What is "Windows Virtual Memory"??

Question

I received a notification that my computer was low on "Windows Virtual Memory" and that windows was about to download more for me.

I'm not sure what that is, soooo what is "windows virtual memory"??

Answer 1

What is Virtual Memory?

A program instruction on an Intel 386 or later CPU can address up to 4GB of memory, using its full 32 bits. This is normally far more than the RAM of the machine. (The 32nd exponent of 2 is exactly 4,294,967,296, or 4 GB. 32 binary digits allow the representation of 4,294,967,296 numbers — counting 0.) So the hardware provides for programs to operate in terms of as much as they wish of this full 4GB space as Virtual Memory, those parts of the program and data which are currently active being loaded into Physical Random Access Memory (RAM). The processor itself then translates (‘maps’) the virtual addresses from an instruction into the correct physical equivalents, doing this on the fly as the instruction is executed. The processor manages the mapping in terms of pages of 4 Kilobytes each - a size that has implications for managing virtual memory by the system.

Problems with Virtual Memory

It may sometimes happen that the system give ‘out of memory’ messages on trying to load a program, or give a message about Virtual memory space being low. Possible causes of this are:

The setting for Maximum Size of the page file is too low, or there is not enough disk space free to expand it to that size.

The page file has become corrupt, possibly at a bad shutdown. In the Virtual Memory settings, set to “No page file,” then exit System Properties, shut down the machine, and reboot. Delete PAGEFILE.SYS (on each drive, if more than just C:), set the page file up again and reboot to bring it into use.

The page file has been put on a different drive without leaving a minimal amount on C:.

There is trouble with third party software. In particular, if the message happens at shutdown, suspect a problem with Symantec’s Norton Live update, for which there is a fix posted here. It is also reported that spurious messages can arise if NAV 2004 is installed. If the problem happens at boot and the machine has an Intel chipset, the message may be caused by an early version (before version 2.1) of Intel’s “Application Accelerator.” Uninstall this and then get an up-to-date version from Intel’s site.

Another problem involving Norton Antivirus was recently discovered by MS-MVP Ron Martell. However, it only applies to computers where the pagefile has been manually resized to larger than the default setting of 1.5 times RAM — a practice we discourage. On such machines, NAV 2004 and Norton Antivirus Corporate 9.0 can cause your computer to revert to the default settings on the next reboot, rather than retain your manually configured settings. (Though this is probably an improvement on memory management, it can be maddening if you don’t know why it is happening.) Symantec has published separate repair instructions for computers with NAV 2004 and NAV Corporate 9.0 installed. [Added by JAE 2/21/06.]

Possibly there is trouble with the drivers for IDE hard disks; in Device Manager, remove the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers (main controller) and reboot for Plug and Play to start over.

With an NTFS file system, the permissions for the page file’s drive’s root directory must give “Full Control” to SYSTEM. If not, there is likely to be a message at boot that the system is “unable to create a page file.”

Here is a link to troubleshoot low virtual memory:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_f...

Answer 2

It's an area of your hard drive that Windows uses as a kind of pseudo-memory.  you're evidently running a lot of programs at once - unless you're really working on lots of stuff all at the same time, close the programs you're not using.  Adding RAM to the computer would also help.

Answer 3

Virtual memory is as the name suggest its Virtual, physically it dosent exists as RAM. its also calles SWAP file.

The physical RAM installed in your systems (512 MB, 1 GB, 2GB etc.)  is not sufficiant for the Windows so its creates a Temperory RAM on Hard Disk called Virtual memory or Swap File. when RAM is full it uses this temp space on Hard Disk as RAM and the Programs can function properly,  when windows shuts down it automatically gets deleted,

when Windows is installed it automatically creates this Virtual memory depending upon your Physical ram installed. generally its 1.5 times of your Physical RAM installed, if you have 1 GB of RAM installed make you Virtual memory as 1.5 GB,

you can change the size of your swapfile manually

1) Right click on mycomputer select properties.

2) Click Advance Tab.

3) Under the Performance heading click Settings button.

4) Select Advanced Tab

5) Here you will see Virtual memory section Click change

6) in the drive section select your C drive

7) now make the necessary changes as you like

8) Click the Set button

9) click ok 3 times and now your virtual memory is increased

I generally keep inital size double the RAM installed and Max as 2.5

No more Low Virtual memory errors.