Hello

Sometimes, when I have been playing on a computer game on my system, an error message is displayed saying Virtual Memory Low. Although this doesn't always crash the game it makes my computer extra slow and very annoying!!

Any suggestions to
1. Stop this message occurring (ie solve the problem)
2. Keep my computer running as quickly as it can

Kind regards, James

Some more information is needed for us to advise you correctly.
The main part is your Operating System.
Also some system specs would help.

The more inforamtion you give the better we can help you resolve your issue.

Need to know a few more things.
OS Version
RAM
Hard drive space
Size of your swap file.
Game(s) being played.
If you are playing games like Runescape, what browser are you using to play them with.
Other programs loaded at startup.

There's a whole lot of things that can cause this. The problem might not necessarily be the game but the game may be what pushes it over the edge.

Received via e-mail

Thanks for responding so quickly
my operating system is windows xp pro sp 2
i have a p4 2.4ghz processor
80gb hd
256mb ram
playing football manager 2007 (pc-cd)

Well for starters get more RAM.
XP Pro runs best with at least 512 Mb.

Ps, please post on the thread as I don't answer question via PM or mail, thanks.

I agree with Curlyben, you should have a minimum of 512 Mb of RAM. The more the better.

A solution would be to stop playing every so often, save and reboot your system. That usually frees up your RAM. Also, if you were using your system for other things before playing the game, reboot before starting up the game.

Hope this helps.

Didi

Ram is really cheap now, so its worth the upgrade. :D

Even with more ram, there are other things you can do to have a "snappy" system.

Such as defragging the hard drive, disabling or stopping unncessary services running in the background, freeing up hard drive space by deleting temp files, history, cookies, etc.

Also run spybot, adaware, ccleaner to get rid of any potential spyware, malware, etc.

If you are playing games you should have at least one gig of ram, 256 meg is no where near enough. If you drop a gig in you will should notice a significant performance boost.

You should also check your paging file to see how big it is and if it's setup correctly since this is what Windows uses for Virtual Memory.
Right click on My Computer, select Properties.
Click the Advanced Tab, click the Settings button under Performance.
Select the Advanced tab in the new window that opens and click change.

If you have only one hard drive you will see it will be selected. Below it the System managed size radio button should be selected. If it's not then select it and click Set... you will have to reboot. Increasing the size if it's a custom size will not yield much in the way of increased performance since the OS will only use it up to a certain point, after that you're just wasting disk space. The more physical RAM you have the smaller the allocated size will be... which is good because the physical RAM is a lot more quick than your hard drive.

Another tip as well, if you have multiple hard drives the paging file should be on the fastest drive that is available at boot time... i.e. don't put it on a USB/Firewire drive.

Thanks a lot everyone for you fast response to my question. Taking into consideration all of your advice, I have been able to upgrade my ram to 512mb (an increase from 256mb) which I have taken out of another computer (one that hadpreviously broken). I am in the process of doing what jstrike has said so I'll post how I get on (any improvements etc)
Thanks again

Virtual memory can be increasing when you go to my computer properties, and another thing that can help your PC is when you are playing your game close all the programs to give your PC some processing room...