On Aug 12, 7:21 am, j...@eldorado.com wrote:
> I was trying to cut and paste a few images into Word Perfect, and
> experienced a failure saying 'inadequate memory'. I have 2GB DDR in
> four 512MB segments. I wonder what the problem might be?
>
> Thanks
>
> Duke
If you mean you are seeing an informative message like this:
Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low: Your system is low on virtual memory.
Windows is increasing the size
of your virtual memory paging file.
That means Windows XP is letting you know it is doing it's job. The
message is not an error message -
it is an informational message.
If XP thinks the size of the paging file (usually c
pagefile.sys) is
too small to accommodate
your current operations it will adjust it to make it larger and
display that message.
Most of the time it means somebody has been tampering with the paging
file to try to solve some
other problem that usually has nothing to do with their paging file.
To see what your current settings are, right click My Computer,
Properties, Advanced,
Performance Settings, Advanced tab, Virtual Memory, Change button.
Unless you know more about managing memory that Windows XP, you should
let XP handle the size
of your virtual memory paging file.
The best setting for Paging file size is usually going to be:
System managed size
Windows XP will try to allocate a paging file approximately 1.5 times
the total amount
of the RAM installed in your system. Letting Windows XP handle the
paging file size
is adequate for most configurations
If yours is not set to System managed size you need to determine how
it got changed and why (usually some
wrong reason), make a note of the current settings, change the setting
to System managed size, click the
Set button and Apply the changes (you will be asked to reboot).
"Because somebody told me to" is not a good reason to make adjustments
to the paging file size.
After making the adjustments, reboot, then check the paging file
settings again to make sure they stick,
then test your system again and see if you still get the messages.
If you are still seeing the message, you should determine what
applications you are running
that are consuming so much of your virtual memory that Windows XP
needs to adjust it.
Some applications are notorious for consuming large amounts of virtual
memory (like the Spybot
Teatimer - do you have that installed?).
You can determine how applications are using your virtual memory using
Task Manager.
To do that:
Right click the Taskbar, choose Task Manager and select the Processes
tab.
Click View, Select Columns, check the box that says: Virtual Memory
Size. Expand the height and
width of the Task Manager by dragging the corners and edges so you can
see all the columns and
processes in one window if possible.
Double click a column heading in TM to sort by the column. For
example, sort Task Manager by the CPU or
Virtual Memory size column.
Who's on top using all the Virtual Memory?
If you need another set of eyeballs on your settings, describe the top
5 applications you see in
Task Manager that are using the most virtual memory and, do this:
Click Start, Run and in the box enter:
msinfo32
Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select
All, Copy and then paste
the results back here.
There will be some personal information (like System Name and User
Name), and whatever appears to
be private information to you, just delete the personal information
from the pasted information.
This will minimize back and forth Q&A and eliminate guesswork and
assumptions.