Virtual memory

munge · 4 Feb 2006 at 14:07

All of a sudden I keep getting low virtual memory warnings on my PC. This started when my Ballistix 2GB memory failed and I briefly had to use a single stick before that failed.

Now I'm getting it even with my new Corsair 3500 2x 1GB sticks (Crucial refunded my Ballistix).

It runs stable overnight with Prime 95 at 2-3-2-6 -1T @218MHz, although intend to increase this if possible.

I haven't changed anything that I can see or think of since the change in memory, so what does this mean? Running XP Home SP2 on Asus A8N Sli Deluxe if that makes a difference. Have 2 Spinpoint SATA II RAID'ed (400GB in 2 partitions) and 2 other SATA I drives not RAID'ed for backup, so disk space isn't an issue surely?

decto · 4 Feb 2006 at 14:10

virtual memory is the swap file. Check this is enabled and set it to a fixed size, typically around 768MB default but can vary.

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smids · 4 Feb 2006 at 14:46

Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced Tab > Settings under Performance > Advanced Tab > Change button under virtual memory > Tick Custom size and set it to 1536MB for each box > Set > Apply/OK > Apply/OK > Restart if required

munge · 5 Feb 2006 at 16:36

Not sure why I couldn't find it, or more importantly why it had become disabled! Stuck it on an unpartitioned bit of my striped drive so hopefully all sorted....

Amazing it still uses the hard drive even with 2GB of fast memory!

Cheers!

Admiral Huddy · 6 Feb 2006 at 10:46

iirc the program instruction on any CPU addresses up to 4gb of memory, therefore page swapping still occurs on 2gb. The processor is designed to allocate less frequently accessed data to pagefile rather than in RAM. This makes sense because your RAM is constantly being refreshed (Dynamic) and considerable over head of large amounts of data are being held unnecessarily.

Typically your page file size should be at least 1.5 times the size of your Physical RAM and never less than.