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why does my pc say ‘virtual memory is too low’?
I keep getting a box appearing saying my ‘virtual memory’ is too low and Corel x3 has slowed unbelievably and become unstable. Anybody know if these two things are linked and if so what I can do about it.
I’m using a laptop Dell Inspiron 8600 and its almost four years old(not walking yet but might soon be flying!! 😮 😮 )thanks
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16 Replies
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are there large photos in the corel file you are using when this message comes up?
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How much space is left on the hard drive mate?
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6.1 GB of 30.5 GB’s
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If low drive space isn’t the problem, the virtual-memory settings may be wrong. Right-click My Computer and choose Properties. Click the Advanced tab. Click the Settings button in the Performance panel. Click the Advanced tab in the Performance dialog. Click the Change button in the Virtual memory panel. Phew! This setting is buried quite thoroughly! Look for the System managed size option, select it if it isn’t already selected, and then click OK, OK, OK. That should end the warnings.
I would try and free up a bit of space on your hard drive though
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Try this freeware software it’s really good i use it every day cleans out old temp files and lots more not saying this will solve your problem but it will clean quite a bit of crap u didn’t know was even there and fixes the windows registry of old files programs since deleted that have left remnants behind
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Harry, I think 20% free space on a hard drive is getting towards the limit. I would prefer not to live that close to the edge.
Do computers still use virtual memory? I thought that was a thing of the past, from the days when real memory was prohibitively expensive.
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You should make your virtual memory a fixed size. Don’t let it try to re-size it.
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quote John Childs:…Do computers still use virtual memory? I thought that was a thing of the past, from the days when real memory was prohibitively expensive.Still very much a necessity when you’re working on a 2 Gig photoshop file with ‘undo’ still enabled!! (An the inevitable Mac terminology of ‘scratch disc’…booo!)
Ah, Yeh Olde Days of faffing around endlessly with your EMS / XMS & config.sys / autoexec.bat to get that extra 4k to run some game or other when 1Mb of RAM cost about £200…
My home PC has the virtual memory turned off normally – runs a damn sight quicker than the work one too.
As for letting Windows choose your virtual disk size, it normally makes an OK job of it and no real loss except the ‘temp’ file is not stored in one allocated chunk, just scattered throughout the drive so read/write can be marginally slower. But set it for a min of 500Mb / max 2Gb if you can be bothered.
Also – run the disk cleanup tool & defrag. (MY Computer – highlight & right click ‘C drive’ – then properties. Even the basic Microsoft one works quite well & may free up a couple of hundred Mb in genuinely scrap files.
Dave
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Thanks for all the advice
ok, defragged, disc cleaned, run ccleaner etc removed 100’s of photos to a separate hard drive and I now have 13.6Gb of free space what else can I do to speed things up?
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How much RAM you got Harry?
Upping that is usually the most cost effective way to improve performance.
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512mb of Ram John
and one very compliant sheep! 😀 😀
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Harry, I used to get that message often before I updated with the Coreldraw update. Now I don’t get it at all. I have only downloaded the first update since release.
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quote Harry Cleary:512mb of Ram John
and one very compliant sheep! 😀 😀
Spend £25 (ish) and get another 512 (if there’s a spare slot) or even just buy a 1Gb module.
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/store/2/cat/Memory—Laptop
Windows on its own uses around 200Mb…then you load a program and start doing some work and that 512Mb soon turns into 50Mb of free RAM.
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another addition to the virtual memory settings:
always set them manually, and rather than allocate a range of say 500 and 2000 as the upper and lower limits, set it to 2000 and 2000 for both. What this does is effectively forces the computer to use a paging file of 2GB on your hard drive as virtual memory, rather than letting the computer decide on a random figure between 500MB and 5GB – which in itself slows the machine down whilst thinking about it.
Give that a try, and also look at upgrading your RAM……. you can never have enough I say 😎
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Like the others have said, clear out your hard drive and if you can add a bit extra ram, the motherboard on your laptop will support up to 2 gig of ram so am extra 512mb module or even a gig module will work wonders.
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thanks for the advice everyone. 😀
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