[Closed] "Windows virtual memory is too small" How do I fix it ?

Control Panel - System - Advanced - Performance Settings - Advanced

Virtual memory is at the bottom of the page. Click change, then make it bigger.

What you really need to find out is what's causing the problem though. Is it an old PC with v.low RAM? Are you running out of disk space? Virus?

Thanks for that, I wouldn't have found it on my own.
It's a second hand lap top that was wiped and had Windows re installed by the shop. I've only had it a month or so.

It's currently set to;

Custom size.
Initial size 384mb
Maximum size 768mb

There's a System managed size option. Should I tick that one or alter the custom size ?

System Managed option.

What RAM do you have/need? If it's PC133, got loads of sticks here being unused I can post...

Increase the minimum as woody suggests.

But consider buying some more physical memory as well.
2GB is a good working minimum these days. 4GB is better.

See http://www.crucial.com/uk/

If he's got such low memory already, I would think it will be fairly old tech - and much more expensive to upgrade these days.

How much disk space have you got (virtual memory is just a file on disk)? If you've got plenty, it might be worth setting the values to a fixed amount rather than let windows deal with it. Try setting it to 1500mb for max and min, should be plenty. You might want to consider turning off some of the visual effects in Windows if it's old hardware and struggling a bit.

@xiphon: Not necessarily - just upgraded the father-in-laws ageing laptop from 512MB to 2GB for £40.

Went from unusably slow to plenty fast enough for his needs.

What's the make and model of the laptop, and how much RAM does it have fitted currently?

I'm guessing from those VM settings that it's probably 256Mb, which is a pitifully small amount of memory to be running XP under.

It's a Sony Vaio.
20Gb hard drive, about half full.
AMD Athlon XP 1600+
489MHz
256Mb

I've just set the virtual memory to system managed and restarted for it to take effect.

All the visual effect boxes are unticked.

I'll see how it goes for now. If there's no improvement would I be better off setting the virtual memory manually to a higher figure ?

Use the tools on that crucial site to see if you can still get memory for it at a reasonable price. If you can then whack in the maximum that it will take.

pop onto the crucial site and let us know what memory type it takes, I have some laptop older memory sitting around doing me no good..

This ^^

The reason you're having virtual memory issues isn't because you don't have enough virtual memory, it's because you don't have enough physical memory.

When Windows needs to allocate memory, for loading a process or its data, it first allocates the needed memory pages from virtual memory, and then it loads these pages into physical ram. So the physical ram is a 'cache' of the virtual memory on the hard disk. It may cache the pages from elsewhere on hard disk sometimes, like for a programs image files.

It does not use the virtual memory as a 'overflow' for physical ram - that was with early versions of Windows, prior to NT.

Therefore you should allocate the same or a larger size to your virtual memory as you have physical ram, not less.

For speed you should set the upper and lower figures to be the same.

Are you sure about that turner_guy (the first bit that is)?

TurnerGuy: so how is it you can set ZERO virtual memory and still happily use the PC if you have enough physical memory?

Because he's read an article and misunderstood "virtual memory" to be talking about the page file on the disk rather than the total virtual address space made available to applications, would be my guess.

(though, even with plenty of RAM, having no page file at all is a bad idea)

@Cougar: agreed and agreed 🙂

yes, page file was the concept missing to my rushed reply - it is 10+ years since I read Helen Custer...

AMD XP 1600 = PC2100 isn't it? 133Mhz FSB?

Although the RAM is backwards compat, so you could by PC3200, PC2700 or PC2100.

I have a stick of 512MB RAM beside me, which would fit your laptop.

Thanks for the offers of help.
It's got PCG 9G6M written on the back.
Crucial don't list that model, but I found it here, http://www.com-com.co.uk/9023/l/0055058.ihtml and it seems to be the same as a PCG FX902P.
Crucial list that one here. http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.aspx?model=VAIO%20PCG-FX900%20Series

"Each memory slot can hold SDRAM, PC133 with a maximum of 256MB per slot"

£28 new.
Anyone got a good second hand one for sale ?

Did you use the Crucial scanner tool Graham?

Assuming your detective work is correct (I haven't looked),

http://www.scan.co.uk/Shop/Computer-Hardware/All/Memory/SODIMM-PC133

£8 for a 256Mb PC133 SODIMM at Scan.

If you've got one fitted already, you'll need one more; if you've got two 128s installed, then you'll need to replace them both with 256's ideally.

For the sake of 20 quid, I'd probably do it if the rest of the system was sound. I'd be wary of throwing good money after bad on a system of that vintage though.

If you have to bin 2 128Mb DIMMS to fit £56 worth of 2 256 dimms, personally I'd look on EBay for a replacement laptop and spend around £100.

£16 for a pair of 256's - see previous link (otherwise yes, at £56 I'd agree).

I'm back at last.
I tried the Crucial scanner tool and got the blue screen "blah blah fatal error blah blah".
Tried again and it said it couldn't scan my laptop.
Tried a third time and got the blue screen again.
Then the internet connection went unbelievably slow and I didn't get chance to reply before I went to work.

Thanks to Mounty73 sorting out my desktop PC for me it's no longer so pressing to get the laptop sorted. I still want to speed it up a bit ready for next time I need it though.

Next dull question; is desktop ram the same as laptop ram ?
There's four sticks of 256 in my old desktop.

No. Laptops require "SODIMMs" which are physically smaller than regular DIMMs.

OK, thanks.
I'll take the back off the case then to see what it's already got so I can order the right one.

You need to figure out what the maximum it can take is as well.
No point buying 2 x 2GB sticks if its motherboard can only support a maximum of 1GB.

We already did that. 2x256 is the maximum.

Yes, assuming I've cross referenced my PCG 9G6M to PCG FX902P correctly, then according to crucial, it's got two slots and "Each memory slot can hold SDRAM, PC133 with a maximum of 256MB per slot"

I did a quick Google and the results seemed to bear that out, yes.

With 512MB it'll still run like a three-legged dog (assuming you're trying to use XP on it).

I'd stick Ubuntu or something on it and start shopping for a new Windows laptop.

XP runs fine with 512MB, even with SP3. You forget that 512MB was considered a large amount of RAM when XP first came out nearly 10 years ago.

10 years ago you didn't have machines running virus scanners, firewalls, anti-malware, Outlook, Internet Explorer 8 while streaming a 100MB Flash movie.

Last week I upgraded my father-in-laws laptop from 512MB to 2GB. With 512MB it was taking around 15 minutes to boot up!

@ GrahamS - it's well known XP's performance deteriorates over time, when was it last cleaned/re-installed?

Problem is, people are too impatient these days. Once they've used a quad-core beast with XP, everything else is now considered 'slow'.

Personally, i don't mind the speed of a new XP/512MB system. 🙂

@xiphon: yeah I know. I cleaned all the crap off it: Uninstalled what I could, got rid of extra services, removed system tray stuff, trimmed all the startup items to the bare minimum, set a static page file, ran CCleaner, defragged it. Basically everything I could bar doing a full re-install (which I couldn't do because he doesn't know where the disks are for half his software).

After all that it was still just barely wheezing into life in around five or ten minutes.
And was pitifully slow and browsing and editing photos (which is what he uses it for).

With 2GB it is now like a new(ish) machine. Boots in about a minute and can edit a big photo without the hard drive smouldering.

Basically I wouldn't even try to run XP on less than 1GB these days if the OP wants to use it fir anything remotely useful.

The XP machine here (mostly used as a media server these days) has 384Mb, IIRC. It's useable certainly; not "fast" but not slow either. As Graham says, you can go a long way towards improving performance with a bit of housekeeping.