My computer keeps telling me it's virtual memory is maxed out. How do I fix this??

My computer is running slower than Refrigerator Perry. Do I need to clean something out or what? Help!!!!!!

Peace

[edit on 12-10-2005 by Dr Love]

Have you Disk cleaned, defrag?

Wew need to know what operating system u have-windows 200 or XP? Second we need to learn what hardwear u have-how much ram u have. U probably don't have enough ram and not even enough virtual memory to work well. Also, we need to know what programs u are running-ie games or what.

If u can give that information, we can try to help. Knowing that info I can suggest hardwear adds as well as softwear optamizations for u.

Originally posted by mrmonsoon
Wew need to know what operating system u have-windows 200 or XP? Second we need to learn what hardwear u have-how much ram u have. U probably don't have enough ram and not even enough virtual memory to work well. Also, we need to know what programs u are running-ie games or what.

Oh man.....................I'll see you in a year!

I think I got some kind of bug through the internet. I always use Firefox, but yesterday I tried to unsubscribe from Sharper Image via their email and it opened IE. My computer hasn't been the same since.

Internet Explorer is the devil.

Peace

It's possible that you picked up something while surfing the internet that has suddenly begun to operate in the background without your notice or approval...hogging up your resources...

But I agree that this is most likely a hardware issue...If you're running low on virtual memory then that means you're already sitting on empty with the physical memory...

Right click on the "My Computer" icon and go to properties....The window that will pop up has your version of Windows, Processor speed, and amount of RAM....Can you tell us what those read?

Windows XP
2.19 GHz
256mb RAM

Peace

Cool....Good deal

Your combination of RAM and processor speed should be just enough to edge-by running several basic programs simultaneously...But if you've got a bunch of nasty spyware having a party on your PC in the background, then at that size of available RAM, your performance is only going to continue to suffer...

Running Firefox is a great start though....If you don't have them yet, I suggest going over to download.com and getting copies of AVG Anti Virus, Ad-Aware, Spybot and Startup Control Panel (The former will enable you to block all those unnecessary programs that begin to run almost right when you flick on the power switch)

Run each of those programs, then reboot...See if that makes any difference...

Also - When you get a chance, push ctrl+alt+del and select "Task Manager" and then go to the Performance tab....On the bottom, what does it say for "Processes" and "CPU Usage"?

The higher those numbers are, the more the chance is that you've got a spyware issue...

You may want to consider purchasing more memory in the future if you plan on keeping your PC for a while - An extra 256MB is pretty cheap and easy to install yourself...

I’m not a computer whiz by any means, but I know that much…..Someone else is free to back up what I’ve said here with a little more beef or suggest an alternative solution

[edit on 10/12/2005 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

EOH

I appreciate the help.

Processes: 65
CPU usage: varies from 2% to 22%

Peace

No problem

Yeah....Hopefully that hefty dose of spyware/trojan cleaning will lower your "systolic" significantly...

I may not have the most "sanitary" of computers, but my running processes are less than half that...

I run about 40 processes FULL LOAD, 25 on boot.

Try running HijackThis from www.merijn.org It will show you EVERYTHING running on your PC good or bad. IF you post a log here I'm sure either myself or someone else will be able to go through it with you.

May I suggest that you add SpyCatcher Express to your arsenal of spyware programs. I learn to like this program more everyday. It has a lot of nice features that are easy to learn to use and just today I used it to quarantine some junk that messed up my settings.

www.tenebril.com...

[edit on 2005/10/14 by GradyPhilpott]

After you have followed the very good advise about spyware and virus, you may want to try these pagefile/virtual memory optimization tips.

In most cases the "let Windows decide my pagefile setting" is sufficient, but if you would like to optimize your pagefile with manual settings - which will also prevent the message from popping up - look at the following tips:

1) First, you will want to make sure that your partition is set to NTFS and NOT to FAT 32. NTFS is designed to be much more efficient when it comes to pagefile usage due to the much smaller cluster size it can use. (4Kb vs 32Kb or more on FAT32 on drives larger then 32 Gb). A pagefile on a NTFS partition will run out of space much much later then one on a FAT32 partition. Click here for conversion steps

2) If you happen to have 2 harddrives, move the pagefile to the 2nd harddrive so your Windows can both access Windows System files, as well as the pagefile at the same time. Note that for this to be most efficient, both harddrives will need to be on different controllers, e.g. drive one as a master on the first IDE bus, and drive two as the master on the second IDE bus, and the optical drives you may have as slaves to the hard drives.
3) Set your page file manually. Set it to a MINIMUM size of at least 1.5 times the size of your memory (e.g if you have 256 Mb of ram, set the minimum pagefile to at least 384), and set the maximum to 1152

4) Do step 3 AFTER you have defragged the harddrive.


