What does this mean

[Hush Darlin]

Windows Virtual Memoery Minimum too Low
Your system is low on virtual Memory
Windows is increasing the size of uyour virtual memoer paging file. During this process memeory request for some application may be denied.

I am getting these little message pop up on my computer.
what does it mean and what di I need to do

[Guest]

Re: What does this mean

I'm not sure if this will help but you can try defragmenting your PC. This can take a long time so I would recommend doing it overnight.

[Morpheous]

Re: What does this mean

Virtual memory is a type of cache memory that is used to accommodate running applications and background processes on your machine. Normally windows allocate a certain amount of virtual memory to run windows and it's processes

Now as you install new software on your machine and run them; many of them hug alot of memory and even locks-up/freezes your computer. Windows memory management however can detect when your virtual memory resources are low and automatically increase the amount of virtual memory "AVAILABLE" to accommodate demanding processes. You can also increase and decrease virtual memory manually.

Virtual memory is as the name suggests-virtual...it is not physical memory like your tangable DDR-RAM. Processes and applications when run, uses this area to load faster and run more efficiently and when you run an application like say word and then later you launch say excell...windows memory management will page or swap out idle/least priority processes for the new requested process you want to run. This swapping and paging forward and backwards happens quite often and sometime your system run out of virtual memory since virtual memory is dependent on physical memory for it's allocation.

the more physical DDR-RAM your machine have the more virtual memory you have available to allocate for paging processes.

[Morpheous]

Re: What does this mean

You did not say what OS you have XP, 2000 what?
How much RAM you have 256k, 512k or what?

Short term solution:
--------------------
Press the alt, ctrl and the delete button at the same time "ONCE ONLY" then you will see a list of running processes on your machine. Select the processes you don't really need running in the background and press the "end task" button.

Repeat this for every process you are "SURE" you or windows don't need then try running any apps you want to run to see if you get the same message.

Long term Solution:
-------------------
1] Go to start -> run -> and type msconfig
2] Select the startup tab to the far right
3] Uncheck any processes that you are sure you don't need started up when windows boots up
4] Then select OK

Then:-
1] Select start -> allprograms on xp or programs on 9x versions
2] Select startup - (look for it, it's there!!)
3] right click on any icons you feel should not be there and select delete
4] Reboot your computer

If this does not get rid of your problem then it means you need to increase your virtual memory and that's a long long long instruction!! So the best thing to do if you still get the error messages is to buy more RAM for your machine and install it. Once you get new RAM intsalled boot your computer as normal and your machine(bios) will automatically detect the new increased memory you installed and windows memory manager will also detect it and adjust it's virtual memeory in accordance to overcome the problem.


GOOD LUCK!