Computer question: What is virtual memory??

[Joe Tonich]

My comp. has been giving me a yellow "!"and saying that my virtual memory is too low and windows is increasing the folder or something. What is virtual memory and what would be making it low?

Joe - who's clueless about the innards of computers. :confused: :confused: :confused:

[Keith Outten]

Joe,

Virtural Memory is basically space that your computer uses to swap information from ram to the hard drive. If your hard drive is getting low on space than you will have less virtual memory available. If you are installing software that requires lots of swap space that could be the reason for the error message. If you are running several programs concurrently then lots of swap space would be necessary.

Check your settings and adjust the virtural memory by increasing the size allocated if you can.

[Ron Meadows]

A good rule of thumb when dealing with virtual memory, or swap space, is to set it at 1.5 X the amount of RAM you have installed in your computer. This allows the computer to operate efficiently and not require more hard disk space than necessary to do it.

Ron

[Tom Sweeney]

I guess my 257 MB of total available drive space might be a problem with my 512MB RAM eh? :rolleyes:

& you wonder why I always get booted from the chat room ;)


Lets see - which should I clean up first - my hard drive, my desk or my shop, cause they're all a mess?



A good rule of thumb when dealing with virtual memory, or swap space, is to set it at 1.5 X the amount of RAM you have installed in your computer. This allows the computer to operate efficiently and not require more hard disk space than necessary to do it.

Ron