what the hell? I need more virtual memory!

[cleofus1]

OK...this is a problem i've had in the past...and something i'm not all that clear on...what is virtual memory? what do i need it for?
how do I increase it?

please help me...:banghead:

[KitchenWitch]

1. Here is some info from the Micro$oft help file - assume you use windows

Managing computer memory

When your computer is running low on RAM and more is needed immediately, Windows uses hard drive space to simulate system RAM. This is known as virtual memory, and is often called the paging file. This is similar to the UNIX swapfile. The default size of the virtual memory pagefile (named pagefile.sys) created during installation is 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your computer.

You can optimize virtual memory use by dividing the space between multiple drives and removing it from slower or heavily accessed drives. To best optimize your virtual memory space, divide it among as many physical hard drives as possible. When selecting drives, keep the following guidelines in mind:

Try to avoid having a pagefile on the same drive as the system files.
Avoid putting a pagefile on a fault-tolerant drive, such as a mirrored volume or a RAID-5 volume. Pagefiles don't need fault-tolerance, and some fault-tolerant systems suffer from slow data writes because they write data to multiple locations.
Don't place multiple pagefiles on different partitions on the same physical disk drive.

You can choose to optimize your computer's memory usage. If you use your computer primarily as a workstation, rather than as a server, you can have more memory devoted to your programs. Your programs will work faster and your system cache size will be the default size that came with Windows XP. You can also specify to set aside more computer memory for a larger system cache, If your computer is used primarily as a server, or if you use programs that require a larger cache

I hope this is helpful.

[cleofus1]

2. i have 512 m of sdram

but it seems i'm running over 30 programs in the background,
with explorer.exe being the biggest hog...i don't even recognize some of these background programs...is this the problem?

[SlackJawedYokel]

3. If you're using XP

in Task Manager click on the tab that sorts by name... will be your name or admin and the others will be system programs.
Don't mess with those.
You can try closing the ones you don't recognize one at a time or google for info on the file name.
There is shareware/freeware software that can tell you what programs are currently running, where they are coming from and what started them.
Again, if you're using XP you can check your start up settings... via "help and support" IIRC, and track down/disable unwanted files there.
You can pare the list down to only what is necessary and that you want to run.
This should clear up plenty of RAM.
And don't forget about setting your RAM cache properly... ie., in another partition or on a second disk, defragged.

Good luck.
Cletus

[LiberalUprising]

4. Start up list

This site gives you the names of almost all items that could be running in background, a description and whether they are needed or not and has a search engine.



Startup Applications List

Keys:

* "Y" - Normally leave to run at start-up
* "N" - Not required - typically infrequently used tasks that can be started manually if necessary
* "U" - User's choice - depends whether a user deems it necessary
* "X" - Definitely not required - typically viruses, spyware, adware and "resource hogs"
* "?" - Unknown
http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php

google startup list for more sites like this if you can't find it here.

On Edit

Startup cop is what I use to find out what programs running in background
you can get it here

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,2173,00.asp

Description:
When Windows starts up, it automatically launches a number of programs for you. Some of these come from the Startup folder. Windows also looks in six other locations for files that should be launched at startup. Startup Cop helps you handle problems with programs that are automatically launched at startup by listing them and letting you disable, enable, or delete them. You can save the list of programs that are currently enabled or disabled as a profile that can be restored at a later time.