter the amount of memory you would like to reserve for Virtual memory by entering the initial and maximum size.

Note: You should choose the same amount for the initial size and maximum size. This will Stop CPU from constantly changing the paging file. Also when you are setting the value it should be at least 1.5 times more than your physical RAM. If your computer has 512MB of RAM, increase the virtual memory paging file to 1.5 x 512= 768.

Good Luck! :thumbup1:

i know this sounds funny but i can't understand the whole thing.
"Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file that you want to change.
● Under Paging file size for selected drive, click to Custom size"
how can i know the disk drive that contains the paging file?is there any harm for my pc....if i continuosly i get this kind of notificaton"...............plz reply

great stuff vishnu, i was about to post this

Originally Posted by prasanta08

i know this sounds funny but i can't understand the whole thing.
"Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file that you want to change.
● Under Paging file size for selected drive, click to Custom size"
how can i know the disk drive that contains the paging file?is there any harm for my pc....if i continuosly i get this kind of notificaton"...............plz reply

you need not to worry about it simply go ahead and change page file size coz by default your derive letter comes as c: so it should be that only where your windows is loded

Originally Posted by smoothvibes

great stuff vishnu, i was about to post this

Thanks! :thumbup1: Just doing what I can.

thanks guys for the reply.....
i've another question .......frm that day when i first got this "warning message" a new problem arises.whenever i am going to start my system scan with AVIRA.....it says.....aecore.dll can not be loaded for avira....and there is no system scan....but when i restart the comp.....everything is fine.....what is this guys......plz help if u can.....is it because of low virtual memory or anything else....otherwise avira is doing great job.....

re install avira

and this not due to low virtual memory

Is this error occurring even after you set the new virtual memory value?

Do you have any other problem with Avira, like when you are updating or something ?



BTW. If you are not fond of Avira you can try some other Antivirus. You can get a list of some good Anti-virus here. Free Version Security Software.

thanks for the reply.....this forum is like a tutorial(not like that of boaring ones)
so i am asking you guys another bunch of silly question.........:stupid:

1.if i increase the size of allocated virtual memory to (upto 728mb for 512 ram).would it solve my prob of getting notification about 'too low virtual memory,windows is increasing the size of paging file,during this some of the application may be blocked....."

2.does it(low virtual memory) cause any prob to my pc

3.whenever i want to install a software,should i install it to c drive where the system files are stored or to other drives for better performance....Or
does it really matter?

Originally Posted by prasanta08

thanks for the reply.....this forum is like a tutorial(not like that of boaring ones)
so i am asking you guys another bunch of silly question.........:stupid:

1.if i increase the size of allocated virtual memory to (upto 728mb for 512 ram).would it solve my prob of getting notification about 'too low virtual memory,windows is increasing the size of paging file,during this some of the application may be blocked....."

2.does it(low virtual memory) cause any prob to my pc

3.whenever i want to install a software,should i install it to c drive where the system files are stored or to other drives for better performance....Or
does it really matter?

Better not install your softwares in C drive unless you r out of space in other drives . i have a specific drive each for Softwares , Data storage/Backup , Games/Multimedia/music , Office stuff

Originally Posted by prasanta08

thanks for the reply.....this forum is like a tutorial(not like that of boaring ones)
so i am asking you guys another bunch of silly question.........:stupid:

1.if i increase the size of allocated virtual memory to (upto 728mb for 512 ram).would it solve my prob of getting notification about 'too low virtual memory,windows is increasing the size of paging file,during this some of the application may be blocked....."

2.does it(low virtual memory) cause any prob to my pc

3.whenever i want to install a software,should i install it to c drive where the system files are stored or to other drives for better performance....Or
does it really matter?

Thanks!(but whats with the smilie ).

1. Yes, It will stop the pop ups.
2. No, it won't cause any problem if you follow the rules.
3. It is recommend installing software in a separate drive. Leave the Windows open.
(the more free space you have in the main drive the better)

It will also decrease the number of errors in Windows.

Good Luck!

Originally Posted by prasanta08

thanks for the reply.....this forum is like a tutorial(not like that of boaring ones)
so i am asking you guys another bunch of silly question.........:stupid:

1.if i increase the size of allocated virtual memory to (upto 728mb for 512 ram).would it solve my prob of getting notification about 'too low virtual memory,windows is increasing the size of paging file,during this some of the application may be blocked....."

