Windows Virtual Memory issue... (1 Viewer)

[Scott Wong]

I did a search and found one other post pertaining to this problem. Not sure what really needs to be done though.

My PC is old. There's no denying that. It's a 500MHz Pentium III. I upgraded the RAM 6 months or so ago to 512MB. I also upgraded Windows98 to XP. A friend of mine at the sametime hooked up a second hard drive (Seagate Barracude 20GB) that I use a slave drive for all of my .mp3s. Everything has been fine up until a month or so ago. Now, I keep getting this windows is low on memory and blah blah blah. It seems I can barely have two windows open at a time before they begin closing for no apparant reason at all. My main hard drive that has all of my software installed including XP is hardly used at all. It's another 20GB hard drive with 17GB of free space. To make matter worse, I'm a dial-up connection. But when I first got everything upgraded... things were actually pretty good. But right now, it just sucks. I'm frustrated more than anything. I can't afford a new PC but at this rate, I may not have a choice. I really only use my PC for the Internet, e-mail, and uploading / downloading music from my portable .mp3 player.

What could have gone wrong in a span of six months? I keep my Norton's Antivirus program updated when updates are available. I checked the second RAM ship that was installed two days. It appears to still be locked into place. I went into my control panel and the system is still recognizing and showing 512MB. I know I could certainly be doing a lot more than simply having two windows open at a time. Ex: I'm listening to music via Windows Media Player and using the Internet via one window with Internet Explorer. If I attempt to open a second window, it attempts to load and then closes. *sigh*

Any ideas?

Scott.

 

[Patrick Sun]

You should look for the resource hogs in your system (check out Task Manager and see what applications being loaded is taking up RAM, and try to shut them down if possible).

 

[Scott Wong]

I'm stumped.

I checked those out already in my control panel. Maybe I'm not looking in the correct area, but according to my scheduled tasks... the only two listed show as Norton AntiVirus and Symantec NetDetect (which I believe coincides with Norton's)

Those are the only two applications in my scheduled task manager. There is nothing else.

Scott.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

You didn't mention anything about your virtual memory swap file. Did you increase it when you added RAM?

 

[Scott Wong]

Sorry. I'm not even sure what that is. Ummm... I would assume my virtual memory swap file increased?? hahaha. I've no idea.

Scott.

 

[nolesrule]

You should check your list of processes to see what services are rnning behind the scenes. All those little icons on the taskbar next to the clock all represent programs that are running and using memory.

 

[Scott Wong]

Joe:

*nod* There was one program on the taskbar. I have a PDA and the software for it must've been running because it was on the taskbar. :frowning: I exited that particular program and removed it from the taskbar.

Do you think this was a culprit? I seems like that's something that was always running behind the scenes, so to speak.

I just know that for whatever reason, I've been getting the windows is low on virtual memory message for awhile now.

Scott.

 

[nolesrule]

What about processes? And how much virtual memory do you have in your settings?

 

[Scott Wong]

Not sure what all of this means but I went to my virtual memory settings and it says:

Drive: C:
Space available: 16453mb

custom size is highlighted
initial size: 384mb
max size: 768mb

total paging size for all drives:

min. size: 2mb
recommended: 766mb
allocated: 768mb

Does all of that sound about where it should be? Perhaps me simply removing my PDA software from the taskbar helped?

Scott.

 

[Scott L]

Hehe you misunderstood Patrick's post. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL, look at the Processes tab.

This lists the processes and applications that are currently in use. To the right you'll see how much memory they're using. Nothing should be taking more than 20mb in idle mode.

Oh and set your page file at 768 intial and 768 max. Keeping it one size is better for performance and fragmentation prevention.

 

[NickSo]

The SCHEDULED task manager, or the task manager? There should be more than two in the task manager.

To access the task manager, use the 3-finger salute: Ctrl+alt+delete

The window will pop up with a list of programs and processes, their CPU usage, and the amount of memory they take up

Look for programs that have an excessive amount of memory allocated to them, and check out the CPU Usage of the processes.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

The initial size for the swap file could be causing the problem. Try setting the initial size to 768MB.