There is always a wonderment as to when and what really happens when you get an error message, why you get it and how to fix it.First let’s see when actually you face this Low Virtual Memory error and subsequently the ways in which one could go about fixing this.
Virtual Memory is used when all of your computer’s real physical memory (RAM) is in use and you don’t have any space left. Windows will try to create virtual memory by grabbing a chunk of hard drive space and treating it like real memory.
The software or anything using that space cannot differentiate between real memory and virtual but you can know because the accessing will be slower, as it requires the activity of the hard drive.
When you encounter this message it means that you have exceeded the amount of virtual memory which is allocated to your system. So what’s next? Probably you would like to eliminate non-essential programs, i.e remove any unnecessary files or reduce the start-up selections to free up some memory.
This will help your computer run faster and be more reliable. One more solution is to add more RAM to your system.
To see memory related details on your system, follow the steps mentioned below (works good for Windows XP):
1. Click Start, then open the Control Panel.
2. Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
On the System Properties window, the type and speed of your processor (CPU) and the amount of RAM can be seen.
Note that Windows always seems to report that you have slightly less memory than you actually have.
For example, if Windows reports 496 MB of RAM, you actually have 512 MB.
(Memory will always be installed in 64 MB increments.)
Windows manages virtual memory by automatically shrinking or enlarging the paging file as needed so to configure just follow the below steps (Windows XP):
1. Click Start, then open the Control Panel.
2. Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. Under Performance, click Settings.
5. Click the Advanced tab.
6. Under Virtual memory, click Change.
7. Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file (virtual memory) settings that you want to change. In almost every case, this will be your C: drive.
8. Click to select the “System managed size” option, then click Set.
9. Click OK on the remaining tabs until they all close and finally restart your computer.