What is virtual memory ?

R

Robbie Roberson

Joined
Dec 27, 2003
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I noticed my computer has slowed down a lot here lately, especially when msn (home page) is loading, it takes forever ! Getting a lot of freezing up of web pages and when I try to click the page off, it sends me a message that says "not responding".

A little box popped up and said windows virtual memory was low and windows was going to do something about it. What does this mean and what could be my problem ?

I run AVG checks and spybot checks but they always say it's clean.

Any suggestions ? Thanks in advance.


Robbie Roberson ;)
 
First off, I am far from a computer expert. Kalooch will be along shortly to give you some real advice. In the meantime...

It might still be spyware, no single anti-spyware program will find everything. Try running two different programs, like Adaware and Spybot, one after the other and see if you find anything.

Also, how much memory does your PC have? I added a fat stick of RAM to my seriously underpowered HP Pavilion and the difference in performance was like night and day.
 
This can be complicated or it can be easy. This helps a lot, right? :)

Virtual memory, to keep it simple, is disk space taken up by your computer to use as memory when your actual memory, (RAM), is all used up. If your computer is using lots of VM then it certainly is going to be running slower but I suspect you might have other problems there as well.

You can either close some programs down, especially background processes, or a better solution is to get more memory.

You can do other stuff too like clearing your browser cache which can help with loading and speed issues. Clear your cookies too.

Microcrap programs are usually VERY memory hungry so watch how many of those you have running at any one time. If you are using Win XP and you don't have AT LEAST 256 meg of RAM then you're in trouble even before you start.
 
gajinoz is right. Normally you shouldn't have to fool with virtual memory because Windows manages the swap space. Theres probably something else going on there.
 
Ok, Torz and Gajinoz, thanks, it's a shame I know, but I am not sure about any of this. About all I know is this is a dell 1 year old or a little more, it cost $499.00 on sale. I used to know these specs but just forgot how much megs it has.

*******
Edited to add, I just found it...128 mb of ram, system restore set at- max. at 12%-4,571 mb ??

It is windows XP, and I can honestly say it does not really work any faster or better than my old windows 98.

I will try running some new spy stuff and dump some more. Thanks.

Robbie Roberson ;)
 
How full is your Hard Drive?

To get rid of unwanted and often unknown junk inside the pc download this free trial, let it run for 30 days and then uninstall it.

http://www.webroot.com/consumer/products/windowwasher/

I got rid of over 5 Gig of space when I ran it the first time because my wife never deletes anything and over 2 years she had managed to accumulate about 3 Gig worth of shite in the form of Temp Internet files.

Once you have done this defrag your hard drive

go to My Computer, right click on the C: drive select properties and then Tools, then Defrag. If you havent done this in a long time or ever just leave it alone for a few hours. Contimuing to work while its doing it will just slow down the process. Once its done reboot the PC and do it again as there is only so much it can do at one time.

After this you should see at least some performance increase. You may also want to look into getting more RAM, its very cheap now and childs play to install.
 
Thanks, see above edit.............can you just go to temp. internet files and delete them ? Is this the same ?

Robbie Roberson ;)
 
No there are millions of little palces Windows puts files, especially the Temp folder in the C: drive that is hidden usually. This little utility does a great job of clearing out all the crap, you will be amazed how much stuff it finds that can be safely deleted. I have used this numerous times over the years and reccomend it.
 
yes

click on the IE icon on your hardrive and hit properties
delete cookies, temporary files and offline content
 
Thank you all, I feel better already, I just think it does need a good cleaning, I just looked at temp files and there are zillions of them that need to go, how does all this crap get in here ? It looks like a giant sales ad or commercial for every knife and sporting product I have looked at in the last year ! :eek:

Stand back........flush job in progress ! :p :D


Robbie Roberson ;)
 
128meg is not enough ram to run XP at a reasonable speed. Your system is forced to use virtual memory, faking it on your hard drive, and since your hard drive is much slower than real memory your system slows to a crawl. There are some things you can with configuration and clearing out old temporary files and defragging that could help a little, but your system is not going to run well until you buy more ram.
 
Robbie Roberson said:
Edited to add, I just found it...128 mb of ram,
Click to expand...

That's really low to be running XP. XP is about 10 times better than 98 in a bunch of ways, but of course it will still seem like it sucks on a slow processor or low memory.

As Gajinoz said, 256 is like bare minimum. 512 is fine (Word, IE, no problem) unless you run some hefty games or other programs that need a lot of memory. I have 512 and XP likes to hog up about 200 for no particular reason.

128 must be making you slow down like crazy. I would imagine your machine is always choking on itself and waiting to get stuff on/off of the hard drive. If so, I suggest one of 2 things:

Go to Crucial and see how much it would cost to get a 512mb card (or whatever the heck is popular to call it these days). They can tell you what kind you need easy enough.
http://www.crucial.com/index.asp

Keep an eye on www.gotapex.com and see if a nice deal on a new Dell comes along. Pretty much every week they have a cheap one ($300-400).
 
For anyone contemplating the new operating system from Microsoft (Vista?), I believe you'll need a minimum of 512 MB or preferably 1GB of RAM :eek:
 
Want to speed up XP and use fewer resources on a slower machine? An easy way is to simply turn off the useless eye candy.

Go to Control Panel. I'm assuming you're using classic view.

Double-click System. Click the Advanced tab. Then under performance click Settings. Select the option Adjust for best performance. Hit Apply. When it's done, Ok your way out of there.

You can even go so far as to disable the Themes service, but this should help.
 
I just remembered something else.

A while ago I cleaned up and upgraded a machine for a friend. I think it was a lower-end Dell or Gateway. The machine was constantly giving me warnings about virtual memory.

The disk had 2 partitions; a C and a D drive. The paging file was located on the D drive. The D drive was used exclusively for storing the paging file and it was only around 384 meg (I think). Far too small. What I did was move the paging file to the C drive and made it larger. This solved the issue.
 
Thank you guys a whole bunch, this will help I'm sure. I think this computer was and is the low end model. What's really a shame is I have no games or anything that is what is usually on most computers (except what came on it installed).

It's a shame it won't run any faster than this..............and one thing that drives me nuts, is every time I turn it on, a warning pops up saying "no firewall" is on, I check and it always says it's on...... :mad:

Thanks for all the advice and help.

Robbie Roberson ;)
 
Temper said:
How full is your Hard Drive?

To get rid of unwanted and often unknown junk inside the pc download this free trial, let it run for 30 days and then uninstall it.

http://www.webroot.com/consumer/products/windowwasher/

...................l.
Click to expand...

Temper, or anyone that might know. I installed and ran this program. After it ran, it said it saved me about 152MB, but the problem was, it changed the type. Everything was very dark black, the quote feature couldn't be used here, and the forum pages were very different.

I ended up using "system Restore" to get the computer back the way it was so the forums worked, but do you have any idea how to prevent that in the future if I ever use it again, or at least how to reset everything the way it was before I ran it?:confused:

Edited to add; Running Windows XP Pro.
 
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