Can anybody explain what this means….

"Windows – Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low.
Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file"
It then goes on to say that some requests may be denied during this process.

This seems to happen when I open my photo files – there are a lot and I wonder if I maybe need to move them to a new external drive.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

you have too much stuff on your C drive. It doesn;t matter where the picture files are, when you "open" them they are stored in memory. Rather than use RAM, some of the memoery will be in a swap file on the disk – you either need to move your swap file to a new hard drive, or free up some space. MOving the swap file will help, but is more work if you don;t have a spare drive 🙂

Cheers. I think i'll be best getting a new drive slotted in and moving all my music and photos. I'm pretty sure that that is what's probably causing the problem.

Another explanation would be that windows uses hard drive space when there is not enough RAM to do all the work: as in when you have loads of big images open.

You could try fitting more memory instead of another hard disk, moving the images to a new drive would admittedly make more space open on your C for a bigger swap file, but even if you have your images on the other disk, you may still have problems as hard disk access is slower than RAM reads.

The virtual mem warning above has no real link to how full the C drive is IME, it's just warning you you're doing tasks that require a change to the existing virtual mem settings. I've had this with several gig free. What it means is you have too little RAM to be opening such large or so many files for editing. Either increase your physical RAM or stop opening dozens of files at the same time. Of course if you have sod all space left on the C drive your virtual mem size is restricted so it will slow you down a bit but you shouldn't really run that full for a variety of reasons.

How much memory do you have?

2GB is pretty much a good minimum these day.

I am currently 'defragmenting' the disc. It suggests that there is 41.5GB / 55% free space.

It's physical memory (known as RAM) not hard drive space which determines the need for virtual memory (confusinly but both are measured in Gb). Virtual memory is used when Windows needs more physical memory. It sounds as though you need more RAM.

To find out how much RAM you have look in Task Manager under he Performance tab it will show you how much is there (you need to divide this by 1024 though to get Gb). If the answer you get is less than 2 (Gb) then you need to buy more – as coffeeking says, more disk space will not help.

bbA

Oh dear. Ignore the above.

You need to go into your Windows settings and create a larger paging file rather than letting Windows set the default.

Thats. Control Panel…System…Advanced…Performance Options…System Memory

Go to Custom Size and set it to 4096. Reboot.

More RAM needed

Increased paging file means you've run out of RAM space so more drive space is needed to take up the difference. Increasing the page file will make the PC slower as drive access is slower than RAM.

Glenmore is right.

It really doesn't need to be any more confusing than that.

+1 Glen More

Glenmore is right.

But doing a defrag as you're doing will help as the paging file needs to be unbroken as far as I can remember.

Glenmroe is right, but on most systems it will be set to "System managed size" by default,

(from "Get maximum performance from Windows Vista")
so Windows should take care of expanding the page file itself unless it gets short of drive space.

You can set it manually to a large number. At least 1.5 x your RAM is typically recommended.

But yeah, just stick in some more memory. I do a bit of RAW photo manipulation so my PC has 4GB in it.

I do a bit of RAW photo manipulation

I've got quite a few of 'those' photos on my PC as well. 😳

You can set it manually to a large number. At least 1.5 x your RAM is typically recommended.

That rule makes no sense. If you have 16 gigs of ram you'd need a 24 gig swapfile, but a machine with only 256 megs would only need 384megs swap?!

Ignore Glen More – your system has already increased its own page file size. It was simply indicating to you that it was doing so because it was running out of ram for the tasks you were doing.

Pagefiles are always contiguous IIRC, defragging only ensures there is a single space large enough for it to be increased.

There's no need to set a fixed size of swap, just let windows handle it as it already has done. What it does is monitor your usage and adjust to suit every so often (warning you if it does). It takes micro second longer to manage automatically when this occurs, but requires no knowledge. Some software requires vast amounts of it to be pre-determined before the system fills the disc space with junk and so MS left the ability to set it manually, but if you're a normal user there is no point.

coffeeking – Member

Pagefiles are always contiguous IIRC, defragging only ensures there is a single space large enough for it to be increased.

There's no need to set a fixed size of swap, just let windows handle it as it already has done. What it does is monitor your usage and adjust to suit. It takes micro second longer to manage automatically, but requires no knowledge.

Pagefiles are NOT always contiguous. If you let Windows manage it, it can end up all over your disk. De-frag your disk and then pre-allocate a large file. THEN it's contiguous. AND you avoid the problem that the OP referred to.

That rule makes no sense. If you have 16 gigs of ram you'd need a 24 gig swapfile, but a machine with only 256 megs would only need 384megs swap?

It's a Microsoft recommendation, so it doesn't have to make sense:

"A frequently asked question is how big should I make the pagefile? There is no single answer to this question, because it depends on the amount of installed RAM and how much virtual memory that workload requires. If there is no other information available, the normal recommendation of 1.5 times the amount of RAM in the computer is a good place to start. On server systems, a common objective is to have enough RAM so that there is never a shortage and the pagefile is essentially, not used. On these systems, having a really large pagefile may serve no useful purpose. On the other hand, disk space is usually plentiful, so having a large pagefile (e.g. 1.5 times the installed RAM) does not cause a problem and eliminates the need to fuss over how large to make it. "
— http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555223

It's just a guideline really.

Also it doesn't matter how big you make the page file on a machine with 256MB in it, as it doesn't have enough physical RAM and using it for anything remotely useful will cause it to spend its entire life paging stuff.

Pagefiles are NOT always contiguous. If you let Windows manage it, it can end up all over your disk. De-frag your disk and then pre-allocate a large file.THEN it's contiguous.

Fair enough, but not an issue to most people and will bearly have any effect whatsoever on the speed of the machine. And you'd have to do it at install as allocating after a defrag could still end up with it split over 2 areas, the original from install and the additional you just added. IT may cause problems if the pagefile is fragmented over dozens of locations by repeated size changes, but in order to get from where they are now to a single file would require disabling the paging, rebooting, deleting the old pagefile, defragging, re-enablign the paging at a fixed size and rebooting again. OR you could let windows deal with it and create 2 or 3 sections of pagefile in teh lifetime of the system.

AND you avoid the problem that the OP referred to.

The OP doesn't have a problem. That was the point.

A slightly more hardcore option is to create a separate partition for the pagefile. I used to keep a 10GB partition just for pagefiles and photoshop scratch files.

coffeeking – Member

Fair enough, but not an issue to most people and will bearly have any effect whatsoever on the speed of the machine. And you'd have to do it at install as allocating after a defrag could still end up with it split over 2 areas, the original from install and the additional you just added. IT may cause problems if the pagefile is fragmented over dozens of locations by repeated size changes, but in order to get from where they are now to a single file would require disabling the paging, rebooting, deleting the old pagefile, defragging, re-enablign the paging at a fixed size and rebooting again. OR you could let windows deal with it and create 2 or 3 sections of pagefile in teh lifetime of the system.

Pre-allocating a file means it removes the original one and creates just one new on. That's why you have to re-boot. That's it – job done. Once.

A slightly more hardcore option is to create a separate partition for the pagefile.

If you're going that hardcore then you're much better off with a separate physical drive.

You need to go into your Windows settings and create a larger paging file rather than letting Windows set the default.

Thats. Control Panel…System…Advanced…Performance Options…System Memory

Go to Custom Size and set it to 4096. Reboot.

Did this – all is well. Seems to be managing deleting and moving photo files much better now. Thanks for the advice.
It was already set to 'custom' setting. I suppose if it was on 'system managed' it may have coped better, but all's well now and i'm happy, thanks.