Your System is Low on Virtual Memory

It is not uncommon to be faced with the following error message when you are using a computer with a Windows operating system installed: Your system is low on virtual memory and Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file. The question that comes to mind is what does that mean and what am I supposed to do about it? It is obvious that increasing the amount of memory is necessary to get rid of the error message, but how do you do that?

Virtual memory is used by computers to run programs when it is running low on RAM (Random Access Memory). The Your system is low on virtual memory and Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file error means that you don’t have enough memory to run whatever program, or programs, you are using, and Windows is automatically doing something about it.

There are a number of reasons for this error to appear. Starting a Windows office program, such as Microsoft Office or PowerPoint, or upgrading from an earlier version of Windows to Windows XP can cause the error. Also, when you start a large application, or try to work with large files inside of an application that is loaded on the computer, it may require more memory than your computer has to offer. Finally, running a number of applications, even small ones, can add up to cause a memory problem. At that point, Windows will be prompted to increase the additional memory in order to make the program(s) load and run properly.

It is a normal process for Windows to update your virtual memory on its own, and this message is shown to inform you that that is what is occurring at this time. In most cases, the normal Windows process should be sufficient to increase the virtual memory. If you continue to see these errors, obviously the automatic change is not providing enough virtual memory to run the programs without chronic errors. In this case, you can manually adjust the virtual memory setting on your computer.

Before you can adjust the virtual memory setting, you need to know how much RAM you currently have on your computer. You can find this out by doing the following:

• Go to My Computer / Computer and right click.
• Click on Properties. For Windows 7, the RAM is shown on this first screen.
• Click on the General tab.
• Under the Computer heading it will list how much RAM you currently have on your system.

Next you will need to determine how much RAM you need to run your programs. Here are some common system requirements:

• Windows 7 needs 1GB.
• Windows Vista needs 512MB without gaming applications and 1GB with gaming applications.
• Windows XP needs 256MB.
• If you have other operating systems, you can determine the amount of RAM necessary by researching Windows system requirements for your particular system.

Determine how much memory you have and how much your operating system requires and adjust the virtual memory accordingly. To manually adjust the virtual memory on your computer:

• Go to My Computer / Computer and right click.
• Click Properties.
• Click on Advanced tab / Advanced system settings link.
• Click on Performance options / Performance - Settings.
• Click on Advanced tab.
• Click on Change.
• Uncheck the box for automatically managing your virtual memory and type in your new settings.

These steps will adjust your virtual memory settings to the recommended amount necessary to run your programs. Adjusting your settings is a short-term solution to the issue if you regularly run large programs that take up a great deal of memory and space on your drive and your RAM is not sufficient to run these programs.

If you are continuing to see the system is low on virtual memory error, adding memory or RAM is a good option to eliminate the problem in the future. Additional memory can be purchased and installed by any computer store that specializes in computer repair.