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In
this article I will discuss...
What
is Virtual Memory?
When
you run a program on your computer, you use physical memory (RAM) to
run it. You tell the computer to run the program and the processor
pulls it from the hard drive and loads it into RAM so it can be
worked with. You can only open so many programs until all of your RAM
is being used. In order to open another program, you'd have to close
one of the ones you have open in order to free up some space in RAM.
Not with virtual memory!
Virtual
memory is a technique utilized by your operating system in which it
takes a chunk of your hard drive and uses it as memory. The programs
you are running don't know the difference between physical memory and
virtual memory, so it doesn't really matter that you run out of RAM,
so long as you have some hard drive space as a backup for workspace.
Essentially, you can choose to allocate as much free disk space as
you have to be used for virtual memory. However, a hard drive is
much, much slower than physical memory; therefore, it's not as
reliable a place to run applications as physical memory, but it's a
cost effective way to increase your workload without purchasing
additional RAM.
If
your virtual memory isn't configured appropriately to match your
workload, you may receive an error from Windows saying that you have
too little virtual memory or that your virtual memory is too low.
This is often accompanied by a blue screen or can result in all of
your programs being closed down and all of your work lost.
Virtual
Memory Issues and How They Occur
Your
operating system should be configured, by default, to allocate a
certain size of the hard drive (typically 1.5 times the amount of
RAM) to use as virtual memory when it is needed. The part of the hard
drive that is used for virtual memory is called a page file or a swap
file. You can increase or decrease the size of the page file in order
to achieve a special result. Increasing the page file size will give
you more virtual memory and thus more space to run programs but will
decrease speed and performance, because the operating system will
have to jump back and forth between physical memory and virtual
memory to run the program. Remember, your hard drive is slower than
RAM, relying on the hard drive as virtual memory too much decreases
performance. Alternatively, if you have a surplus of RAM to run
applications you can decrease the page file size to prevent
applications from using the hard drive as virtual memory. You don't
want to completely disable the page file, because many programs, the
operating system included, expect that virtual memory to be there.
Some programs even load several of their components into virtual
memory but never access them.
Occasionally,
you may give your computer more work than it can handle. You may
unknowingly load more applications into your physical and virtual
memory combined that there is simply no more room to work with and
Windows will give you a virtual memory error. This error isn't fatal,
it simply means you ran out of virtual memory. Other times, there may be
errors in your system's configuration that cause virtual memory overload.
A
virtual memory error doesn't necessarily mean something is broken, it means that
you are out of memory. You may be able to prevent this buy doing one or both of
these things: Add more RAM to your computer or increase the page file
size, thus increasing your virtual memory pool. We've described some
manual steps to take to solving virtual memory problems.
You may already have
the maximum amount of RAM that your motherboard and/or operating
system will allow. In this case, your only options are to run less
applications, which hardly anyone is willing to accept, or you can
increase the page file size.
How
to Easily Fix Virtual Memory Issues
Virtual memory problems, such as "low virtual memory", are not commonly caused by errors with your RAM or hard-drive themselves. Rather, these errors spring up because of system misconfigurations. A misconfiguration can range from something as simple as a number setting being too low, to random, seemingly unrelated errors in your system's registry. The bottom line is that it takes a proper diagnosis to determine how to fix a virtual memory problem.
We recommend you use FixCleaner by SlimWare Utilities to diagnose the reason behind your virtual memory issues. FixCleaner is certainly the easiest, fastest method to find errors within your computer, and has been downloaded by millions of users worldwide.
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