I keep getting an exclamation symbol in my lower right cormer of my screen (with the volume symbol) along with the pop-up comes a messgae that says, "Your Virtual Memory is low, your computer is accessing more memory some applications may not work while this occurs, Etc." What the Hell does this mean?? Whenever I get this my computer basically locks up and the only way to fix it is to shut it off by pulling the power cord.
Total Physical Memory is 522224 I have Winzip running and it uses a lot. Wouls there be any reaon for this to be running??
Number 1 ... Stop jerking the power cord!!!!!!! Your not doing the machine any favors doing that. Hold the power button in for 10 seconds and it should shut off. If that doesn't work look for the on/off switch on the back of the PC, if it doesn't have one then as a last resort pull the plug. You did not say what OS your running so with this being a common XP problem I'm going to ASSUME. #2. Check you System Tray, how many Icons are in the tray? Here's the rule: More than 4 throw them out the door!! These are aplications demanding a position in your memory, give the ones you don't use every day the boot from your start-up files. Here are some real nasty's you need to boot: Real Player, Music D/L software, AOL IM, MS Messanger, etc... (Regseeker below will help you shut off tray items also) #3. Clean up the registry. Here's a good freebie: http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm #4. Clean up the hard drive and do a defrag. Don't forget to shut off all the running programs and everything in the systray first, oh, and that pretty screen saver. Why we still have screen savers is beyond me, screens don't burn anymore??? #5. XP has this nasty problem of Memory errors that occur when your computer runs low on hard disk space and it causes the virtual memory paging file to fault when trying to save. It never tells you it's a virtual problem or a hard drive space problem just a memory problem. Check your hard disk space for "used" and "free". If your hard drive is full you found your answer. If it's a proprietary PC with a partitioned hard drive for recovery files or just a partitioned large hard drive, move your virtual memory to that second partition for a temp fix. XP doesn't like seaching outside the root drive but it works ok. You can also add an old hard drive and use it, just dont mix hard drive speeds. I use the second drive application on my personal PC and the transfer time difference is practically unmesuarable. #6. XP uses Logical Prefetch, it gives a faster boot and logon but it pages a sizable amount of data. Run a defrag on your virtual memory. Here's a free software that does it for you. Be sure to read the page for preliminary cleanup steps first. http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html Hope this helps DDR Dan
I agree with everything that has been previously mentioned. The one thing I would say is to NOT go to Best Buy and get a memory upgrade. You can get the same products much cheaper elsewhere (such as me!! :lol: ) Randy
Randy, I don't think either of our pricing can compete with Ken's prices, he works for beer!!! Hey, I've got an idea Randy, we contract the work for money and we pay Ken with beer to do the work??? :lol: :lol: :lol: Just kidding Ken !!!!
First of all, thanks for everyone's input. I am not going to add memory as this is a work computer and not my personal. It is less than a year old and should have adequete memory for what I do. I think I have some sort of issue going on which I will get our computer guy to check the problem is he does not come to the office regulary which was why I was asking the questions about Virtual Memory. As for "pulling the plug" I know not to do that unless no other options and THAT was why I did it. There WERE no other options as the computer totally locks up when the Virtual Memory thing comes up and there is no getting out of it unless pull the plug. I have ran Spybot, adaware, registry cleaner and done systemscan and still have found nothing odd.
