"Windows is creating virtual memory"

[kc7jty]

When I came back to my antique Dell desk top yesterday after a couple hours of being away I was faced with a window that stated Firefox crashed, and another window stating Windows was creating virtual memory.

When I defragged the hard drive I got a bunch of green (unmovable files) scattered all over the entire range of space in little pieces. After the defrag they remained, but since I shut the comp down they are now gone.
Duh....what was that about?

[WØTKX]

Firefox chewed up enough regular RAM memory and demanded more! Winders pages out memory data to the hard drive in chunks when this happens. It's a losing battle, as the more memory demand goes up, the more gets swapped to the drive. It's called Virtual Memory and it's slow.

If you ran the defragger before rebooting after the Firefox Crash, those little bits were in control of the OS, and Winders did not want to let them go. Probably was swap space.

You might want to tweak Firefox for the PC, so it doesn't get so aggressive with RAM... I like Google Chrome on lesser PC's. Add more RAM, and/or reboot often.

[ad4mg]

Agreed. You're running XP, right, Bill? If you tell me how much physical RAM your machine has, I'll give you a step by step on setting your swap file size to be more efficient than the Windows default settings, which are very generic, and made to work on as many machines as possible. There are far better ways to do this!

Which defragmentation program are you running? I find this one to be excellent, better and faster than the Windows defrag utility:

Download Auslogics Disk Defrag (http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/download)

[kc7jty]

Agreed. You're running XP, right, Bill? If you tell me how much physical RAM your machine has, I'll give you a step by step on setting your swap file size to be more efficient than the Windows default settings, which are very generic, and made to work on as many machines as possible. There are far better ways to do this!

Which defragmentation program are you running? I find this one to be excellent, better and faster than the Windows defrag utility:

Download Auslogics Disk Defrag (http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/download)
Yep, XP with 512 M ram.
It probably happened cause I had too many pages shrunk down on the taskbar and was playing poker at 2 tables on Yahoo games.
I'll just remember never to exceed 6 pages at once.
Thanks for the info folks and I'll try the Auslogics download.

[ad4mg]

Yep, XP with 512 M ram.
It probably happened cause I had too many pages shrunk down on the taskbar and was playing poker at 2 tables on Yahoo games.
I'll just remember never to exceed 6 pages at once.
Thanks for the info folks and I'll try the Auslogics download.
Here's the step by step to set your virtual memory to be a little more efficient. The general rule of thumb is to make your swap file (virtual memory) 3x the amount of physical RAM in your machine.

1. Right-Click the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, or on your Start key menu
2. Select "Properties"
3. On the System Properties dialog box, click the "Advanced" tab
4. Under "Performance", click the "Settings" button
5. Under "Performance Options", select the "Advanced" tab
6. Under "Virtual Memory", click the "Change" button
7. Select the "Custom Size" option
8. Set both the "Initial" and "Maximum" sizes to 1535 MB
9. Click the "Set" button
10. Click "OK", this window will close
11. Click "Apply", then "OK" and the window closes
12. Click "OK" once more, and the window closes

You will likely have to restart the computer for changes to take effect. This should be enough virtual memory for all normal uses. The advantage is that Windows doesn't have to constantly grow and shrink the swap file size, which helps eliminate swap file fragmentation. The only time this is detrimental is when you don't have much hard drive space available. When all is said and done, hopefully you still have at least 30% of your "C" drive free.

I would suggest that the files on the drive be defragmented before making these changes. Here, I have multiple hard drives in all my machines, so I put the swap file on the fastest hard drive.

I originally read about that tip when Windows 2000 first came out. An article about tuning the OS appeared on the ZDNet site. It works very well!

[kc7jty]

Here's the step by step to set your virtual memory to be a little more efficient. The general rule of thumb is to make your swap file (virtual memory) 3x the amount of physical RAM in your machine.

1. Right-Click the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, or on your Start key menu
2. Select "Properties"
3. On the System Properties dialog box, click the "Advanced" tab
4. Under "Performance", click the "Settings" button
5. Under "Performance Options", select the "Advanced" tab
6. Under "Virtual Memory", click the "Change" button
7. Select the "Custom Size" option
8. Set both the "Initial" and "Maximum" sizes to 1535 MB
9. Click the "Set" button
10. Click "OK", this window will close
11. Click "Apply", then "OK" and the window closes
12. Click "OK" once more, and the window closes

You will likely have to restart the computer for changes to take effect. This should be enough virtual memory for all normal uses. The advantage is that Windows doesn't have to constantly grow and shrink the swap file size, which helps eliminate swap file fragmentation. The only time this is detrimental is when you don't have much hard drive space available. When all is said and done, hopefully you still have at least 30% of your "C" drive free.

I would suggest that the files on the drive be defragmented before making these changes. Here, I have multiple hard drives in all my machines, so I put the swap file on the fastest hard drive.

I originally read about that tip when Windows 2000 first came out. An article about tuning the OS appeared on the ZDNet site. It works very well!

I did everything and it went without any problems. The initial was 768 (I believe) and the max was 1536. They are both 1535 now if it took OK.
Thanks Luke for another piece of good advice.

[kc7jty]

I ran the Windows defrag after the mod to see the disc space and I now have another solid block of (green) unmovable files with plenty of free disc space left.
Thanks again.

[AE1PT]

You may consider increasing your RAM. While XP can run on 512M, at least half of that is going to be eaten up by the time the box finishes booting. Needless to say, this means that your computer will start to use and create additional virtual swap file space.

While Firefox is my default browser--it is a horrid memory hog. Each new tab that is created gobbles up additional memory, and interestingly enough is not released if you close the tabs. The only way to get memory to clear out is to periodically close out Firefox and restart. Someday, one would think that this would be ironed out...

[kc7jty]

good to know...thanks

[ka8ncr]

I create a separate 3 gig partition and run my swap/pagefile there. It'll never get fragmented that way, and it makes it quite speedy.

Well, speedier...

Running the virtual memory on the same drive as the system and user space is another one of Microsoft's triumphant design flaws.