Is there any way to disable virtual memory for one program?

Question

What the question title says. I'm running Windows XP Professional on a machine with 256 megabytes of RAM. When I run Terragen 2, it sometimes uses large amounts of page file space and in such cases my machine ends up spending most of its time spinning its hard drive. I'd like to somehow make Terragen 2 use only the system RAM if possible and a bare minimum of page file space (800 megabytes hardly sounds like a 'bare minimum' to me), but at the same time keep enough page file space there for other programs if they need it too. I don't know if Terragen 2 will run properly if I do this, but I at least want to be able to try it. Is there any way I can set my computer to do that?

Answer 1

terragen 2 needs the extra memory to work.  It wouldn't use the memory if it didn't need it.  What your asking might be possible, you'd probably need a special program to do it, but terragen 2 would definitely not work properly.  Set all you video/audio settings to low or very low, that might help.  Buying more ram is your best option.

Answer 2

Your problem is that the computer is memory starved, and it's thrashing the virtual memory pagefile to try to accommodate the game.

250Mb is barely enough to boot XP, let alone run anything.  You need at least 1Gb, more like 2Gb.

Memory is cheap - get some today!

Answer 3

Virtual Memory takes place at the operating system level, and it can't be disabled.  Programs are not aware where their memory is, they just know that the OS can produce it for them when they need it (hopefully).  Terragen 2 might also benefit from a better graphics card, this might allow more graphics resources to be placed in video memory, keeping it closer to the graphics hardware and reducing system memory pressure.

Even if you could disable VM for Terragen 2, it wouldn't fix the problem.  Terragen might use all the memory available, the OS wakes up at regular intervals and needs to use memory, it would start paging in and out, as well as any other applications running.