2.does it(low virtual memory) cause any prob to my pc

3.whenever i want to install a software,should i install it to c drive where the system files are stored or to other drives for better performance....Or
does it really matter?

You get low virtual memory error when there are too many memory hogging programs running. If this error is being displayed, it means that something is not going right in your PC.

You should normally not fiddle around with virtual memory and page file settings if you are not an expert and (pardon me) you sound like a novice. I consider myself to be an advanced user (one level below expert) and till date I never had to change the memory settings. When I installed Oracle on Windows servers, I set the virtual memory/page file size to be twice the RAM size. That is about it.

Here is what you should do.

Open tasklist, go to processes tab and sort the programs/processes by memory in descending order. Find the top 5 memory consuming programs. Find out what they are doing. Use google search to find why they are taking huge memory. Some games consume a lot of memory. Also post your findings here.

thanks for the reply....ya that's right.....when i tried to change the size.....i just can't be able to open my browser(mozilla),,,,!!!!(it says too low paging file)so i changed the setting to the previous one.....no games in my comp.....so what is consuming so much of memory......i am just cluless.....even when i am listening songs....i get the notification.....what's this???plz suggest...........

you should allocate 1024-2048 mb for Page file( Virtual)

you can also do this, this will delete your page file at shutdown, but will slow down your pc shutdown as well

in run
gpedit.msc
computer configuration-windows settings-seccurity-local policies-security options

now find " shut down : clear page file ' and enable it

now exit, then in command promt type " gpupdate /force"

I'm going to assume you're running Genuine Windows XP, and seeing a message stating "Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file."... Unless you have very little physical memory (RAM) in your system, this message is indicative of a buggy application with a memory leak...

A memory leak is a common problem caused by poorly written or poorly debugged applications where they continually use more and more memory until you shut down the program, end the process manually or restart Microsoft Windows...

Finding the source of the problem
First you need to determine which application is causing the problem...
Hit Control-Alt-Delete to bring up Task Manager... Go to the Processes tab in Task Manager... Here you will see a list of all the processes (applications or parts thereof) that are running on your system... You will see the memory usage here, but in my experience this very rarely has anything to do with problems running low on virtual memory...

Click View, Select Columns...




Check the Virtual Memory Size box, as circled in the screen shot below and click OK...

Now you have a VM Size column in your Processes tab... Click the top of the VM Size column (as circled below) twice to arrange the processes by their VM Size from largest to smallest...





You'll see in this Task Manager shot that Mozilla Firefox is taking up the most virtual memory at about 204 MB... This is cuz there are too many tabs open in firefox...


Once you determine which process is using more virtual memory than it should, you need to determine what the process is... Some are pretty obvious, like winword.exe is Microsoft Word, iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer, and so on... Others aren't so obvious... The best way to determine the source of a specific process is to use a search engine like google to search for the top virtual memory consuming processes as shown in Task Manager...


Resolution

Now that you know which application is causing the problem, let's resolve it... One common thing to try is to uninstall and reinstall the offending application if possible... Searching the Internet, and checking the support site of the software vendor would be the next two steps I would try... Without knowing which application is at fault, it's difficult to recommend a specific solution...


Note - If you are using pirated installation of Windows, then it might be possible that your Windows has bugs... And its causing the memory leakage... Buy original...

as per your suggestion i am sending the screenshot of the task-manager page..........some processes are really consuming great amt of memory.......so what to do...............?

Originally Posted by prasanta08

as per your suggestion i am sending the screenshot of the task-manager page..........some processes are really consuming great amt of memory.......so what to do...............?

Can u please tell me what's the name of 1st process? Ur image shot has cropped name... Stretch the "Image Name" in taskbar to know wots exactly "NMINDE~2.EXE is...

OK...leave it... it seams u've nero installed... with that comes a bundled s/w known as nero scout... that nero scout is wrecking havoc on ur system... The application can be removed using the control panel Add\Remove programs applet... its of no use... that should solve ur problem...


Important: Some malware camouflage themselves as NMIndexStoreSvr.exe, particularly if they are located in c:\windows or c:\windows\system32 folder. Thus check the NMIndexStoreSvr.exe process on your pc whether it is pest.
check it by Security Task Manager - Windows XP process viewer