Virtual Memory?

[Major Noob]

Hi, my friends computer gets a message that says "Virtual Memoy Minimum Too Low." First of all, can someone give me a definition that somebody that doesnt know much about computers can understand? i tried google and it came up with some fancy definitions lol. And also, how can he raise his virtual memory minimum to fix the problem?

System Specs
AMD 3200
1gb RAM
160 gb hd
7800 GS AGP gfx card
Thermaltake 430w PSU

Thx

 

[Ste]

Virtual memory is Non RAM Memory, Virtual memory is the page file of your computers harddrive.

Basically it uses a portion of your hard drive as memory.

You change the virtual memory like this, Control panel>System>advanced>Click settings under preformence>Advanced>Click the change button>
There you change the amount of Virtual memory in MB, set the maxiumum and minimum size to the same to keep fragmentation low. Increase the size depending on his needs.

 

[jcortes]

virtual memory is your paging file it is used when you run out of physical memory (RAM) once you are low on ram it will begin swapping data over to the harddrive to save room on the ram and when you run low on paging file and ram often times that means its time for a RAM upgrade however you can just increase the paging file but that is still very slow and not as good as ram.

 

[King X13]

um virtual memory isnt run like ram, you can have 4 gigs of physical memory with like 3.5 gigs free and you can still have 2 gigs of virtual memory on your hard drive. virtual memory isnt like over flow from phsical memory. and your computer will actually run faster having the 4 gig page file on its own partition for operations to run. It is also used to store dump files for error reporting in windows. and just cuz you run low on it doesnt mean you need more ram. Follow STE and increase your size and your fine.

 

[A-mak]

page file on its own partition?

HOW IS THIS DONE? or do you mean.. windows on its own partition and everything else on a different one? If not, never knew you could make page file its own partition (just like linux)

 

[King X13]

yeah like linux, it doesnt need to be done, but thats how i have my pc at home set up and it really is the optimal way to use it, and leave a 2mb page file on your c drive for error dumping.

but yeah you would just create a 5 gig partition format it ntfs, then it would be like D:\ for expample then if you follow what STE said and set your page file youll see your D:\ drive on the list or whatever drive letter it is and set that page file to 4096 which is 4 gigs and the max windows 32 bit can handle, page file is pretty use full so usefull that windows 64 bit will allow a page file of 16 terabytes now thats crazy but you get my point.