Virtual memory

Associate
Joined
31 Dec 2005
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648
Location
Always on the M1.....
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?
 
Soldato
Joined
24 Jan 2006
Posts
2,524
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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Soldato
Joined
18 Dec 2004
Posts
6,568
Location
London/Kent
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

:)
 
Associate
OP
Joined
31 Dec 2005
Posts
648
Location
Always on the M1.....
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!
 
Man of Honour
Joined
17 Feb 2003
Posts
29,636
Location
Chelmsford
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.
 
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