A few other points to consider:

- Many applications add programs to your startup routine that will take up memory. Good examples of this are the Real Player, CD-Burning programs, QuickTime, Chat/Messenger type applications, etc, etc..... You may want to review these and decide what you really need on startup. In most cases, you can remove half the stuff from the startup group by using "msconfig".


Best of Luck
makeitso

[edit on 13-10-2005 by makeitso]

Just a note on msconfig, although its enough sometimes, you might want to try downloading "Startup List" from merijn.org or using the startup list reviewer in Spybot S&D 1.4 from www.spybot.info

Easier to review and edit your booting processes.

Makeitso,

For the pagefile/MFT, do you need two physical hard drives or can it be just 2 separate partitions of the same disk?

The reason I ask is that I've been using Diskeeper Pro for a while now, and although I'm generally happy with it, it seems like it wants to expand my pagefile every single time I run the thing. For example...

My system specs are a P4 2Ghz Dell Inspiron 8500 with 512 megs of RAM and running Japanese WinXP SP2 on a 40 gig hard drive. I have the hard drive partitioned into a 10 gig C:\ & a 30 gig D:\. Diskeeper currently has the pagefile on C set to 3MB and 3,556MB on D (just a wee bit in excess of the 1.5X value, huh?), and max MFT on C & D of 1,561,709 and 4,650,440 files, respectively. Additionally, every time I run the software, it says that "the peak memory usage since the last reboot is (at least 75%) of the total available memory, which indicates it is likely the paging file will become fragmented"

Any ideas?

Doc?????? 65 processes are a few!

Hijackthis is a great program as someone mentioned.
Another good one, from Microsoft:

www.microsoft.com...

The advanced tools will allow you to choose what programs you want to start at boot, reset your browser if you want, and clean your tracks.

Check out:

www.answersthatwork.com...

If you really, REALLY want to know what all those procresses do. I did. Got this 'puter down to 40. Also helps you locate the common adware and viruses that load at startup.

Good Luck!

HokkaidoHillbilly

2 hard drives are not needed. I have 1 hard drive with 2 partitions, and my big page file is on the 2nd partition. I do this to help avoid filling up the C drive, (not to gain performance). When the C drive gets low on free space, it will cause performance degradation.

But I would get much better performance if I had 2 drives (wont fit in my laptop) with the big page file on the second drive, provided that the second drive was also on a seperate controller, not a slave on the same IDE ribbon cable.

As for the 3,556MB, that is fine (XP max page file is 4 gig), and some games may require this much page file. But it will be using the 3 gig on the C drive first, so if you do have them on seperate drives and seperate controllers, you are not getting the performance enhancement until you remove most (or all) of the 3 gig on the C drive.

As for the Peak memory usage, it just means that it used that much during peak usage. If you have the virtual memory set to min of 1.5 times ram, and maximum somewhere under 4 gig, windows will scale the size up and down as needed. As that peak goes away, so will most of the fragmentation.

If you have the page file set at the same size for both min and max, you can get fragmentation of course. If you are concerned with page file fragmentation, there is a small but good article about defragmenting the page file here


Kalapadea is right as usual, but I think the program is called startup control. It is a goody, small and easy to install and use, but be aware that there are some apps that hide from it too. Hijackthis, Microsoft Antispyware, and dozens of other free apps also allow you to manipulate what apps start during startup if you are not comfortable with msconfig.

最もよく運の
makeitso

[edit on 14-10-2005 by makeitso]

I'm running 48 processes, with about 22% with Yahoo going with my webcam, and my fiancees webcam connected, and this running. I run Spybot S&D in resident mode, so that it asks if I want to allow registry changes.

Yahoo? Yahoo?

Used to be one of the best.

Now? Dont even get me started.

Yahoo funding spyware?

Oops you got me started.

It's not great, but when you're 6000 miles from the one you love you'll settle for anything. And it's the only thing we've found that lets the webcams work well together.

makeitso:

It's not just big advertisers who have ties to spyware and adware.

Yahoo Inc. made a deal with adware company Claria Corp., formerly known as Gator Corp., to provide search listings for its SearchScout toolbar. The popular search engines Ask Jeeves and Google also benefit from adware, says Internet researcher Benjamin Edelman.

He says an Ask Jeeves toolbar generates ads without users' full consent, while Google's search listings appear in queries made through a questionable third-party toolbar. Ask Jeeves and Google officials dispute Edelman's account and say they don't use any spyware or adware. Company policy bans the use of adware by Google, said spokesman Barry Schnitt.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Old news I know, but related


Webcam, wow haven't used one in ages, but when I did it was MSN video, now I just use Skype.